Translating graphics with Paint.NET

Step 5: Saving the file

So, congratulations! You are only a few moments away from putting the image in the translated document. We now need to save the file in a format supported by your word processor.

Before we do this, it is a good idea to save the image in Paint.NET format. This way, you can make corrections to the image more easily because the file saved in this format will contain all the layers you created. In Paint.NET, click File -> Save, select a folder to save to, type the name of the image, and finally select "Paint.NET (*.pdn)" from Save as type list before clicking the Save button.

Now, let's save the image so that we could insert it in the translated document. Click File -> Save As... and choose "PNG" or "JPEG" from Save as type list before clicking the Save button.

• For a PNG file, you will see a Save Configuration dialogue. In this dialogue, choose "24-bit ", "32-bit" or "Auto-detect" and click OK:

  
  Figure 10: PNG file settings

• For a JPEG file, you will also see a Save Configuration dialogue. Select a high quality (90-95%) if the file size is not a problem for you. Otherwise, play with the quality until the file size is small enough and the preview image is satisfactory.

  
  Figure 11: JPEG file settings

When you press OK in the Save Configuration dialogue, you will see a dialogue asking you whether you want to "flatten" the image. PNG and JPEG formats cannot store individual layers which you created, so all the layers need to be merged together. The image will still look the same, but it will contain only one layer. Click 'Flatten' to save the image:

Figure 12: Flatten image prompt

Now, you will notice that the Layers panel now contains only one layer. At this moment, you can make further changes to the image (open the PDN file you saved before, or undo the last action to 'unflatten' the image) or insert the PNG / JPEG image in the word processor.