PDN for Digital Scrapbooking
PDN is short for Paint Dot Net, a FREE photo editing & image creating software.
Easy, Quick Digital Paper Tutorial Using Paint.Net
There are a few different ways you can create your own textured digital paper using Paint.Net. Some will take more time and some will not. The first thing you will need to decide on, regardless of the way you make your digital paper, is what resolution (dpi) you are going to use. For professional printing purposes, 300 dpi (300 resolution setting) will need to be used for your starting canvas setting. This will create a really huge image. The size of your completed image will be larger than you probably anticipated but these are settings used for professional printing companies who make photobooks, print your image onto a mug, wall canvas, pillows, fabric, invitations, etc. The sooner you get use to working in 300 dpi, the less weird and different it will be for you.
Your other option is to simply leave your paint.net default resolution setting (dpi) at 96 and make your image, or layout, and save it as a digital image to use on the internet or send to friends & relatives by way of email or text messaging. That resolution setting will be perfectly fine for that purpose. Your image file size will be much smaller, too. Even printing out an 8" x 10", or smaller, photo layout on your home printer, it will use much less ink and still look perfectly fine to frame. It may not be as rich and crispy clear as a professionally looking print job, but odds are you'll still like it and won't notice much difference. Since it's just for your home personal enjoyment and use, it's really all about what fits your needs. As you do this you'll figure out more about it and begin finding what works best for you. You can solely use them to send in emails and text messages if that's all you'd like to do.
For this easy tutorial, I'm going to use the setting of 300 dpi (resolution setting) but you can still apply it to the smaller default 96 resolution setting Paint.Net starts with.
Common professional photo printing layout sizes are varied. The standard old school, and still used, common size was 12" x 12" in 300 dpi. Visit places like Shutterfly and look at their sizes of photobooks...but they also do standard common size photo print sizes like 8" x 10", 11" x 14", bigger and smaller. If you want a great image for a professional printing company, you'll probably need to set your resolution (dpi setting) to 300. I'm going to set my resolution setting to 300 and my canvas size to 8" x 10" for this demonstration.
This is January 2019. The developer of Paint.Net announced wonderful improvements are coming to Paint.Net this year. As of right now you cannot use brushes (.abr files) properly in Paint.Net. There is a plug-in to use .abr brushes, "The Brush Factory". You can open .abr brush files in Paint.Net, and save images as an .abr brush file, but when currently using brushes, it's not practical to use dealing with a different set of colors. You also will have little use for using the brush plug-in for 300 dpi resolution, used for professional printing purposes. Brushes cannot be used in larger sizes for 300 dpi work. You can still use the .abr brushes but they are going to be very small. You also cannot see an image you are working with below it to know where to line up your brush stroke at. With regards to choosing particular colors or using a custom color palette, fugetabowdit. Way too time consuming.
So, at this time, to deal with a few limitations, I'm going to show you a much faster way to accomplish textured looking background digital paper, while saving you a lot of time.
A website like Pixabay.com has high resolution (really big) images that you can use without worrying about stealing or illegally using an image another person or organization owns the right to use. With most or all of them, you can even use them for commercial purposes (making something and selling it) if you wanted to.
Sometimes blending a "helper image" in or using bits and pieces of an image can help you make something really cool. Also, some commercial designers buy rights to use various images or use royalty free images in their graphic work. I certainly don't want you to feel like there's something wrong with you just because you don't want to learn a much longer, detailed approach to getting a particular effect. As you use Paint.Net more, in a positive way that is fun and interesting to you, and as Paint.Net increases it's abilities, the other knowledge will come. I'm just here to show you a much faster way to work around current issues and certain limitations of using 300 dpi/resolution with Paint.Net, which was not originally created to be another form of Gimp or Photoshop, but now it does belong in the display case right next to them.
Getting started..... go to Pixabay, or wherever you can find a high resolution (usually over 2,000 pixels) image of something grungy looking or watercolor paint strokes. Maybe both. Do a search at Pixabay for "grunge texture" or "Watercolor texture"...maybe even "Paint stroke textures". Create a yellow file folder and call it "Textures". Put the images you save, and save them in the highest size you can, in that folder. Don't feel the need to save every image. They take up a lot of space if you end up saving a massive amount of them. So, for now, just pick a few. Maybe they will look something like these images, or this image, or this image, or this image, or this image. You'll need to create an account at Pixabay, which will take about 1 minute to do. I have no association with Pixabay.com. It's just a good place to get free high resolution images to use legally.
The Pixabay images will often be huge rectangle shapes.
Your canvas is set to 8" x 10", which means it will be taller going up and down, like a photo portrait.
Open Paint.Net, go to the far upper left corner and click on "File" then click on "New", when the little box pops up change the "Resolution" setting for it's default 96 setting to 300. Below that,where it talks about "print size", on the far right side change the measuring form to "inches". Now change the width to 8 and the height to 10....or, you can make it so it is slightly just outside the measurements by making the width 8.10 and height 10.10. You don't need to. It will make it just over the edges of 8" x 10, slightly. Your own form of a bleed. However, I just put my settings at 8 and 10. This is also called "portrait" mode. The rectangular shape is called "landscape" mode.
Now that your canvas is open and ready to go, while in Paint.Net, go to "File" in the upper left side, click on "Open" and find the way to that yellow file folder you created that you keep your images from Pixabay in. Select one or more images you just saved and then click open. If you want to select more than one at a time, hold down the "Ctrl" button on your keyboard while clicking on more than one image. Let's pretend you chose 3 images. After selecting them click "Open". They will appear within Paint.Net in the upper area of the software. To see them click on their small thumbnail type images at the top of Paint.Net. You will see those three Pixabay images and your blank white canvas.
Let's turn those Pixabay images in the same direction as our blank canvas. Select one of your Pixabay images, go to the top left menu of Paint.Net, click on "Image", when the menu appears go down and select either "Rotate 90 degrees clockwise" or "Rotate 90 degrees counter-clockwise". Either way your Pixabay image is now in the same direction as your canvas.
Using that same Pixabay image, go to the upper left menu of Paint.Net, again, and click on "Edit", then "Select All", then go back and click on "Edit" then click on "Copy".
Go to the upper thumbnail, small images and click on your white blank canvas to bring it up. Go back to the upper left menu area and click, again, on "Edit" then click on "Paste into New Layer". The Pixabay image will show up on your canvas, on its own layer. You will need to use your mouse, left click on the mouse button while clicking on the bottom corner of the Pixabay image and drag the image to better fit your white canvas perfectly, with no white on the canvas showing.
(Should you have your canvas set to the default 96 resolution, your high resolution Pixabay image will be huge, a pop up box will appear and you will select "Keep Canvas Size". You will then need to hold the "Shift" key on the keyboard, left click on the mouse holding that button down, and on the top corner of the Pixabay image drag it down to fit the canvas).
Now that you have your Pixabay image on its own layer over top of your white canvas, you have a few options to play around with. Click on the layer with the white blank canvas on it. Make sure that box is highlighted in a darker blue, showing it has been selected. You'll think you did but it didn't take. So, make sure the white blank canvas layer is selected by clicking on it. You want to create a few blank layers in between your top and bottom showing layers. You can do this in two ways, that I know of. One way is going to the top left area of Paint.Net, click on "Layers" then click on "Add New Layer". Do that 3 or 4 times, or how ever many blank layers you want to have. Another way of creating blank layers will be to go at the bottom of your layer box, which is showing just above. At the bottom of it is a red "X". On the left side of that red "X" click on that. It adds new blank layers just above the layer you have clicked on and highlighted. The box on the right side of that red "X" duplicates the layer you have clicked on and selected. The box next to that
merges/combines layers to the one below it. You just want to create a few blank layers at this time.
You can either leave your Pixabay image as it is or change it to black and white. I usually change mine to black and white. You change that Pixabay image to black and white by going to the top left area of Paint.Net, click on "Adjustments". When the menu appears, near the top will be "Black and White". Click on that. You may have more than one option of "Black and White". Those options just help you do a little more than just turn an image to black and white, but for this demonstration, just turn your Pixabay image simply to "Black and White". Your Pixabay image needs to be above your new blank layers. If it is not, either click on your Pixabay image in the layer box and drag it to the top or click on it in the layer box and at the bottom of the layer box click on the up pointing arrow. A sample of the layer box image is showing just above. It's the image that has the word "Layers" at the top left corner of it.
To the three blank layers below the Pixabay image, click on each one of them and add color to each blank layer. Below I show examples of three colors I chose randomly. You do this by clicking on a blank layer, highlighting it in the layer box, click on a color in the color palette, then click on the paint bucket on the tools menu and click on the blank canvas with the paint bucket tool. This is your color wheel/color palette below. Also showing below is the tools menu where your paint bucket is located. I then show you how your layers should look.:
Landscape
Portrait
After you have chosen three different colors to paint/fill your 3 blank layers with I want you to select your Pixabay image at the top, double click on that layer, quickly, so that a pop-up box appears. That pop-up box allows you to change the name on it if you want. However, that pop-up box has "Blending Mode" options on it to select from. Once the pop-up box appears by double clicking on the selected image, look at the "Blending Mode" options. Click on the drop down menu and notice many blending options appear to choose from. In this case, click on "Overlay"..
Now you will see how the Pixabay image blends in with the colored images you created. Click on the check boxes within each of your created colored image layers so the check mark on the far right side no longer appears. This allows you to see how your Pixabay image blends with your other colored layers and hides the viewing of the layer that is not checked. From here you can bring back the view of your colored layer boxes by clicking on the check mark boxes so a check mark appears or to make the check mark disappear.
You can play around with various shades of the same color by playing around with the colors of the color palette, sometimes called a color wheel. Using your paint bucket tool to fill that layer with a new shade of the same color or an entirely different color all together.
Double click on the layer to bring up the layer properties box again and play with the "Opacity" of the Pixabay image. That makes the image fade out or be fully viewed to its full saturation of colour or shades of black, white, and gray.
Once you have found a digital paper you created that you like and want to keep, go to the top left corner of Paint.Net, click on "File", then click on "Save as", name your digital paper or digital background, make sure you are saving it as .jpg file and save it to wherever you want to save it to.
Practice doing these steps until they don't make you feel confused and until you no longer need to read this information to do it. It's like exercising a muscle until it gets stronger. You'll also begin to feel how simple and quick this process really is by practicing doing it.
Another tip you can use while seeing how your Pixabay image looks on each color after selecting "Overlay" is to click on the Pixabay image and also play with something called "Curves". Go to the top left area of the Paint.Net menu, click on "Adjustments" then look at the menu that appears and click on "Curves"...or "Curves+". Play with that and watch how your image looks as it blends with the colored layer below it.
There are endless ways you can play around with further blending modes. You can even make many different colors on one layer and use your "Frosted Glass" or "Gaussian Blur" tool under the Effects menu. Go to "Effects" then select "Distort" or "Blur" or all and mix it up. This is how you get to know Paint.Net a little bit better in a way that is of interest to you, if this is your thing.