Made for Pinterest Pics - Getting Started

As promised, here's the very first post of the series: Made for Pinterest Pics, it's not going to be an overwhelming post as that's the last thing you need when you're just beginning. This article on Enhancing Photos for beginners explains how you could add life to dull pics using any software at hand. Once you've checked that out you'd be interested in modifying them even more - this post will help you accomplish that:

By now, I hope you've got yourself Paint.net or just about any other Photo Editing software.

If you haven't, then I suggest you read this post about the top Photo Editing software's for beginners.

The very first time I came across Paint.net was through a friend on Wizzley, she suggested it and I'm really glad I went ahead and began the download - it's Awesome! (For beginners at least).

Some time next week, I'll be giving Photoshop a try - it seems much easier now that I'm familiar with Paint.net



So, where should we begin? 

Oh yes! I almost forgot, let's get the necessary Plugins first:

I've got just one of the many installed and there's a reason I have just one, that's because it's the only one you'd need - The Grim Color Reaper! (Click here to download it)

Using Grim Color Reaper for Paint.net

What does the Grim Color Reaper do? That's definitely the question you have in mind; so, as the first step in this tutorial, let's see when and how you could use it:

Getting Rid of  Backgrounds and Primary/secondary colors: Usually most images come along with a white background and when you're designing something, that's the worst part. You need a transparent background in order to work effectively. 

Rather than rubbing the white off (Zooming in to do so), you could use this plugin by just going to: 

Effects > Color > Grim Color Reaper (You'd need to install it first - Help on that is further along this post).

Once you've clicked on it, you'll be shown a screen as below:

As you can see, you'd need to choose the color, as it's initially just Primary Color. However, when you click that drop down arrow; you'd have to choose between:

Primary, Secondary, White or Black as shown

Usually you're not going to have to use Primary and Secondary; however, removal of white and black are the most common necessities - White especially. But, in this case, I've made it a point to get rid of the Primary Color.

Here's how I used it to create the opening Picture:

In this Tutorial, I'm just going to teach you to effectively use this particular plugin as I guess it's the only one you'd need for your basic images. The creation of borders,backgrounds and painting of the above image won't be explained in this tutorial, they'll be featured in the future posts. (As I said, I don't want it to be overwhelming)

Here are the two individual Images:

Now, I'd have to get rid of the backgrounds. 

As you can see the Reaper has a white background and I don't need it; as, it would cover up the custom made background that I create to some extent.

So, I set the reaper plugin to white and clicked OK - all traces of white disappeared.

In some cases wherein you don't want all the white, as in the case of  a persons eyes, to disappear; you could alter the Color Tolerance and Color Transparent bar (This you'd learn through experience).

Just as the Reaper has a white background, this image of a paint splatter has an aqua background. As you can see, aqua makes up a majority of the image and it's also the Primary Color.

I don't need that background and hence I used the Reaper plugin and selected the option of Primary Color and the end result was a clear transparent background.

This is what they look like after using the reaper
Note that the black and white check boxes indicate a transparent background and they aren't visible after you save the image.

That's all for today and through the next post we'll check out how you utilize Layers. But, before you go away let's take a look at how you integrate the Grim Reaper plugin with Paint.net:

Integration of this Plugin

1. Once you've downloaded the file it's going to be either a .rar or zip extension. So first and foremost extract it anywhere you want and find the dll file (The extension would be .dll).
2. Now that you've got the dll file, go to your Program Files and find the Paint.net folder, open it an search for the folder titled Effects.
3. Open effects and paste the .dll file there.
4. Close Paint.net if it's open and then launch it once again, go ahead and check out Effects> Color> Grim color reaper (Enjoy!)

If at all you have any questions regarding the Grim Color Reaper or it's installation, don't hesitate to ask via a comment. Moreover, if you've downloaded this software and have some other questions, feel free to ask me via our Google+ Page. There's a post specifically for questions on Paint.net