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Paint.NET logo

Paint.NET

By dotPDN Free Editors' Rating

Key Details of Paint.NET

  • Similar to the basic Microsoft Paint program, but with significantly more features
  • Allows resizing, cropping, rotating, and adjusting brightness, contrast, and other image properties
  • Creating layered compositions for complex editing and masking specific image areas
Paint.NET depends on Microsoft's .NET Framework 4.6, which is automatically installed if it isn't already on the system.

Editors' Review

Download.com Staff Aug 31, 2014

Paint.NET is a full-featured image editing program that gives you tons of tools to work with through an intuitive and streamlined interface. Whether you just want to touch-up your photos before you share them with friends or you need high-quality images for another type of project, this program will get you where you need to go.

Pros

Nice interface: This app presents all of the tools you need to create beautiful images in a clean and accessible way. Many of these are arrayed around the main working window, while others are contained within their own windows, which you can reposition anywhere on the screen to clear the space you want to work in.

Lots of tools: Whether your project involves adding layers, introducing text, or using filters and effects to get the look you're going for, you'll find what you need in this program. There are more options in all of these categories than you'll probably ever use, giving you the ability to create just about anything you could imagine.

Cons

No extremes: This program is a good option for intermediate users. It isn't quite accessible enough to make it the right choice for users who have no experience with photo editing programs, and it doesn't offer all of the advanced features that experienced users will be looking for.

Layers for text: While this app does let you introduce text into your images, you have to create it in a separate layer if you want to be able to move it around or experiment with it as you work. This may not be a huge inconvenience, but it does add an extra step to a lot of projects.

Bottom Line

Paint.NET has a lot to offer when it comes to editing and enhancing images for a variety of purposes. It's a free app that provides nearly as much functionality as some of the more highly rated image editing programs and makes these features available to everyone.

Full Specifications

What's new in version 4.2.13

Introducing support for 2-bit per pixel saving in PNG format.
Incorporating 1-bit per pixel saving capability for PNG, BMP, and TIFF formats.
Addressed issues related to low-bit-depth saving quality, ensuring better results in scenarios like 8-bit images, preventing instances where only 64 colors were used instead of 256.
Rectified an error that caused failure when resizing images at exceptionally large sizes, such as from 32K pixels to 64K pixels, resolving arithmetic overflow problems.
Fixed instances where recently saved images did not update their thumbnails in File Explorer automatically, requiring manual refresh of the window.
Resolved issues where saving images to a network share would encounter failures intermittently.
Updated the bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to version 1.10.4.0, specifically addressing an issue related to loading and saving images using the sRGB color space for improved functionality and performance.

General

Release August 7, 2020
Date Added August 7, 2020
Version 4.2.13

Operating Systems

Operating Systems Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows, Windows 7
Additional Requirements None

Popularity

Total Downloads 8,659,994
Downloads Last Week 1,217
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User Reviews

4.2/5
1,111 User Votes
5 Star
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Developer's Description

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance. In order to handle multiple images easily, Paint.NET uses a tabbed document interface. The tabs display a live thumbnail of the image instead of a text description. This makes navigation very simple and fast. Extensive work has gone into making Paint.NET the fastest image editor available. Whether you have a netbook with a power-conscious Atom CPU, or a Dual Intel Xeon workstation with 16+ blazingly fast processing cores, you can expect Paint.NET to start up quickly and be responsive to every mouse click. Usually only found on expensive or complicated professional software, layers form the basis for a rich image composition experience. You may think of them as a stack of transparency slides that, when viewed together at the same time, form one image. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plug-ins.
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