Minecraft Forums

I use Paint.NET to do my pixel work. By default the terrain is saved as a .png file.
I've noticed that after saving a .png file things go wrong. Pixels change color and get distorted.
Doing this process over and over again results in something completely unlike what you made.

Knowing the visibility of each pixel in Minecraft, this problem is huge.

Am I missing a feature of saving .png files with Paint.NET, or is it something else?
Has anyone had this problem, and has anyone found a solution?

I use paint.net too, but this never happened to me.

Never used paint.NET, but it sounds like you're either compressing it too much, or not saving it at the same resolution at which you created it. The second one's more likely, considering how tiny 16x textures are.

In any case, if paint.NET is worth a ****, there will be a menu somewhere that determines what happens to the image when it's saved.

I just found something called the "dithering level" when saving, which I have now set to zero. Hopefully this will solve the problem. Has anyone else ever encountered this?

Thank you for your help by the way

Dithering is basically a form of noise. Pixel artists actually do it by hand to tailor the way colors blend together.

For anybody who wants to know more about pixel art, which is what creating your own textures really is, this is what dithering looks like when it's done creatively:





Each image is just a sphere with the same light source and the same four colors. The only difference is how the artist chose to transition from one color to the next. Dithering!

This example is actually quite mediocre compared to some of the stuff out there.

Ah! That's really cool! Thanks so much for the explanation, turns out the dithering level WAS up and turning it down fixed everything. Thank you!