(REQUEST) Antialiased Ellipse and Irregular Selections

[drakaan]

This doesn't appear on the "Popular Feature Requests" list yet, so I'll go ahead and ask for it in the hopes that it shows up eventually.

Ellipses (well, any non-rectangular selection) would be a lot more friendly if they were antialiased. Pretty much my only point of frustration with PdN is this particular item.

It's especially difficult to get a good result on "glassy" effects within non-rectangular selections without resorting to either gaussian blur (which affects single-color transparent gradients pretty badly) or Feather, which also affects transparent gradients.

I'm going to try out the new "Antialias" plugin, and see if it's suitable for fixups, but I'd much rather just have things come out better without having to do that.

[Ash]

It's especially difficult to get a good result on "glassy" effects within non-rectangular selections without resorting to either gaussian blur (which affects single-color transparent gradients pretty badly) or Feather, which also affects transparent gradients.

I'm going to try out the new "Antialias" plugin, and see if it's suitable for fixups, but I'd much rather just have things come out better without having to do that.

Yeah, those effect does kinda mess up transparent gradients.

And the new AA plugin only works with "Alpha 255" well.

[jsonchiu]

I think the newest AA plugin will work if you are careful about the options.

I managed to get semitransparent gradient to work with these settings:

Amount: 7

Strength: 900

[Crazy Man Dan]

You know, this request was part of my first ever post on the Paint.NET forums two years ago.

Rick explained that, with the current selection model, a pixel is either selected or not selected. In order to enable anti-aliased selection edges, the current selection system would have to be completely rewritten to allow for variable pixel selection weight, taking into account the curve of the edge and figuring the appropriate alpha value for that pixels channel so the edge would be smooth.

So, I know Rick is aware at least one guy wants it, but I don't know if he intends on doing so, and if so, when. First there's a rewrite of the Plugins API and DLL handling system coming, and I know Rick has mentioned that 4.0 will most likely entail a complete rewrite of the canvas rendering system to allow for less of a memory burden when dealing with large images. That would then make possible the addition of another channel per layer, Masks, which would entail a rewrite of the Layers system...

[Ash]

@jsonchiu: I'll give that a try

@CMD: That make sense.

[drakaan]

You know, this request was part of my first ever post on the Paint.NET forums two years ago.

Rick explained that, with the current selection model, a pixel is either selected or not selected. In order to enable anti-aliased selection edges, the current selection system would have to be completely rewritten to allow for variable pixel selection weight, taking into account the curve of the edge and figuring the appropriate alpha value for that pixels channel so the edge would be smooth...

Yeah...I didn't figure it would be a "coming in PdN 3.11" feature, but it's something that needs to be tackled at some point.

I'm not bad at coding, but I'm not great at math, which is a pretty big deal in most of the important code in PdN (lots of trig in what I'm asking about). That's frustrating in and of itself, because I'd love to be able to help, or at least make a patch on my own.

I keep going to do things where this crops up, and trying to find the right way to deal with it isn't always easy...just waaaaaay easier than implementing a change in code to fix it

I'm a patient guy, I can wait a year or two.

[jsonchiu]

Sometimes you don't have to wait that long.

The anti-alias plugin should work for transparency gradients now!

PS: turn off "soft outline"

[drakaan]

Sometimes you don't have to wait that long.

The anti-alias plugin should work for transparency gradients now!

I'll re-download it...had no luck earlier today.