Wow thank you so much! I never knew about the PSD plugin - what a life saver! Now I can cancel my £200+ Adobe license!
(to all those thinking why the heck would you spend £200 just to open PSDs, I have to work with others on projects who have Photoshop on non-Windows machines. I prefer PDN though.)
Very well made guide, also thanks for the shout. I used to use PDN a lot and the only reason I switched to GIMP was because PDN didn’t support Windows 10 at the time. I forgot how many useful tools PDN had that GIMP still lacks.
The Affinity range might be able to help you there if you want higher quality than PDN (and more similarity to Adobe software). One time payment that is like $50 USD (I think?). Their programs are what I use and work well.
The software has save/load support for PSD/AI/etc but note that exporting isn’t great atm. They can also use plugins made for the Adobe software.
You’re welcome! Yea, the plugin community for PDN is massive. They have like everything and anything. Downloaded a plugin the other day that lets me open vector files, even.
An easy way to replace that drop shadow tutorial you listed is to use this plugin.
It’s part of a plugin fact, but all the other plugins are super useful as well.
Another plugin I use all the time is Object Align. Allows you to center an object along an axis.
They have kinda different styles though. Your plugin makes it more shadowy. Chip’s way makes it look more like raised off the background. Still a useful plugin though!
That plugin allows you to fully customize the drop shadow.
(I tried my best to replicate the drop shadow he made in the tutorial at the start of the gif)
Ooooo, nvm then. Yes. That is much better than I thought it was lol.
Thank you for all of these useful plugins, guys! Keep them coming!
I may or may use a cracked photoshop.
A Cool 3D Effect Without Plugins
I create cool stuff on paint.net, most of it is without plugins. I use ‘Layers’ → ‘Rotate / Zoom’ a lot, since it creates a cool effect.
What I do is, I put a new layer, and put something on that layer [I recommend dragging it to a corner if you’re putting text on it.]
Now, what I do is, I select the layer, then click 
> 
button. Make sure the 
button isn’t selecting anything.
After you did that, it should pop up this window: 
Now, you should drag the window out of the center, so you can see what the image looks like. You can rotate the circle that is on the top left to where you want the layer to be facing. However, when you rotate it, the layer may be cropped out.
You can fix this issue by dragging “+” on the center of this: 
to another direction so that it isn’t cropped off.
You can also Zoom the layer in and out with the zoom slider.
When you think it looks good, you can click the “OK” button to confirm the changes.
This is what I got:
Here’s another example of what you could create with that:
Personally with my experience, Photoshop just takes playing around with. I’ve told people I taught GFX to that I can’t teach it and its something they have to learn themselves, it usually takes a week to get used to and after that you can get someone to help you with advanced stuff.
Been using paint.net since 2013, very good program for something that free and easy to use. Good informative tutorial!
Wonderful tutorial. Paint(dot)net is a great free alternative to Photoshop!
Amazing tutorial! I’ve been using PDN since forever and it feels great to being reminded how great of a program it is. Obviously there is photoshop and gimp, but I personally love PDN.
I got to admit that I use Paint.net more than Adobe Photoshop (I own both) as it’s way simpler, and making Roblox clothing is not too complicated.
Very informative and well written!
Nice job. I can tell you put a lot of time into it. I use Photoshop to edit. It may seem hard at first but I got used to it and it has so many options. I recommend paint.NET for short term benefits but Photoshop for long term benefits.
Amazing tutorial! Thank you! This really helped.
