Copyright © 2006 James R. Grunwald.

Martin Luther College

Getting Started with

What is Paint.net?
Paint.net is an easy to use image and photo manipulation software. The software is open-source code and
can be downloaded free from http://www.getpaint.net/ The program is only compatible with PC based
computers.

Working with Paint.net

I. Open Paint.net
A. Select Start  All Programs  Paint.Net or, if available, simply click on the Paint.net
icon on your desktop. The Paint.net program should open.
B. On-screen help: On the menu bar select Help  Help Topics. A new window will open with
a menu listing of various topics. This on-screen help document should serve as your main source
of help when working with the program. (Explore some of the items listed to see how this might be
helpful to you.)
C. Return to the Paint.Net program to start working on a picture.

II. Opening Pictures

A. Open the picture you want to work on through File  Open
(The picture Redeemer.jpg will be used in the following steps. Your
instructor will tell you where to access this picture. Note its file size
and physical size using the ruler bars.)
B. Many image editing programs can automatically correct the
color and brightness of your pictures. In Paint.net this feature
is found through Layers  Adjustments  Auto-Level.

III. Reducing Image Memory Size

When working with digital images, it is important to be aware of the amount of memory being used
by an image. For instance, if you take an image with a digital camera set at 5Megapixels, you don't
want to send the image as an email attachment to a friend who has dial-up service because it might
take several hours for the image to down load.
There are several things you can do to reduce the amount of memory consumed by an image. (Each of
these will be explained in more detail in the following pages.)
A. Crop the Image: - to get rid of extra space around an image that is not needed.
B. Resize the Image: - reduce the physical size of the picture to what is needed in the publication.
C. Change the Resolution of the Image: - Images that will be viewed in electronic form, (emails,
Web pages, PowerPoint presentations) look great with a resolution of less than 100dpi (dot per
inch) whereas an image used in a print publication, such as a church bulletin or newsletter needs
a resolution of about 300pdi to look decent.
D. Save in a Compressed Format (usually JPEG): - Recommendations do change over time. For
instance, in the past scanned pictures were normally saved in a TIFF format, often at 300dpi. It
was not uncommon to read in books comments like “Never save a file with JPEG compression if
you’re going to print it.” (Cohen and Robins 1999, The Non-Designer’s Scan and Print Book, p. 114). However,
saving images in a JPEG format at 300 dpi usually results in no visible loss of print quality but
will drastically reduce the image’s file size by about 90%. Also, digital cameras save their
images in JPEG format. Such images are often used directly in print documents without first
converting them to a different format.
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 Getting Started with Paint.net
Copyright © 2006 James R. Grunwald

A. Cropping an Image
a. From the Tools window, select the Rectangle
Selection tool and drag across the picture to
select the part you want to keep. If you want to
change your selection, simple drag across the
desired area again. (In Paint.net Help see
Selection Tools for additional information.)
b. On the menu bar click on Image  Crop to
Selection to crop your image. (In Paint.net
Help see Image for additional information.)
c. If you think you might want to return to the
original image later, save the cropped image with
a new name by selecting File  Save As… (use a descriptive file name such as Redeemer-
crop.jpg). (Note: When you save, an additional window that allows you to control the Quality: might
appear. Use the default setting of 95% when working in the tutorial.) The resulting file size should
be about 775K, and physical dimensions, about 27 x 15 inches.

B. Resizing an Image and

C. Working with Image Resolutions
Resizing: Your images should be resized as close as possible to what you plan on using in
your publication before inserting the image into the publication. Reducing the size of the
image with an image editing program will reduce the image's file size. Inserting the image into
a document first and then dragging on a corner of the image to resize it will have no effect on
the amount of memory being consumed by the image. Therefore, to reduce the overall memory
size of your publication, you must resize the image before inserting it into your publication.
Generally, you only want to resize downward because increasing the size can lead to increased
distortion. Because of the way Paint.net works with images, we need to work with resizing
and resolution at the same time.

Resolutions: Computer monitors only display about 72 (or 96) dots per inch (dpi). Different
image editing programs will default to various resolutions when displaying images. Paint.net
displays images as 72 dpi, this is why the physical size of the picture is so large when
compared to the ruler bars.
A resolution of 72 dpi is perfect for web based material such as web pages, emails, and
PowerPoint presentations, but it is inadequate for print materials, especially when printing
larger photo-quality pictures. For our purposes, a setting of 300 dpi will be adequate for
printing images to paper. (Note: 300 dpi results in a file size that is about 9 times larger than
100 dpi.)
You can adjust a camera's resolution before taking the picture (for the assignment on digital
imaging, students should be taking pictures with a fairly high resolution, resulting in a file size
over 1 megabyte) or you can adjust the resolution downward later with an image editing
program. The same is true of using a scanner. You want to make sure you scan at an
appropriate resolution. (When working on the digital imaging assignment, students should be
scanning at 300 dpi.)

The following steps will lead you through adjusting after the picture has been
taken or scanned. We will work with the Redeemer-crop.jpg image used
earlier. We will assume that we want a 3" wide image for a newsletter.

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 Getting Started with Paint.net
Copyright © 2006 James R. Grunwald

To adjust an images physical size and resolution in Paint.net:

With a picture open … (we will demonstrate with the recently cropped Redeemer-crop.jpg
image) (In Paint.net Help see Image for additional information on Resize.)
a. On the main menu bar select Image  Resize … and
a Resize window will open.
(Note: the New size: 8.1 MB can be ignored.)
With the resolution set to pixels/inch, notice the
Resolution: is at 72.00 and the Print size is about 27
by 15 inches.
Change the resolution to 300 dpi so it is suitable for
print media and the print size will automatically adjust
downward.
For our example change the Width: to 3 inches
because this is what we said we wanted for our
particular newsletter image. Notice the Height:
automatically adjusts itself because we have Maintain
aspect ration checked earlier.
b. Click OK and the image on the screen will be resized
and retain a resolution of 300 dpi.
c. Select File  Save As… to save the altered image with
a new name (use a descriptive name such as
Redeemer-crop-3in-300dpi.jpg). Note the new file
size, about 150K, and physical dimensions, about 3 x
1.7 inches.
d. Note: If we had been attempting to create a 3inch
image for use on a website, email, or PowerPoint, we
would have left the image at 72 dpi. Doing so would
have resulted in an image size of about 13K.

D. Save in a Compressed Format

As mentioned on page 1, recommendations from
professionals in the field do change over time. For
instance, in the past scanned pictures were normally
always saved in a TIFF format, often at 300dpi. It was
common to read in books things like “Never save a file
with JPEG compression if you’re going to print it.”
(Cohen and Robins 1999, The Non-Designer’s Scan and Print Book,
p. 114).
However, saving images in a JPEG format at 300 dpi usually results in no visible loss of print
quality compared to a TIFF format but the JPEG format will drastically reduce the image’s file
size by about 90%. Besides, digital cameras save their images in JPEG format automatically.
Such images are often used directly in print documents without first converting them to a
different format.
The point is that it is perfectly OK to save scanned images in a JPEG format, at 300dpi for use in
print media. (This is what students should do for the digital imaging assignment.)
Remember, the actual file size of an image is as important, if not more important, than the
physical size of the image when creating publications.

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