Unfreeze Combined with Paint.NET

[Ratmaster]

Can someone make an addon/effect that will add an unfreez box to paint.NET in the effects window that lets you make animated images with frames if you set them a certain way? I have read something that animated images cannot be made with paint.NET, but it would be very helpful to be able to do it via paint.NET. Although, I do not know how the general editing area will look unless you can edit one frame of the animation there.

that lets you make animated images with frames

Frames in that statement is referring to another box being made that lets you add frames in the order that you wish the animation to start at and end from. (start=top; end=bottom)

Thanks for your time.

[david.atwell]

Effects can only touch one layer at a time. This is not possible with the Effects API in Paint.NET, sorry!

[BoltBait]

Actually, David, this would be possible with a filetype plugin.

[Myrddin]

Much like the Animated Cursor plugin? It uses the layers present as the frames, the hotspot setting could easily be replaced by frame timing. Am I right in thinking this?

[BoltBait]

Sure. We just need a brave soul to code it up.

I tried writing a filetype plugin... once. I got confused.

[Myrddin]

Couldn't the source of the Animated Cursors be manipulated rather than starting a fresh?

Actually, if the source was published. :?

[david.atwell]

Oh, wow...that's something I never even thought of. I guess I should leave the programming questions to the programmers, eh? ;-)

[Yata]

Well you were right, the animated cursor was just a very smart work around.

Lets see... Pyro is busy with about 20 other plugins, BB can't do it... MadJik? MKT? (off the top of my head.)

[Bob]

IIRC, the Animated Cursor plugin need to break the Paint.NET plugin API to display this dialog before saving.

My advice will be to wait for the PdN version which will add a better plugin system.

[Ratmaster]

Has there been any progress on this yet?

[Ash]

Lets see.....4 days.....umm.

My guess is, NO.

[david.atwell]

The fastest turnaround I've seen was about a week and a half or so...and it was an effect BB made for Steganography. It was cool, but it was pretty simple, if I understand his description of the code correctly. This would be immensely more complex.

[Sozo]

Yet soooo usefull.

[pyrochild]

At this point in time, I would be far more interested in a plugin that would build a SWF or APNG file.

[MyrddinE]

Building a SWF would be kinda useless, since Flash is primarily a vector format. There are already flash objects you can use where you can provide the URL to an image, and the flash object will let you display, zoom, etc the given file... what else would you do with a picture embedded in flash?

But I'd like to see Animated PNG (APNG) support too. Animation requires an entirely different GUI though, so I don't expect to see it anytime soon. Even if all you did was use each layer as a frame, how would you specify the frame lengths? I think that kind of stuff is best done in an external program, similar to how Paint Shop Pro had the external app Animation Shop.

[trippdoctor]

At this point in time, I would be far more interested in a plugin that would build a SWF or APNG file.

Me too I want an APNG editor thats out side of the Mozilla Firefox I am thinking about coding an app outside of Paint .NET but not really sure where to begin.

[pyrochild]

Building a SWF would be kinda useless, since Flash is primarily a vector format. There are already flash objects you can use where you can provide the URL to an image, and the flash object will let you display, zoom, etc the given file... what else would you do with a picture embedded in flash?

You dismiss ideas far too quickly. You did the same thing when someone said that your idea for better line nub handling would make cutting out images easier. There would be nothing "useless" about having a SWF plugin for animation. It would certainly be better in many ways than either GIF or APNG. Every frame of a GIF animation takes a MASSIVE quality hit. APNG has almost no support. Honestly, how many people have Gran Paradiso installed on their computer? It's easy, in Adobe Flash, to put bitmap images in each keyframe and run that just like a regular animation, so there's no reason why SWF would not be a viable format for exporting animations.

[jsonchiu]

@Pyrochild

Totally agree. In flash, you can add a loading bar easily.

Also, flash is good with Bitmaps too. Most photo slideshows are done in flash.

I don't see any reason to ditch flash (and I love coding flash games btw)

[Fisherman's Friend]

And last but not least SWF allows jpeg-compression (i think). Unoptimized png-files tend to be big, and i think it would be terrible to load a web page full of APNGs each consisting of various unoptimzed PNGs. :shock:

[jsonchiu]

@Fisherman

Flash's lossless compression is already pretty good.

I mean, a 500kb png file can be compressed to 100kb~150kb in flash without loosing quality.

It's jpg compression is also pretty good too. You can often get like 5% of the original file size without loosing too much quality (about 75).

[Fisherman's Friend]

I didn't know that! You don't just make some fine plugins, you help me further even in other ways. Thank you! ^^

I myself prefer jpeg compression with 96/97. It reduces the filesize enoumously and looks quite good in most of the cases. For the web I try to make files as small as possible with good quality as there are still people with slow connection, and I don't want to terrify them.

[trippdoctor]

Ok SWF APNG and GIF animation would be a great Idea bundled together but because most forums do not allow SWF files for avatars and such so the APNG has its use there but why not support all 3 formats each has its advantage.