Paint.NET has quite a few options of how you can distort an image. I have a flower opened and I’m going to apply a twist effect to it. This is an effect that I really like to use especially on flowers or something in nature. It gives a really interesting look, creates sort of an abstract look.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to go up to effects and then distort and then twist. And I’m going to move this box over here so I can see the effect that’s taking place. You could see I have a nice twist. Now, I can adjust several components of this, the amount and direction, I can move up or I can also move down. If I want it to be a softer, more subtle twist that adds a little bit of interest, I can do that. And that’s also going to change the direction a little bit to. I’m going to go ahead and move this over this way. And then the size—and this is going to depend how subtle it is as well. I mean, we’ll add up a little bit more, and the size of it, I’m going to actually make it a little smaller. You could see it applies this in waves, it takes it a little while to catch up sometimes so you might have to be a little patient depending on the speed of your computer. You can also move this center. I like to have it especially in a flower right over the center of the flower but you can also move that and you could use the sliders to adjust that as well.

The quality, you can increase, remember, this is going to increase your file size if you move the quality up. But that’s also something that you have the option to do. You could also use the reset buttons and that will take you back to the default twist. When you’re finished with your settings for your twist, click the okay button and then it’s going to go ahead and render. It’s going to tell you the percentage before it gets done. Right now, I’m at almost 20% finish and of course, this depends on the speed of your computer and the different effects that you’ve applied, how quickly this is going to happen.

And this is another one, it takes so long to render. You might need to go back and you might need to make some changes again and you just have to be a little patient. But I really like the look of this so far. It has a good quality. I just got a little bit of a twist. It looks natural but there’s something about it where you’re just like, there’s something a little bit off about that. So I just distorted it, it almost looks like it’s a different type of flower than my original tulip. And then it’s done rendering and you have your twist distortion in Paint.NET.