· August 7, 2008 at 5:16 am · Desktop
Tags: best-of, effects, graphics, help, paint.net, tips, tutorials
I have been playing a lot more with Paint.NET lately, trying to get back in tune with my more creative side. One thing I never realized was there are a lot of great tutorials out there for it, but it is hard to find the best ones. Here are the top ten best Paint.NET tutorials I have run across so far.
Scotch Tape - Create a transparent segment of scotch tape
Glossy/Glass Buttons - Create Web 2.0-like glassy buttons
Toy Car - Turn a real car into a toy car
Make a Chain - How to render individual links, then link them together to form a chain
How to make a Lightsaber - Use lighting and blur effects to render a Lightsaber in
Transparent Background - Make the background of an image transparent
Cutting out Images the Easy Way! v2 - Great method for cutting images out of pictures
LiteBrite(TM) Effect - Transform your pictures into coloured peg-board style images
Lets Make a Software Box - Transform flat images into 3D boxes
Drop Shadows - Add depth to your artwork with drop shadows
It is amazing how advanced Paint.NET has gotten over the years. Also, if your used to the graphic editor layout - it is really easy to pick up and use too. Know of any other great tutorials?
· August 1, 2008 at 6:56 am · Desktop, Resources
Tags: copy, customize, edit, free, ico, icons, paint.net, plugin, Resources
I had an idea to customize a few of my default Vista icons, but had no way of doing so. I had the icon files, but no way to edit them. So after doing some browsing around I did come up with a solution to my icon editing woes.
First Step? Get Paint.NET!
First step was to pickup Paint.NET. This is an awesome free image editor with all the bells and whistles of your hundred-dollar programs.
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
Grab the Paint.NET ICO Plugin
Well worth having, just as a backup image editor if nothing else. Since Paint.net does not have .ico support built in by default, I picked up this plugin from Evan’s Web Site. To use it, all you need to do is unzip and then put it in the “FileTypes” folder in the Paint.NET directory.
Startup Paint.NET and try dragging and dropping an .ico icon onto the canvas. Thanks to this neat plugin, it will open just as any other image would open. With saving as an .ico, I had a few errors at times but doing it again or changing the name of the file seems to have helped.
So there is a totally free way to edit and create custom desktop icons for your next design project or desktop redecoration.
