Scanlines Effect

Scanlines Effect is a plugin dedicated to Paint.net, which gives you the possibility to apply scanline filters to images. It enables you to set the spacing of the scanlines along with their position and brush width.

There is no actual installation involved, since all you have to do to get the extension up and running is copy the downloaded DLL file to the "Effects" folder of the photo editor's files. It works whether you have an installer or portable edition available.

The application must be restarted if it was launched prior to the file copy operation, in order to finalize setup and gain access to the new add-on. It can be found in the "Render" submenu of the "Effects" menu.

The configuration panel is small and displays three sliders for adjusting the scanline and brush width, together with the horizontal or vertical spacing. Alternatively, you can enter the numerical values or click on two arrow buttons to increase or decrease the levels. Any of the three settings can be restored to default with one click.

Last but not least, photo modifications produced by Scanlines Effect can be observed in real time, which means that it's not necessary to commit changes just to be able to verify results and undo the actions or delete the second layer if you're not pleased with the outcome.

Although it hasn't been updated for a long time, it successfully integrated with the latest edition of Paint.net in our tests, without triggering it to hang, crash or indicate errors. Changes were quickly applied during the preview.

Thanks to its set of intuitive options, Scanlines Effect can be easily tackled even by those less experienced with this particular graphic processing program.