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Paint.NET is cool…

... but doesn't write PNG8 with alpha transparency, unfortunately.

This comment on the YUI blog got me all excited by the possibility of having another designers tool other than Fireworks that creates PNG8 (palette PNGs) with alpha transparency.

Overall Paint.NET is a very simple and friendly program (as a non-designer I'm often intimidated by Photoshop's plethora of features) and I can see how I can use it for my future (rare, I hope) design needs :) It's pretty impressive, free and from what I read, it has a dedicated community, plus a number of plugins (hmm, a smush.it plugin would be nice... one day).

I tried saving a PNG8 with alpha but unfortunately this feature is not (yet!) supported. I created an image with a sold red square and blue gradient that fades to 100% transparency. When saving as 8-bit (in order to create a palette PNG) the semi transparent pixels are all gone. It treats palette PNGs like GIFs (like Photoshop does).

Default (produces truecolor PNG):
png 32

With 8 bit option selected:
png8

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 and is filed under images, tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


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4 Responses to “Paint.NET is cool…”

  1. dexbol Says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    I download and install it in my PC, but i can’t found “Save Configuration” ,what’s the shortcut key? ‘ctrl+shift+s’? i don’t see this window.

  2. Stoyan Says:
    December 25th, 2008 at 12:14 am

    Hi dexbol,

    This window shows up when during a normal Save, you select *.PNG file type.

    S

  3. Chicouloum Says:
    December 30th, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Have you tried Paint.com ?
    It’s the same as paint.net but it offers some more features.
    http://www.rw-designer.com/image-editor

    I have not already tried PNG8, maby someone could …

  4. lack of sleep Says:
    January 8th, 2011 at 1:55 am

    http://sleepnaturallynow.com/lack-of-sleep-causes-for-lack-of-sleep/ Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time :-)

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