50% Opacity Overlays in MSPaint
First you start out with two pictures of the same size:
Open both of these pictures in their own, individual mspaint windows. Then double the size of each. This can be done in the Stetch and Skew menu located under the image menu at the top (or press Ctrl+W) and stretching them both vertically and horizontally by 200%. Now open a third window and adjust it to the same size as the other (now bigger) pictuers.
Now pick a color that is not very common in one of the pictures. For example, if one of your pictures is a white rabbit in a snowstorm, then use black. Using the line tool draw either a vertical or horizontal line on the blank third picture.
Beautiful. Press Ctrl+A for Select All. Now click this thing...
This ensures that when you copy and paste a picture, the background color is treated as transparent. On the same note, please make sure white is selected as your background color (right mouse click on white in the color pallette).
With the whole picture selected, hold down Ctrl and click and drage the line over 2 pixels so that you now have two parallel lines.
Press Ctrl+A again. Now hold Ctrl and drag the image 4 pixels so that now you have 4 parallel lines. Repeat this process so that you have 8 parallel lines, then 16, then 32 and so on until you've spanned the whole image.
Drag your lines over to the edge of the image and select them.
Now using the Stretch-and-Skew menu (Ctrl+W) stretch them so that they take up the whole image.
Select the whole image and copy it. Now go to your other picture (the one you used to determine which color to use). And paste. Make sure white is selected as your background color, and click the transparency option on the left...
Yeah, that thing.
Now, Ctrl+A this picture and copy it. Go to the other picture you wish to blend and paste this on top of it. Enable transparency and right-mouse click the color you chose earlier for the lines.
Now go into the Stretch-and-Skew menu (Ctrl+W) and shrink the image 50% both horizontally and vertically. This will compound every square set of 4 pixels down to 1 by averaging the color values for each.
Voila!
Open both of these pictures in their own, individual mspaint windows. Then double the size of each. This can be done in the Stetch and Skew menu located under the image menu at the top (or press Ctrl+W) and stretching them both vertically and horizontally by 200%. Now open a third window and adjust it to the same size as the other (now bigger) pictuers.
Now pick a color that is not very common in one of the pictures. For example, if one of your pictures is a white rabbit in a snowstorm, then use black. Using the line tool draw either a vertical or horizontal line on the blank third picture.
Beautiful. Press Ctrl+A for Select All. Now click this thing...
This ensures that when you copy and paste a picture, the background color is treated as transparent. On the same note, please make sure white is selected as your background color (right mouse click on white in the color pallette).
With the whole picture selected, hold down Ctrl and click and drage the line over 2 pixels so that you now have two parallel lines.
Press Ctrl+A again. Now hold Ctrl and drag the image 4 pixels so that now you have 4 parallel lines. Repeat this process so that you have 8 parallel lines, then 16, then 32 and so on until you've spanned the whole image.
Drag your lines over to the edge of the image and select them.
Now using the Stretch-and-Skew menu (Ctrl+W) stretch them so that they take up the whole image.
Select the whole image and copy it. Now go to your other picture (the one you used to determine which color to use). And paste. Make sure white is selected as your background color, and click the transparency option on the left...
Yeah, that thing.
Now, Ctrl+A this picture and copy it. Go to the other picture you wish to blend and paste this on top of it. Enable transparency and right-mouse click the color you chose earlier for the lines.
Now go into the Stretch-and-Skew menu (Ctrl+W) and shrink the image 50% both horizontally and vertically. This will compound every square set of 4 pixels down to 1 by averaging the color values for each.
Voila!
User Comments: 11
Post by asdasasefasd on 10 Cado 12:5 - 0.8.77
This is amazing, i have been using mspaint all my life, i had no clue you could do anything like this.
Post by asdasasefasd on 10 Cado 12:5 - 0.15.37
This doesn't work on windows7 version of paint!
Post by ciacho0000 on 10 Cado 12:5 - 1.59.17
asdasasefasd said:
This doesn't work on windows7 version of paint!
yeah, discovered that a while ago. Use Aviary's pheonix editor.
Post by Blake on 10 Cado 12:5 - 12.81.64
The UI is a bit different, yes, but it works fine for me on Win7. Which part are you running into trouble?
Post by asdasasefasd on 10 Cado 13:0 - 12.40.9
Well since i just got Windows 7, i'm fairly sure i may need to explore it more, but i cannot seem to find the transparent tool thingamabob. So when i try to select it, i cant exactly position it. I basically have a problem with finding, and using the tools that you used in this tutorial.
Post by Blake on 10 Cado 13:1 - 9.70.46
Post by gws on 10 Cado 13:4 - 12.11.90
Have you tried it using a checkerboard mask instead of lines? If not, I'll do it and post results.
Post by Blake on 10 Cado 13:4 - 13.15.81
The end result will be identical. Each 2x2 pixel group will contain 2 pixels from each image with each contributing 25% to the final color value.
Post by gws on 10 Cado 13:4 - 14.9.7
I went ahead and tried both ways, and then compared the images with the GIMP's 'difference' layer mode. The MSPaint blends are identical, however they have minor differences with the result of doing a 50% opacity blend in the GIMP. I haven't sat myself down to think about why yet.
Post by eofpi on 10 Cado 13:4 - 14.66.97
GIMP may do a larger sample area for each pixel, either directly or as a post-shrink filter. I imagine it's something like morphological antialiasing.
Post by asdasasefasd on 11 Ineo 3:3 - 14.50.86
Ahhh.....
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