How to draw smooth lines?

[Reelix]

It seems like a simple question, and I feel that images will better demonstrate what I'm trying to ask.

 

This is me as a noob drawing a "circle" in Paint.NET (4.0.3)

The image has been zoomed in for clarification.



Now, this is me drawing a similar noobish circle using Adobe Illustrator CS6

Whilst drawing



Release left-click on my mouse (Ignore the line)



Zoomed in

 

As you can see, this figure has had it's lines significantly smoothed. Gone are the wobbly lines created my minor mouse tremors (As displayed in the first non-zoomed image), and it has been "corrected", remaining smooth regardless how much I zoom in.

Is there any way to do this automatically in Paint.Net as it is done by default in Illustrator (Maybe an addon or some such?).

Thanks

 

- Reelix

Edited September 15, 2014 by Reelix

[Pixey]

Hi Reelix and Welcome to PDN.  You can achieve a nice smooth circle in Paint.net by using the shapes tool, like so:

 

 

And 'viola' you have a nice clean circle:

 

 

Also, if you draw with the brush only, then you could use Gaussian Blur to smooth the lines and there is a Plugin called AA's Assistant to further smooth the lines.  Plugins can be found in this thread.

 

How to install Plugins cane be found here.

 

Good Luck.

 

[midora]

Is there any way to do this automatically in Paint.Net as it is done by default in Illustrator (Maybe an addon or some such?).

 

This is a vector graphics feature (no surprise Illustrator is a vector graphics editor). It is not impossible to implement such a feature but the Ui will be not so funny in a pixel editor.

 

I would recommend Inkscape. There are settings to define how many points should be used to create the final vector and the maximum failure distance to your mouse drawing.

[pdnnoob]

There's always the bezier curves too.

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Or draw your line thicker than necessary then thin it with the Median effect (Effects > Noise > Median). The result is an overall smoothing of the wobbly bits.

[TechnoRobbo]

Try TR's Spline Master maybe it's a good alternative