MSPaint tips and tricks - repost from Something Awful

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:26 am

Originally posted by Blarrrg on Something Awful forums.

I figure there are a lot of MSPaint threads here, so why not one to share cool tricks?

Smooth gradients

Start out with a 100x100 blank image. Zoom in, and use the line tool to draw a diagonal line from one corner to the other.

Fill both sides with different colours, the two colours you want to make a gradient between.

Now, go into image -> stretch and skew, and set the horizontal value to 1%.

Hit OK, and ta-da, there's your gradient!

To get it back to a normal size, just go back to the stretch and skew menu and stretch it horizontal 500% and repeat that a few times (500% is the max it lets you do it).

Final product:

I also know how to blend images rather well, as well as a few other neat tricks, so if people support this thread at all I'll post those.

... merged post ...

Blending images

All right, to start out, take the 2 images you want to blend, open them in seperate MSPaint windows, and crop them so that they're the same size. I just picked 2 from GIS at random:

Now, open another MSPaint window with the same dimensions as the images. Zoom in to 8x, and start to make a 1x1 grid of red pixels (or whatever colour there seems to be the least of in the two images, red usually works fine).

Then just keep copying and pasting that until it fills up the entire thing.

Alright, now hit ctrl + a to copy the whole thing, and copy it. Choose one of your other pictures, and make sure that this is selected:

And also that your background colour is white (it is by default, so that shouldn't be a problem. Then, paste the grid over top of the image.

Now, hit ctrl + a and copy that image, then go to your other image and set the background colour to the colour you used for the grid (just right click it on the palette, of course), and make sure that option you selected in the first one is selected for this one as well. Then, simply paste the other image on top:

Yay.

If you want better quality, you can, at the start, double the size of the two images, then make the grid twice as big and once you finish, shrink them all back to their original size. It'll look quite a bit better. I just forgot to do it while I was doing this. v

v

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:27 am

Originally posted by Blarrrg on Something Awful forums.

This is one of the more well-known ones.

Rotating an image 45 degrees

Everyone has been annoyed at one point that mspaint only allows you to rotate stuff in 90 degree increments. But be annoyed no longer! Start out with a picture. This is a squirrel.

Now stretch it by 140% both ways in the stretch and skew menu, this will help it retain it's original size at the end. If you don't care that it's a little smaller, don't do this and the end product will look a bit better.

Select the whole thing, go into the stretch + skew menu, and skew it horizontally 45 degrees.

Now select it again, and skew it vertically -26 degrees (don't do this in the same step and the last one).

Finally, stretch it 50% horizontally (not 150%)

Comparison:

The -26 and 50% are values that will ususally work well for most pictures. You can try slightly different ones if yours doesn't come out good.

That's it for tonight, I'll do a couple more tomorrow.

gamemasterAS · Post by **gamemasterAS** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:35 am

cool, I'm trying to do some of this.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:58 am

More tips: http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/tutorial/mspaint

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 12:30 pm

I've been using paint for a long time, but never even attempted some of those things...

typamc95 · Post by **typamc95** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:18 pm

gENERIC pIC'D!

Bibin · Post by **Bibin** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 2:59 pm

10x zoom if you click the light grey pixel line below 8x.

Metallica Man X · Post by **Metallica Man X** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:11 pm

I've been using Paint for a long time, and I've created some pretty kewl things...I've had peeps goin' WOH a lot

. Most of these are Dream cards from my fav card game back in the day. the first two are a bit old, but they're still pretty cool.

This is one I did years ago for the DBZ card game:
http://www.imageigloo.com/viewer.php?id ... bgett0.JPG
This is one for the DBGT card game:
http://www.imageigloo.com/viewer.php?id=3416oofa0.JPG
This one is a little more recent, it's for a card game I've been working on for quite some time:
http://www.imageigloo.com/viewer.php?id ... harge0.JPG
This here is the most recent of my creations...TOOK FOREVER!!!!
http://www.imageigloo.com/viewer.php?id ... 20copy.JPG

Yeah...if you're willing to waste A LOT of time...you can really make some seriously sweet pics, lol.

Seriously, I'm amazed i haven't hung myself while working on any of these lol.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 4:08 pm

Awesome stuff!

typamc95 · Post by **typamc95** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 4:10 pm

you stole mine!

Sir Games-A-Lot · Post by **Sir Games-A-Lot** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:34 pm

Most people have probably figured this simple one out:

When you use fonts over a certain size in a text box, paint automatically adds shading around the edges of the characters. The only problem is that paint auto-magically adjusts that shading to go with whatever color the characters were typed on originally, so if you use the "background color transparent" tool and then use the "select" tool to move text with a transparent background over a colored field, it will retain the colored shading from the back ground it was typed on. The trick is to create a field with the same color as the field you wish to move to text to, create a text box over it, type your text and then fill that field with the background color, set background to transparent, us the "select" tool to move the text which now has a transparent back ground and the right shading around the edges to the color field you want it to be in.

The end result (No offense CTfan

):

Before:

After:

Post by **bicostp** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 5:51 pm

Let's see Paint do THIS:

<img src="http://bicostp.portablesofdoom.org/gall ... alNumber=1">

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:01 pm

I made this using your cool gradient effect...i couldnt figure out how to do the blending thing....I only got the crappy way to work, not the good blend

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:16 pm

Did you draw that Majora's Mask?

Bibin · Post by **Bibin** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:23 pm

bicostp wrote:Let's see Paint do THIS:

<img src="http://bicostp.portablesofdoom.org/gall ... alNumber=1">

It could. Just make the mask thicker/denser.