"Quadrilateral crop" effect possible with Paint.NET?

[tomy]

I may be new on this forum but I'm not new to Paint.NET. It has been my image editor of choice for a very long time now, but I'm looking for an effect that I cannot quite seem to find anywhere, although I have found similar. What I am looking for is to crop an image, but not using a rectangle - I'd like to crop an image with a quadrilateral shape. Then, rather than there being white/transparent space around the cropped image, I'd like the cropped image to be stretched/distorted to fill the previous canvas.

 

If you'd like a visual representation of what I'm trying to do, skip to 0:40 in this video: 

 

0:40 through 1:05 details the kind of effect that I want to achieve in Paint.NET . I want to drag some knobs, or well "pushpins" over the image, click a button, and have the cropped selection fill the canvas' previous size.

 

Now, I did find Evan Old's Quadrilateral Reshape plugin, and it does something along the same lines as what I want, but not the same - more like the opposite. The knobs stay on the outside of the shape and cannot go inside to crop the image, rather the image stays "stuck" to the outer knobs, which was disappointing because the screenshots suggested that I could do otherwise (the screenshot shows a reshape/matte tickbox which looks like it would do the job) but the option to invert the knobs to go inside is nowhere to be seen.

 

I also found dpy's DistortThis (which does something similar to Evan Old's plugin) and the Perspective plugin (which is not what I am trying to accomplish either). I also saw Grid Warp come up, but I have no idea how that is relevant to the effect I need.

 

Any help is appreciated. I'd like to stick to Paint.NET and plugins obviously, but I'd also welcome software suggestions, GIMP not included (eww) and 3dvia Shape not included either (obsolete software).

 

(EDIT: spelling mistake)

Edited May 13, 2014 by tomy

[DrewDale]

Reply removed. I should have read that you have tried Evan Old's plugin already...Sorry. 

Edited May 13, 2014 by DrewDale

[tomy]

Yeah, maybe I'm just missing something but Evan Old's plugin does not seem to do what I'm trying to accomplish (see video)

Thanks anyways. Any other suggestions?

Edited May 13, 2014 by tomy

[Goonfella]

Don`t think it is something you can do in PDN. Maybe the genius plug in creators here can come up with something. It would make for a great plug in.

[skullbonz]

For what you did with the wall in the video you can do it in PDN using a couple steps and plugins. 

 

1. Add the image you want to crop as another layer above the layer you are placing it on and use TR's Alpha Cutter to surround the part you want to use and enable the mask. That should leave only the part you want to use and the rest will be transparent.

 

2. Using the magic wand click on the transparent part of that.

 

3. Go to Edit tab and click Invert Selection or just use cntrl + I

 

4. Now go to the tools and click the blue arrow,Move Selected Pixels. You will see control points that you can adjust the size with and can move it by clicking and holding inside the selection and move it to align perfectly.

 

The only draw back is that this method only works for rectangles. Hope this helps a little.  

 

You could center the cropped selection using the Object Align plugin and then use the Quadrilateral Reshape plug in if one side is taller or longer than the other and then place it using the Move Selected Pixels tool.

 

Cutting out the window would take a few more steps but is possible. I can explain that also if you would like to do that,just let me know.    

Edited May 14, 2014 by skullbonz

[tomy]

@Goonfella ikr? Seems like the kind of thing a plugin would do, I don't know any C or C# or C++ or B or A or XYZ or whatever Paint.NET uses (I know some Javascript but that is completely different than Java never mind C, common misconception) so I couldn't make one myself. Though some plugins comes so close that maybe some simple modifications could be made rather than starting from scratch, given somebody knows the language well enough to change the code appropriately.

 

@skullbonz thanks, but that isn't exactly what I'm looking for. The whole point is I want to be able to crop, but with a shape different than a rectangle, and then to be able to morph, distort or stretch that into a square/rectangular shape. Your suggestion is a good one, but it still isn't quite there yet. Thanks anyways though!

[Cc4FuzzyHuggles]

Hello.
 
You could try this plugin, Peephole/Path Tool -- http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/26552-peephole-drawing-or-some-path-tools-in-the-future/

It is still in beta, but I think it might help as a work-around for what you want to do.
 
1) Add a layer above your image and use the plugin to make the shape you want. (It has a pre-made rectangle shape that you can transform.)

2) Use the magic wand tool to select the shape (possibly select the outside of the shape and use invert selection).
3) Crop To Selection.

 

I'm not sure what to do about morphing/distorting the cropped item into a new shape. Sorry

Edited May 14, 2014 by Cc4FuzzyHuggles

[tomy]

I'm not sure what to do about morphing/distorting the cropped item into a new shape. Sorry

 

That's okay! So this is about as close as it gets to what I want. Still really neat functionality even though it doesn't give me the ability to stretch that shape into a square.

Well, thanks for all the recommendations. Maybe at the current time this is simply not possible and I'll just have to wait for a while until a solution is found. Of course if it doesn't really need to be precise, simply rotating the result appropriately and zooming in so it fills the canvas might do for now. Perhaps the better question is how exactly do you stretch a shape so it fills a rectangular area, like taking a spherical map of earth and changing it so that it is square with minimal distortion? I wouldn't even begin to claim that I know how the math behind that works, so for now, I might just have to stick to using a deprecated software to do the job. In any case thanks for everyone's help - it's the thought that counts!

Edited May 14, 2014 by tomy

[Cc4FuzzyHuggles]

Well, there is this plugin for turning round things square, and square things round : http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/28103-trs-eers-drum-skin-v13-mar-27-2014/

[tomy]

Hmm, so something like that but with a custom shape rather than a sphere... and the source code is available, right there, so it doesn't seem that far off that at least it COULD, with some amount of work, be done. Interesting plugin suggestions!