My absolute favorite graphics editing program has been updated recently to version 3.5.6.
The following items have been addressed in this update:
- When pasting an image, Paint.NET will be smarter about ensuring it is placed within the area that has been scrolled/zoomed to.
- Improved the performance and quality of the Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustments.
- Some minor improvements to memory usage, which should help out a few scenarios on 32-bit systems.
- Fixed: If a JPEG was loaded that had an embedded ICC profile, and was then saved as an 8-bit or 24-bit PNG, then the resulting file would be corrupt (32-bit PNG worked fine though).
- Fixed: 16-bit TGAs no longer load with the red and blue channels swapped.
- Fixed: Copy-paste from a Remote Desktop session will no longer be ‘shifted’ by 3 pixels.
- Fixed: Copy-paste from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome should preserve alpha/transparency.
- Fixed: Copying from Paint.NET and pasting into Windows Live Writer should now work.
- Fixed: Taking a full-screen screenshot with Print Screen on a multimonitor system, where those monitors don’t form a simple rectangle, will now fill the ‘gap area’ with transparent instead of black. (Example: two monitors of the same size, one of which is rotated by 90 degrees)
- Fixed: If Paint.NET is opened without specifying an image to open, and then the default image is modified and saved, then Paint.NET will no longer close it upon opening another one. This was causing data loss if that default image had layers, and was then saved in a format that did not support layers (anything other than .PDN).
- Fixed: Some systems were showing ‘red X’ thumbnails for .PDN files in Windows Explorer, instead of the real thumbnail.
- Fixed: The EXIF “Creation Software” saved along with images is no longer localized. This prevents certain languages from seeing “Paint.NET ????? v3.5.6″ in the image properties (metadata).
The greatest part of Paint.NET is that it is absolutely free and uncrippled software. All features are available to you without doing anything more than installing the software. It is an excellent editor and well worth your time to download and install.
For those of you who have never used or heard of Paint.net check out this description from the author:
Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.
