PDN Tutorial

This tutorial is unofficial and is in need of a spell and grammmar check. I also need someone who has never used PDN to test out the tutorial and see if it is any help. I am having trouble posting the tutorial. Some reason I have to post it in small bits. Learning how to use Paint.net Before you start reading this I need to let you know that map making isn’t always fun. For some people it won’t be fun at all. At first it will be frustrating because you won’t understand how to do certain things. I made this tutorial to try and make it easier to understand those confusing things. I’m going to try and make this a quick and easy to understand tutorial but if something I say doesn’t make sense to you please message me, Pntbttr. Please follow along with Paint.net (PDN). Here is where you can download PDN: http://www.getpaint.net/download.html If you don’t want to read all of this (I strongly suggest that you do) you can use the tip bar on the bottom of PDN. It will give you tips about the tool you are using. If you just don’t understand one or two things just hit “ctrl” + “F” and type in a key word and it will search for that word. This is the order in which I will explain how to use PDN: Tip Bar (already been explained above) Gadgets • Colors • Tools Special Bar 1. Size 2. Antialiasing 3. Blendin 4. Flood Mode 5. Tolerance 6. Fill 7. Special Shape Option 8. Select Mode 9. Tools Without Special Options 10. Tools With Unique Special Options How to use a Tool • Layers • History Tool Bar File Edit View Image Layers Adjustments Effects Utilities Window Help Image list, size and location Plugins Once you open PDN you will immediately notice a white rectangle that takes up most of the screen, four boxes two on each side of the screen and a long bar with symbols and words across it. The white rectangle, which I call the canvas, is where you will be making your map. Those four boxes are the most helpful tools of PDN, I call them gadgets. That white bar with tons of words and symbols is where you can find a lot of helpful options, I’m going to call the part with words the tool bar the part with images the image bar and the part that has different options depending on which tool you are using the special bar. If you can’t find the gadgets hit the following buttons: F5 (this will make Tools appear) F6 (this will make History appear) F7 (this will make Layers appear) F8 (this will make Colors appear) Or look on the tool bar for the word “Window”. Click on window and a drop down box will appear. The drop down box has four options at the top which will make the gadgets (Tools, History, Layers, Colors) appear. Gadgets • “Colors” Obviously this is where you get your colors. It’s complicated though. You can have two colors selected at once: The “Primary” and the “Secondary”. To select the color you want just click on one of the preset square colors, that area is called the palette, at the bottom of the box or search the color circle for the color you want. If you select a color with the right side of the mouse it will select the color in secondary and if you select a color with the left side of your mouse than it will be put in primary. There is also a button that says either primary or secondary on it. If you click on this box a drop down box will appear with the options primary and secondary if secondary is selected than the left/right click rule is the opposite of what I told you. Once you select a color the color will appear in one of the two (right/left click rule) boxes in the top right of the Colors box. You probably noticed a smaller version of the black and white boxes below the colors if you click on that button it will change your colors back to black and white. There is also a blue arrow above the color boxes. That arrow will change which color is primary and secondary. If you look in the top right of the colors box you will see a box that says more>> on it. Once you click on that box the whole color box will get bigger. There will be more preset colors and a ton of slides with letters next to them. R = Red (this is where you can change the amount of red that is mixed in with the color you are already using) G = Green (this is where you can change the amount of green that is mixed in with the color you are already using) B = Blue (this is where you can change the amount of blue that is mixed in with the color you are already using) H = Hue (the hue is basically the color circle except the saturation and variance don’t change when in use) S = Saturation (this is where you can change the amount of white that is mixed in with the color you are already using) V = Variance (this is where you can change the amount of black that is mixed in with the color you are already using) I normally take a preset color and lower the S and V slides to get the color I want. I never use the Transparency – Alpha slide (just changes the amount of invisibility) (you can do the same thing to a whole layer in layer properties). (click on <<Less) In the bottom left corner (above the preset square colors) there are two options: the one on the left (box with your primary color in it) will let you save a color you are using on your palette and the one on the right will let you either save a palette, open an already saved palette or reset the presets to the default colors. Wondering what to do with the hex:000000 thingy? Try typing in FF0000. It came out bright red, right? Basically there is a little code for each color and if you type it in than the color will be selected. The problem is the code is kind of complicated. I think. I don’t really understand it and nobody has explained it to me so I don’t really know how to just type letters and numbers in to get the color I want.

• Tools Special Bar Before you read about the tools I would like to explain the Special Bar, which is at the bottom of the tool bar. First of all you will notice that you can change the tool right there on the special bar. Depending on which tool you are using there will be different options. 1. The size appears whenever you are using the following tools: Paint Brush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor, Text, Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse or Freeform Shape When changing the size of a brush, ect… you can click on the “-” and “+” on each side of the number or click on the arrow pointing down to select your size. 2. Antialiasing will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Paint Brush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor, Text, Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse or Freeform Shape Antialiasing will basically make your line smooth if it’s on and pixelate if it isn’t. I always have Antialiasing Enabled. 3. Blending will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Gradient, Paint Brush, Pencil, Text, Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse or Freeform Shape I always have blending on Normal Blending. I haven’t ever used Overwrite. 4. Flood Mode will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Magic Wand and Paint Bucket The flood mode is very important. If the setting is Contiguous than when you use the paint bucket or magic wand than it only paints or selects all the adjacent pixels with the same colors that are the same or similar. If you have the flood mode on global than every same or similar color will be painted or selected. 5. Tolerance will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Magic Wand, Paint Bucket and Recolor The tolerance is the amount of difference in color that you will select, paint or recolor. The lower you go the fewer pixels you will select, paint or recolor. The higher you go the more pixels you will select, paint or recolor.

6. Fill will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Paint Bucket, Paint Brush, Text, Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Freeform Shape A fill will just make a pattern or your choice with your primary and secondary colors. I have yet to find a use in map making for this option. 7. Special Shape Option will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Any of the shapes This option makes it possible to fill in your shape with the same or different color.

8. Select Mode will appear whenever you are using the following tools: Any of the select tools The first setting is the plain old select. The second setting makes it possible to select more than once without deselecting your first select. The third option makes it so you can only select pixels inside of another selection. The fourth option makes it so you can do multiple selections at once but if select over another selection it will be deselected. 9. Tools Without Special Options include: Move Selection, Zoom and Pan

10. Tools With Unique Special Options include: Rectangle Select, Move Selected Pixels, Gradient, Color Picker, Text and Line/Curve Rectangle Select has an option where you can lock the selection or make it so you can’t select certain parts of the canvas. I have never used this option before so I can’t give you much information on it. Move Selected Pixels has an option that makes the selected pixels either smooth or pixelated. I always have it on smooth.

Gradient has different options for where the colors come from. It also has an option that makes it look like it is in overlay (I will discuss what overlay is when I am discussing the Layers Gadget). Color Picker has a cool little option where once you pick a color it will switch to the previous tool or if you want to the pencil. Text has a lot of options. First of all you can change the Font (the type of text…the font I am using right now is called Androgyne, this font is called Calibri). You can also make the text bold, Italic, underlined, Struck Out, You can center it Or align your text on the right Or what you normally do: align it on the left. Line/Curve is what you use for connections. You can dot, dash or do both to the line or you can make the ends arrows or rounded.

How to use a Tool Most tools are pretty simple. You click and sometimes drag when using any of the tools. When you are using any of the automatic drawing or selecting shape tools you can hit the shift key to make it symmetrical (in other words when you use the rectangle select or rectangle it will make it perfectly square and when you use the ellipse select or ellipse it will make it perfectly circular). That also applies to the Line/Curve tool (it will be pickier and only let you make lines at certain angles). When using the Line/Curve tool you can drag the little nubs around to move parts of the line. When you have the line in the place you want it just click enter or draw somewhere else (I don’t suggest this because sometimes you will draw in the middle of a territory or something and not erase it which makes the map messy). The select tools have more option in edit on the tool bar. Most of the tools are self-explanatory or were explained in the special bar section but if you don’t understand how to use a tool you can always message me, Pntbttr, or any other map makers (that use PDN) on the site. • Layers In the layers box you will notice that a smaller version of your canvas is to the left of the word background and to the right of background there is a box with a checkmark in it; you should also notice seven small images along the bottom of the layers box. The word background is the name of the layer you can change the name in properties (I’ll discuss properties in a sec). If you click on that checkmark the image will disappear and you will see a bunch of grey and white squares. Those grey and white squares are supposed to mean it’s invisible but once it becomes a different format they will turn white. The most important thing about making a map is having as many layers as possible. To make another layer just click on the little image on the bottom left. Now you can do something in that layer and then erase, delete or change something in the layer without affecting anything in another layer. If you are unsure about which layer you are in just look at the layers box, the layer you are in is highlighted in a semi-invisible-light-blue. If you don’t like one of your layers you can delete it with the red X on the bottom of the layers box. If you like a layer and you need two of them just click the third (to the right of delete) image, duplicate Layer. If you want to images in the same layer just click the next image to the right, Merge Layer (be careful if the properties of a layer are different than the properties of the layer you merge it with the properties become the same as the bottom layer). The next two options just move the layer up and down. The last option is properties. You can either click on the image or double click the mini version of the canvas to open properties. Once you are in properties you can change the name of the layer and make it invisible or visible. You can also change the mode. The most of the modes won’t work well when working on a map but Normal and Overlay are very helpful. If you put a layer in overlay it will become semi-invisible. This is very helpful when you are doing texture and shading. You can also change the amount of visibility by changing the opacity with the slide bar, arrows or typing a number in. • History The history is what you have already done. Everything you have done is listed inside this box. If you click on one of the things you have already done it will go back or forward to the time that you did that. There are four buttons on the bottom. The outer two will take you to the first and last thing you did and the inner two will take you back to the last and next thing you did.

Tool Bar There are a lot of options on the tool bar so I am going to try and make this very quick and explanatory. I am going to list the options from the top down. If there is an image next to the option it is also on the image bar below the tool bar and above the special bar. Most of these options are self-explanatory so I will underline the ones I think are important when making a map. 1. File: 1. New…: Makes a new canvas with the size of your choice (if you don’t understand how to do this scroll down to image and look for resize. Resize is very similar.) 2. Open…: Opens an already saved picture 3. Open Recent: Gives you a list of recently used pictures that you can open 4. Acquire: You don’t need this option 5. Close: This closes the current picture 6. Save: Save your picture 7. Save As…: Saves your picture however you want 8. Print: You don’t need this option 9. Exit: Exit will close PDN but before closing it will ask you if you want to save your picture 2. Edit 1. Undo: Undoes your last action (also on History) 2. Redo: Redoes your last action (also on History) 3. Cut: This will cut text or selections 4. Copy: This will copy text or selections 5. Paste: Pastes a cut or copied text or selection 6. Paste In New Layer: Pastes a cut or copied text or selection in a new layer 7. Paste In New Image: Pastes a cut or copied text or selection in a new image 8. Erase Selection: This will erase a selection 9. Fill Selection: This will fill a selection with a color of your choice 10. Invert Selection: This will invert or reverse your selection 11. Select All: Selects the whole image 12. Deselect: Deselects all selections (you can do this by selecting outside of the canvas)

3. View View is extremely self-explanatory and is not needed in basically anything (most of it you can do with the zoom tool and almost all of it is on the image bar). 4. Image 1. Crop To Selection: This will get rid of everything except your selection 2. Resize…: You can resize your image with this option. You can resize “Absolute Size” or “Percentage”. You will you absolute size for everything but the outline. Maintain aspect ratio just means it will stay in the same dimensions. When resizing you only use the Width and Height numbers and arrows that have the word pixel after them. Leave everything else the way it is.

3. Canvas Resize…: With this option you can resize the canvas but keep the image the same size. All the options in canvas resize are the same as the option in Resize; except Anchor. You can

change the anchor by clicking one of the arrows or clicking on the box that says Middle

and selecting

an option from the drop down box.

4. Flip Horizontal: Flips image so that whatever was on the right is now on the left and whatever was on the left is now on the right 5. Flip Vertical: Flips image so that whatever was on the bottom is now on the top and whatever was on the top is now on the bottom. 6, 7 and 8 are very self-explanatory 9. Flatten: Flatten will make your image very similar to a JPEG image. Everything will be in one layer.

Layers Options 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9 are on the layers gadget and have already been explained. Option 5 is the same as “Open” in “File” on the tool bar. Options 6 and 7 are also in “Image”. Option 8 is called “Rotate / Zoom…”. This is a fun little option. You can twist and turn your image basically anyway you want to. I suggest playing around with this option. The Pan will let you move the image anywhere you want to and you can zoom with the slide bar on the right. Adjustments Many of these are downloaded as plugins (I explain how to get plugins at the bottom of this tutorial) so I am not going to explain how to use these. The most useful adjustments are “Black and White” and “Brightness / Contrast…”. Effects This is similar to adjustments because you can download countless plugins with more options but “Effects” focuses more on the distortion of the image whereas adjustments focuses more on distortion of the color in the image. This is a list of the effects I use most often: Gaussian Blur… (a basic blur) Crystalize… (makes a pattern with the colors in the image) Jitter… (this is extremely helpful for textures) Stitch… (this is very similar to Jitter) Sharpen… Soften Portrait… Vignette… (makes it darker around the corners of the image and lighter in the middle) Clouds… (another extremely helpful option for textures) Flames… (also helpful for textures) Emboss… (this is a really cool option. Can be used for texture) Utilities Window Help The last three (Utilities, Window, Help) are either not helpful already been explained or are very self-explanatory. Image list, size and location All the images you have open are listed at the top right. You can click on any of them and they will be opened (put on the canvas). The size of your currently open image is on the tip bar at the bottom of the screen (1st number = width, 2nd number = Height). The location of your mouse is listed to the right of the size of your image. Plugins A plugin is a special option. Here is a tutorial on how to download a plugin: http://boltbait.com/pdn/InstallingEffects.asp Here is where you download them: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/forum/7-plugins-publishing-only/ If you are having trouble understanding anything about my tutorial please message me. Thanks for reading. Once you have read this whole tutorial or you feel confident in you PDN skills please read my map making tutorial. I hope you can have fun learning to make awesome maps with me and all of the other map makers. Thanks for reading, Pntbttr