This article was written on July 23, 2007 by CyberNet.
Microsoft Monday
Paint.NET is one of my favorite free options for editing photos because it’s got a lot of great features, yet it is simple and easy to use. We’ve mentioned it on the site before, and some of you may already use it. While it may be a program that you use, you may not be aware that it actually started as a senior design project which was mentored by Microsoft. According to the Paint.NET website, it was originally intended to be used as a replacement for the current Paint which comes with Windows. Today’s article will focus on some of the basic features found in Paint.NET and how to use them. We’ll follow up with another article that goes into some of the more advanced features.
Red Eye Removal
We’ll start with one of the most basic features, but one that gets used quite often, red eye removal.
To remove red eyes from a picture, use a selection tool to select an area including the eyes. Next, go to the Effects menu and select Red Eye Removal. There you have it, your red eyes are removed! Below is the image from the Paint.NET tutorial which shows what the before and after looks like.
Auto-Level
This is another feature that gets used quite often once you know it’s there. Instead of manually adjusting the levels of the image so that it looks just right, use Auto-Level! It does all of the work for you. Sometimes the difference will be subtle, other times it will be drastic. Below is an example of what an image looked like before and after using auto-level.
Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Alt + L
Curve
If you like to have control over how the colors of your photo are adjusted, use the Curves feature. When you click to use the curves feature, you’ll notice a graph. Just start dragging your mouse around to notice the differences in your image. Horizontal values are the intensity input and the vertical values are the output.
To use the curve feature, go to Adjustments > Curves
Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + M
Other Effects:
There are a handful of effects that you can play around with to add something special to your image. And remember, if you don’t like the way it looks, you can always undo it by clicking on Edit > Undo, or by pressing Ctrl + Z.
Some of the effects that you can play with include:
- Oil Painting
- Outline
- Frosted Glass
- Pencil Sketch
Below is an example of what a photo looks like using the oil painting feature with a brush size of 5. The larger the brush size, the less detail you’ll notice.
Wrapping it up
As mentioned, these are very basic features within Paint.NET that some of you may already be very familiar with. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, take the time to play around with them because while simple, they can add a lot to your photos.
Next week we’ll get into some of the more advanced things that you can do with Paint.NET.
UPDATE: Want to make a Web 2.0 Logo Using Paint.NET? Here is CyberNet’s Tutorial including video!
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