Creating a Chain Using Paint.Net

This tutorial requires the following Effects Plugin

Rectangular to Polar Conversion

You should start with a canvas size of 250 wide by 150 high.

Set your Primary colour to one you would like your chain links to be; I chose a Yellow colour (as I want the chain to be kind-of gold). Set your Secondary colour to Black.

Draw a Gradient (Linear Reflected), using the left-mouse button, from the centre to the bottom of your canvas.
You should ensure that the angle of your Gradient is exactly 90.00 degrees, this will be important later.



Set the Transparency Alpha of your Secondary Colour to 0.
Adjust the canvas size: IMAGE > Canvas Size, to 250 x 250.
Ensure the Anchor is set to 'Middle' (I know the screenshot looks different).



EFFECTS > Rectangular to Polar Conversion

EFFECTS > BLURS > Radial Blur: Radial Amount 360



With the Rectangle Select tool highlight the entire right half of your canvas. The area selected should have a Bounding Rectangle size: 125 x 250, according to the info bar at the bottom of the screen.

I would advise for the next stage to zoom in to at least 200%

Use the Move Selection tool to and grab the right nub of your selected area. Contract the selected area until it is only 2 pixels wide.

Change to the Move Selected Pixels tool and, again grab the right nub of the selection. Now, drag the selection all the way to the right side of the canvas.

This is commonly known as the Pixel Drag Effect



Adjust the size of your canvas again. This time make it 500 x 250, make sure (this time) that the Anchor position is now set to 'Left'.



Duplicate the background layer (CTRL+SHIFT+D). LAYERS > Flip Horizontal. Flatten the image (CTRL+SHIFT+F).

You now have the first link in your chain.



Adjust your canvas size again. This time to 2000 x 500

Use the Magic Wand with the tolerance set at about 25. Hold the SHIFT key and select in an area outside the link. CRTL+I to invert the selection. Use the Move Selection tool to rotate (right-click) the link to somewhere around 30.00 degrees.



With your link still selected, press CTRL+C to Copy and press CTRL+SHIFT+V to to paste a copy directly into a new layer.

Use the Move Selected Pixels tool to drag the link to the right, rotate and position it so that it overlaps the first link.



Press CTRL+SHIFT+V to paste another link directly into a new layer. Move this link into the desired position.
Repeat this process until you have a 6-Link chain, with each link on a different layer.



Go back and work on the Background Layer.

A) Use the Magic Wand, holding the SHIFT key and select the area outside the left-most link. CTRL+I to invert the selection. Now, choose Layer 2 and select the Eraser tool - set your brush-width to about 20.

B) You are going to erase a small section where the links overlap.

(Don't worry, the eraser will only rub-out what is inside your selection.)

It now looks like your second link is connected to your first.



With Layer 2 still selected repeat steps A) & B) from previous instruction. Basically Magic Wand, Invert Selection, select Layer 3, Eraser.

Repeat these steps, working your way up through the layers until you have erased a joining section on each.

Flatten the image and your chain is basically finished.

You can add a Drop Shadow for effect. EFFECTS > Drop Shadow: X -10, Y - 10, Blur Radius 5.

Creating a Toy Car Using Paint.Net

This isn't a really a tutorial in the strict sense, as it does not really demonstrate any type of effect or technique - it's just a bit of fun.

We are going to take a picture of a full-sized sports car and modify it to look like a cool Toy Car.

Start with a picture of a car - must be taken completely side-on for best effect.



Start with the Rectangle Select tool and select the front area of the car - ahead of the wheel arch, from top to bottom of the picture. (If there is a flare on the wheel arch select outside that as well, it'll look better).



Now, switch to the Move Selected Pixels tool and, selecting one of the middle points, contract the size of the selected shape by 50% (so, if your selection is 100px wide, squash it to 50px)



Switch back to the Rectangle Select tool and now select the middle area of the car, the whole area between the front and rear wheels.



Again, use the Move Selected Pixels tool to squash this selection to 50% of it's original size.



Then, using Rectangle Select again, highlight the are behind the rear wheels.



Once more, use the Move Selected Pixels tool to contract this to 50% of it's original width.



Now, you need to move all the pieces back together, so that they join up neatly. The simplest way to do this is with Madjik's Gravity plugin.
Press CTRL+D to make sure any active areas are deselected - alternatively you can press CTRL+A and select the entire canvas; either will work.
Then go to Effects > Distort > Gravity: Select the direction as 'Left' or 'Right' and all the pieces will be moved back together.

To get rid of the left-over space, use the Magic Wand tool and select the transparent area of the canvas. Press CTRL+I to invert the selection and go Image > Crop to Selection (CTRL+SHIFT+X) and voila - you have turned a full sized car into a toy version.



Try turning it into a cartoon version using the combinations of the Ink Sketch, Pencil Sketch and/or Toon Filter effects.



This'll work for any car as long as the pic is taken directly side on...

Like this.....


or this.....

Making glass buttons using Paint.Net

I was over at Microsoft's Visual Studio site and saw these cool buttons.



I wanted to see how easy or difficult it would be to recreate them in Paint.NET. After being able to accomplish it in just a few easy steps I figured I'd write a tutorial on it.

Ok, we'll start of with creating a new image (ctrl+n). I chose 200x50 px. Fill it in with a color of your choice. This color will be the main color of your button. Whichever color you choose, avoid having the "Value" of that color set to maximum (100) as we will be using it in the next step for a gradient.

Pick the Rectangle tool (o), make sure you have "Draw Filled Shape" selected (bottom toolbar, next to "Fill style"), and set the value of your color to maximum (100). Go about three quaters down the image and draw a rectangle from that point down, all the way across. Do a Gaussian Blur at a 10px radius.



Add a new layer. On that new layer, from the left, go in about a third of the way and draw a white rectangle all the way across the image, top to bottom. Do a Gaussian Blur at 100px radius.





Add a new layer. Pick the Line/Curve tool (o). Turn off Antialiasing. With the brush width set at a value of 2, go down about half way and draw a line all the way across. Start at -1,25 and finish at 199,25 so the nubs (handles) are pretty much centered. I used a bright red for this. Grab the two center nubs and move each one down about 10 pixels.





Pick the the Magic Wand tool (s) and select the bottom half of the layer (below the line). I used a tolerance level of 69. Once that is selected, hold the Ctrl key down and now select the line itself. While you have this portion selected, switch to the layer below this one (the one with the white gradient). With that layer selected, cut out the selection (ctrl+x). Uncheck the layer with the line so you can no longer see it.



On you white gradient layer, do a motion blur with the angle set at 0.00 degrees and the distance set at 20px. Select the entire image using the Rectangle Select tool (s). Switch to the Move Selected Pixels tool (m). Grab the bottom center nub and move it up about 16 pixels.





Open the properties dialog for that layer by double clicking it in the Layers window or by pressing F4 and adjust the opacity to 150.



Flatten the image (ctrl+shift+f). Add a new layer and select the Rounded Rectangle tool (o). Set the brush width to 4 and make sure you have "Draw shape outline" selected. Turn on antialiasing. From the top left corner, go in 5 pixels and down 5 pixels. From there, draw your rectangle until it is centered in the image.



Pick the Magic Wand again and set the tolerance to 30. Select the rectangle you just made. Switch to the other layer and cut out the selection (ctrl+x). Eraese the remaining outer portion. You may notice that the bottom right corner is not the same as the other three. It's not as round. To get it more rounded, zoom in and add the missing pixels manually.

There you have it!



It's not an exact reproduction but it is pretty close.

As always, experament with the colors, blurs, gradients, and all that good stuff to achieve the look you want.

Special thanks to CMD for helping me out when I first started making glass effects.

__________________________________________________________________


Here's a tutorial for a different glass button.



1.) Create a new image. Whatever size you want your button to be, make the starting dimensions three to four times larger... and then resize it to a smaller size after you're done. (i.e. for a button that is 100x25px, start out with making it 400x100px)

2.) Fill in the image are with whatever color you want your button to be.




3.) Add a new layer and fill it with the color white. (hex: FFFFFF)

4.) In the Colors window, set the primary color's transparency-alpha to 0 (zero). Open up Tom's Code Lab and load SearedIce's Transparent Fade script. You can get Tom's Code Lab here: http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1096 and you can get SI's script here: http://paintdotnet.12.forumer.com/viewt ... ight=#5120 . You'll notice that the layer faded from transparent to opaque, top to bottom. If you would have set the secondary color's alpha to 0 and not the primary, the layer would have faded from opaque to transparent, top to bottom. OPTIONAL... before you click "OK" in Code Lab, go ahead and name the script (something like... TransparentFade), and click "Make DLL". This will save the effect .dll in the correct place (Program Files/Paint.NET/Effects) so the next time you load Paint.NET, it will show up under the "Effects" menu. After you made the .dll (if you chose to) go ahead and click "OK" in Code Lab.




5.) Double click the layer inside the Layers window and adjust the layers Opacity to 175.




6.) Add a new layer and fill it in with the color black. (hex: 000000)

7.) Repeat step 4. Only this time, make the layer fade from opaque to transparent, top to bottom. Adjust the layers opacity to 175.






8.) Add a new layer and fill it in the color black again.

9.) Select the Rectangle Select tool in the Tools window and make a selection on the black layer about 10 pixels from each side and cut out the selection. This will give you a black border.




10.) Duplicate that layer.

11.) Switch back the original black border layer and Gaussian blur that layer at a 10px radius.




12.) Add a new layer and fill in a little less than half of the top half of the layer with the color white.




13.) Repeat step 7






Adding in text... before you flatten the image.

1.) Add a new layer and type in whatever you choose.

2.) In the Layers window, move that layer down to where it is below the layer that has your top highlight. (the highlight you made in steps 12 & 13)



3.) OPTIONAL... duplicate the layer with your text. Switch back to your original text layer. If your text is a different color other than black, Fill in each letter with the black color. Gaussian blur it at a 10px radius. Adjust the layers opacity to 175.

Scotch Tape (Create a transparent segment of scotch tape)

Here is an interesting topic that I come across to using Paint.Net.

In this tutorial, we are going to make a scotch tape.

End result will look more or less like this. (with out my paper of course)

1. Start with a transparent canvas.
   
   
2. Set your primary color to D8D8D8 .
   
   
3. Draw a rectangle ( ) with the height of 25px and a width of what ever you like. (I used 100px)
   
   
4. Use the easer ( ) to cut out triangles on both ends. Like so...
   
   
   
   Zoomed in to show detail:
   
   
   
5. Set the primary color to C0C0C0.
   
   
6. Use the Outline Object plugin to make a border around the tape, using the settings shown here:
   
   
   
   
   
7. Use the feather plugin, with settings seen here:
   
   
   
8. Rotate the tape to 45 degrees using Zoom / Rotate ( ). You may have to expand your canvas first.
   
   
9. Now set the layer opacity to about 175.
   
   There's your Scotch Tape:
   
   
   
10. Now just put your paper or photo into a new layer under this one.

And if you want a more transparent tape or finer edges, see below for some variations: