Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

http://blog.getpaint.net/2014/06/24/paint-net-4-0-is-now-available/

by dtech • 12 years ago

295 163 12 years ago

blog.getpaint.net

rtpg• 12 years ago

Paint.NET is one of the first things I get when I install windows somewhere. It's actually pretty frustrating that there isn't a nice simple image editing tool like that for Mac (or Linux). There's Gimp but...

josteink3• 12 years ago

There's Gimp but...

Yeah. Gimp doesn't really cut it in my books.

I'd love to get paint.net running in Linux under Wine, but so far all my attempts have failed.

spingsprong• 12 years ago

Just out of curiosity, why doesn't Gimp cut it in your books?

rplnt• 12 years ago

I managed to run it using mono. It wasn't flawless.

laichzeit0• 12 years ago

I'm too stupid to use Gimp. It's like every time I want to do something I think is really simple (and in other tools it is really simple) takes me longer to do in Gimp. Sometimes I can't get it right, give up and try something else.

quarterto• 12 years ago

Pinta[0] is a decent Paint.NET-inspired Linux image editor.

[0] http://pinta-project.com/

fletchowns2• 12 years ago

You should definitely check out http://pinta-project.com/

tphan• 12 years ago

I use Pinta at work. It's no Paint.NET.

shurcooL• 12 years ago

Pixelmator is my go-to OS X alternative.

bakareika• 12 years ago

I second Pixelmator. It's great for simple edits, and also provides some of the more complex, Photoshop-esque tools. Also pretty fast.

rimantas• 12 years ago

+1 for Pixelmator, but there is also Acorn, quite popular.

shaunpud2• 12 years ago

Seashore isn't too bad either, http://seashore.sourceforge.net

mythz• 12 years ago

Massive fan of Pixelmator, my #1 goto option on OSX. Very few apps have Pixelmator's quality and polish.

Paint.NET is a great option on Windows for quick and easy graphic work, has been enough to keep me off Photoshop (as a web dev) for years.

rogerdpack• 12 years ago

That would be a non-free alternative...

a-saleh• 12 years ago

It has been long time since I tried, but ... http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/

Then there is http://pinta-project.com/, that was created basically as a cross-platform clone of paint.net

Apart from that, if you want a painting tool, Krita is reasonably good.

factorialboy• 12 years ago

I'm not a heavy graphics user, but Pinta on Linux (and Windows) does the trick for me.

dools• 12 years ago

Preview is a pretty simple image editing tool that ships with OSX

ghshephard2• 12 years ago

Preview is a markup tool, not an image editing tool.

On OS X it is either Acorn (my preferred tool, because you can cut/paste excel spreadsheets into it elegantly), or Pixelmator (which I also use occasionally)

Spiritus• 12 years ago

Rita is quite nice, perhaps a bit too simplistic and is vector based. Doesn't support text input either.

http://www.frykholm.se/rita.html

mathnode• 12 years ago

Pixelmator for mac, it also has a vector editor. The new version also allows for 16bit editing, which GIMP doesn't do yet (but Krita does).

Svip• 12 years ago

GIMP 2.10 does.

http://www.gimpusers.com/tutorials/whats-new-in-gimp-2-10

(I admit, GIMP 2.10 isn't technically out yet, but it is just around the corner.)

lmm• 12 years ago

Krita is pretty great for simple image editing on Linux (I even use it on Windows sometimes).

chestnut-tree• 12 years ago

Krita is an impressive painting app, but not really designed for photo-editing. The developers of Krita currently have a Kickstarter campaign running to fund new features and possibly port it to the Mac

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/krita/krita-open-source...

enimodas• 12 years ago

i use the http://pixlr.com/ editor, no need to install anything

guelo• 12 years ago

I actually run paint.net inside a windows vbox on OS X. Pixelmator doesn't cut it. People say paint.net is simple but it's actually very powerful. It's just designed so well that it fools people into thinking it's simple.

mschaef• 12 years ago

What don't you like about Pixelmator? (I've been thinking of buying it for my MBP...)

grennis• 12 years ago

Also wondering what is wrong pixelmator. My trial ran out before I could decide whether it was really capable enough. It seemed like something wasn't quite right with it though.

MrBra• 12 years ago

It's designed to look like Paint :)

devindotcom2• 12 years ago

I'm with you, Pixelmator is a bundle of aggravation. I can't stand it.

Serow2252• 12 years ago

I've used Paintbrush for this use case because it gets the job done and is free; it hasn't been updated in a while but still seems to work fine under Maverick.

viraptor• 12 years ago

When it was first released, it worked quite well under mono on Linux. (so I guess also on Macs, but I never tried) Is that not the case anymore?

Edit: The Internets claim that ported paint.net 3 exists as paint.mono. Not version 4 though :(

tinco• 12 years ago

The OSX alternative is Seashore. It's got the same goal as Paint.Net, to be a simple and easy to use image editor and is based on gimp, so it's stable and supports many things.

I'm not sure there's a similar project for Linux.

arrrg• 12 years ago

Depends on what you need on the Mac. For many common image editing tasks like rotating, cropping, resizing, saving in a different image format, some simple levels, exposure, saturation, sharpening and white balance adjustments as well as a few mark up tools (adding text, arrows, various shapes) Preview is perfectly adequate.

That’s probably more than enough for people who don’t actually create any images. Maybe the photo editing is a bit anaemic, but Photoshop’s photo editing tools are cryptic and hard to use for occasional users and those probably benefit a lot more from a simple editing panel with a few relevant sliders than from all the hard to unlock power of Photoshop.

The only notable absent thing is some sort of image straightening tool (only 90° rotations are possible).

If you want to do actual image editing there are a couple of excellent apps, namely Acorn and Pixelmator, both modern and frequently updated. You have to pay for them but that’s Mac software. You should have to pay for them. That’s only proper.

arikrak• 12 years ago

There's a large amount of free software available on Windows that doesn't have an equivalent on Mac. It matter less over time as more things move to the web, but Paint.net is still a good example.

pasbesoin2• 12 years ago

I had a similar situation and came across... "Pinta" (Linux), I think it was. Did enough while retaining relatively simple and straight-forward controls. (It was no Paint.NET, but neither was it the beginner-adverse Gimp.)

I'd have to have another look to refresh my memory, and it was only a brief need, but might be worth having a look.

P.S. And of course, for vector graphics, "Inkscape".

And, oops: I see now that someone else mentioned Pinta already.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

I agree. I went all Linux years ago, and Paint.NET, minesweeper, and Irfanview are the major things that I miss.

GIMP doesn't take that long to start now, though. I missed Paint.NET a lot more when the GIMP took longer to load.

josteink3• 12 years ago

Haven't really tried much yet, but initial impression is that it seems noticeably snappier than the older version.

That said, I mostly use it to crop images and highlight regions when documenting bug-reports with screenshots.

Most of these enhancements are probably not meant for me :)

dtech4• 12 years ago

The major improvement for everyone is decreased startup time thanks to Multicore JIT. That was one of my few irritations with Paint.NET.

Paint.NET should perform better overal thanks to GPU acceleration and multithreaded rendering. I've personally used the alpha's and beta's for a while now and it just feels zippier.

pjmlp3• 12 years ago

For several years I had put off using Paint.NET over GIMP due to the dependency on .NET, but as soon as I realized that it still managed to outperform GIMP, I moved on the spot.

Still do not get how GIMP gets compiled on Windows to perform so poorly.

Rapzid• 12 years ago

Why wouldn't something like Paint.NET just be AOT compiled with ngen?

ohwp• 12 years ago

I never used it because I've got Photoshop installed on Windows but just gave it a try.

The first thing I noticed was the enormous lag of the mouse movements. So I think for an free alternative I will stick to Gimp.

trentmb• 12 years ago

I just used it without lag. Consider making a bug report instead of a snarky comment on HN?

morganvachon2• 12 years ago

What was snarky about it? I agree, he should file a bug report, as I'm on a modern system and don't have lag (I use paint.net and Gimp on Windows 7). But his comment was fairly emotionless and to the point.

imdsm• 12 years ago

I had this, but got rid. I find my mastery of regular paint suffices and for anything else, I can hop into Photoshop.

CmonDev• 12 years ago

Well, Paint.NET is for people who don't want to buy Photoshop. Adobe products are not priced for people who only use them occasionally.

dtech4• 12 years ago

Plus Paint.NET occupies a sweet spot: it is simple enough to easily do easy tasks like cropping, while complex enough to do so slightly more advanced things.

I find it to be especially popular among IT professionals as they usually don't need to do photo-manipulation ("photoshopping"), but need to process images every so often.

thescrewdriver• 12 years ago

There are many people who can't afford Photoshop, so Paint.NET is useful for those who want something better than paint without having to sell their car to pay for software.

okonomiyaki3000• 12 years ago

In case you don't enjoy clicking through half a dozen pages to get to the download, the actual link is on this page http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html

codebolt• 12 years ago

I appreciate that the author wants to get something back, but really? Why would I have to click through 4 or 5 pages just to get the download started, while nearly being tricked to click several abusive CNET "Download Here!" ads. Free apps like this would make a much more professional impression if they didn't clutter their websites with ads that no one will ever click (except for by mistake).

omnibrain• 12 years ago

My GF is a teacher who did some graphics design and typesetting part-time during her time at the university. She used the Adobe products of course. When teaching at a school for the first time, and doing image manipulation with the pupils, she had to use Gimp because it is free and because of that the "oficially recommended" program. She had real trouble adjust to the GUI and teaching it to her pupils and at the same time the tool was way oversized for the tasks. I showed her Paint.NET and it was like heaven-sent for her.

hereonbusiness2• 12 years ago

I agree the GIMP developers are missing out on a big opportunity by not making their UI look/behave more like the commercial products people are used to. But on the other side there are a lot of people used to the current GIMP UI as well.

Good thing there are projects like Gimpshop (though I havent' tried it yet), GIMP is a open source project so I don't see why we wouldn't have multiple UI's just like there are for Linux, KDE, GNOME, Xfce, ... as long as the core remains the same.

ionforce• 12 years ago

Every time image editing comes up on forums, so does mentions of GIMP. To me, there seems to be no shortage of "GIMP has UX problems" claims.

So what gives? Do they not believe that this is a legitimate problem hurting their adoption? Or do they not care about adoptions? Somehow it's not a priority? Or their execution is severely lacking.

bane• 12 years ago

I've been using GIMP for years and if I don't use it for a couple weeks still have to look up in the help where the crop tool is. The GUI is pretty rough to use.

GhotiFish• 12 years ago

really? I think ive got crop as muscle memory now. shift+c I think...

yup.

zeinology• 12 years ago

without further ado

andrelaszlo• 12 years ago

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ado-versu...

codeulike• 12 years ago

I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and wondering why all the word files got so big.

Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that.

Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.

MrBuddyCasino• 12 years ago

Artweaver is pretty nice too - there is a freeware edition for non-commercial and academic purposes.

aneeskA• 12 years ago

You can use https://pixlr.com/editor/ for such trivial uses.

nhebb• 12 years ago

Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.

It's one of the tools available on Ninite. Point them there instead: https://ninite.com/.

baha_man• 12 years ago

Or Chocolatey: http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/

koesterd• 12 years ago

You can use normal Paint (mspaint.exe) since at least Vista to resize and crop pictures, too.

Cthulhu_2• 12 years ago

Has been possible in older versions of Paint too, albeit indirectly; select region, copy, file->new, paste.

shaunpud2• 12 years ago

Supports PSD too, http://psdplugin.codeplex.com, not sure if it supports the latest version yet though.

kubiiii• 12 years ago

There is a built in workaround in word itself : pasting the huge picture, adjusting size, cut & paste as PNG.

cholmon• 12 years ago

https://imageresizer.codeplex.com/ for simple and quick right-click-to-resize functionality. Works for multiple selected files too.

adam74• 12 years ago

Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link'

getpaint.net > download tab > download now > Free Download Now

That is quite a few clicks.

user242• 12 years ago

Let me show you what it looks like without adblock:

http://imgur.com/a/kuKqo

doczoidberg• 12 years ago

Paint.NET is one of the best free graphic applications. It' amazing how easy and fast it is.

I only miss a dark theme.

richardw• 12 years ago

Worth a donation. This is such an awesome app.

Grue35• 12 years ago

How about donating to some opensource project like Gimp or Krita, so that everyone benefits, not just Windows users?

Cthulhu_2• 12 years ago

Because the parent apparently doesn't like those as much as Gimp / Krita etc? Open source is a noble goal, but not equal to worth donations / money.

josephagoss• 12 years ago

I would donate to GIMP if they started caring about UI.

Infinitesimus• 12 years ago

Maybe because the parent has benefited from Paint.NET and it is logical to support them?

knocte2• 12 years ago

It's a bit sad that this program was open-source once, and then further versions got closed. (It's the other way around to what usually happens!)

teh_klev• 12 years ago

There's some history there. Basically a scammer was passing it off as a paid app [1].

Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

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