Arrows and curves
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2025 1:39 am
Which arrow do you prefer?
Paint 3D is deprecated and unavailable for Windows 11. It let you make curves pretty intuitively, where all the adjustable points were on the line and the line moved where you expected. There's a type of spline manipulation algorithm called Catmull-Rom that works like that. An app called Boxy uses it, but it adds a shadow, which probably isn't part of the image when you save it, but it's annoying, and I couldn't figure out how to change the line color. I didn't want to dig for info on that because it's way too basic for it to be so unintuitive. So I spent more than a day trying to figure out what tool to transition to to make custom arrows. I found nothing I liked! I'm currently using Paint, which doesn't anti-alias its curves and limits line thickness of curves, so I superimpose two copies of the curve, slightly offset to make it thicker, and use Irfanview to work some magic and reduce the size. That's how I made the above arrows.
Paint 3D is deprecated and unavailable for Windows 11. It let you make curves pretty intuitively, where all the adjustable points were on the line and the line moved where you expected. There's a type of spline manipulation algorithm called Catmull-Rom that works like that. An app called Boxy uses it, but it adds a shadow, which probably isn't part of the image when you save it, but it's annoying, and I couldn't figure out how to change the line color. I didn't want to dig for info on that because it's way too basic for it to be so unintuitive. So I spent more than a day trying to figure out what tool to transition to to make custom arrows. I found nothing I liked! I'm currently using Paint, which doesn't anti-alias its curves and limits line thickness of curves, so I superimpose two copies of the curve, slightly offset to make it thicker, and use Irfanview to work some magic and reduce the size. That's how I made the above arrows.