What's New

For a more detailed change log, please visit the Roadmap page on the Paint.NET website.

Paint.NET v3.5

• Performance in many areas has been substantially improved, and overall memory usage has also been greatly reduced (especially when more than 1 image is open).
• The user interface has been refreshed with new icons, and visual styling has been enhanced for Aero Glass (Windows 7 / Vista only).
• Upgraded to use the latest .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, which has many built-in performance improvements.
• New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
• The font manager for the Text Tool has been completely rewritten, resulting in increased performance and better reliability. On Windows 7, the quality of text is much better as a result of using DirectWrite (this also works on Windows Vista if you have installed DirectX 11).
• The built-in updater now has the ability to download updates in the background, and will wait until you exit Paint.NET to install them. In previous versions, the download happened in the foreground, and you had to wait for the entire process to complete before you could use Paint.NET again..
• Now includes a Russian translation.

Paint.NET v3.36

• Bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.35

• Posterize adjustment.
• Intersect selection mode.
• Dramatically improved performance for selection editing modes (add, subtract, intersect).
• Bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.31

• Bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.30

• Italian translation.
• Fragment, added to the Effects -> Blurs menu.
• Ability to save PNG's at 24-bit and 8-bit color depths.
• Ability to save BMP's at 8-bit color depth.
• "Auto detect" option for PNG, BMP, and TGA -- this will analyze the image and choose the lowest bit-depth that can save the image without loss of quality.
• IndirectUI has been extended with new controls and rules, and can now also be used for file type configuration UI.
• Bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.22

• Reduce Noise, added to the Effects -> Noise menu.
• Bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.20

• Rectangle Select tool can now draw selections based on a Fixed Size or Fixed Ratio.
  
   
• The selection combination mode is now accessible from the toolbar (Replace, Add, Subtract, Invert ("xor")).
  
   
• The flood mode for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools is now accessible from the toolbar (Continuous, or Global).
  
   
• Reorganized the Effects menu so that all effects are classified under submenus named Artistic, Blurs, Distort, Noise, Photo, Render, and Stylize.
• Improved rendering quality for the Motion Blur effect.
• Enhanced the Radial Blur effect so that the center of blurring can be chosen, as well as the quality.
• Enhanced the Zoom Blur effect so that the center of zooming can be chosen.
• Enhanced the Bulge distortion effect so that the center of "bulging" can be chosen.
• Enhanced the Frosted Glass distortion effect in several ways: 1) performance has been improved from between 1,000% to 10,000% depending on image size and settings, 2) the scatter radius can now be set up to 200 pixels instead of 10, 3) a "minimum" scatter radius can be chosen to affect the random scatter radius chosen at each pixel, 4) a smoothness setting is now available.
• Enhanced the Tile Reflection distortion effect by adding a Quality setting.
• Enhanced the Twist distortion effect by 1) allowing counter-clockwise twisting, 2) allowing the size of the twisted area to be configured, 3) allowing the location/center of twisting to be chosen.
• Enhanced the Add Noise effect by adding a "coverage" setting.
• New Mandelbrot Fractal and Julia Fractal render effects.
• New IndirectUI system for plugin authors so that they can develop much more sophisticated effect configuration dialogs with a fraction of the amount of work that used to be required.
• If an effect plugin crashes, it is much more likely that Paint.NET will be able to recover from the error. The option to restart Paint.NET will then be provided as a recommended course of action.
• If an effect plugin fails to load, or is blocked from loading, then a "View Plugin Load Errors..." item will be added to the File menu which can be clicked on to show the error and/or diagnostic information.
• Improved the cursors for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools.
• Ctrl+Alt+0 now works for View->Actual Size (aka, "Zoom to 100%"), which is a shortcut key that other software uses (e.g., Photoshop).
• Updates are now installed faster by only creating one System Restore point instead of two (it used to implicitly create one for uninstall, then one for the reinstall).
• Lots of little bug fixes.

Paint.NET v3.10

• Ink Sketch effect, originally by David Issel ("BoltBait")
• Soften Portrait effect, originally by David Issel ("BoltBait")
• DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file type support
• Some extra visual fit-and-finish for the Layers window and the image list
• Many small bug fixes

Paint.NET v3.08

• Bug fixes

Paint.NET v3.07

• The Line/Curve tool has been enhanced to let you draw arrows, and with various dashed- and dotted-styles.
  
   
• When an image has unsaved changes, its thumbnail in the top-right of Paint.NET will display an orange asterisk. This makes it easy to determine at a glance which images you have yet to save.
  
   
• This help file has been moved online. It is no longer part of the Paint.NET download, a change which has reduced the download size from 4.5 MB to about 1.3 MB.

Paint.NET v3.05

• Pencil Sketch effect
  
   
• For Windows Vista users, Paint.NET now uses the enhanced File Open/Save dialogs that are available. Among other things, this enables Search functionality.

Paint.NET v3.01

• Bug fixes

Paint.NET v3.0

• Multiple Document Interface ("MDI")

  This has been the #1 requested feature of Paint.NET over the last few years. You can now open multiple images in the same instance of Paint.NET. A thumbnail for each image is displayed in the upper right section of the main window. It works much like your tabbed web browser: click on an image to switch to it, or use Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab for keyboard navigation.
  
  

• Gradient Tool

  The #2 most highly requested feature has also been added to Paint.NET: gradients. The new Gradient tool is easy to use and provides a level of interactivity that surpasses most professional imaging software. You can use it to draw color gradients, or to apply a transparency fade.
  
  

• Color Palette
  New for the Colors window is a customizable palette that can hold up 96 colors. Also available is the ability to save, load, and manage the color palettes. These are stored as simple TXT files in your Documents folder hierarchy.
  
  

• Better User Interface

  Many parts of the user interface have been cleaned up, simplified, or just plain improved. For instance, the toolbar now only shows controls that are relevant to the currently active tool. Based on user feedback, we have also optimized the toolbar layout to eliminate some issues which were accidentally causing lower drawing quality (such as inadvertently disabling antialiasing or alpha blending). Some parts of the user interface have even been removed in order to simplify workflow and reduce annoying confirmation dialogs. "Task dialogs" and "command links" are also being employed in order to provide dialogs that are simpler and provide more relevant responses than the forced "Yes, No, Cancel" buttons of many user interfaces.
  
  

• New Effects
  The following new effects have been added: Clouds, Outline, Median, and Unfocus. Improvements have also been made to the Sharpen effect.
  
  

• Compressed History
  Paint.NET now compresses the files that store history data. This can result in a substantial reduction in required disk space, and better performance due to less hard drive activity. Note that this requires that your hard drive is using the NTFS file system, and not FAT32.