paint.net Changelog

What's new in paint.net 5.0.13 (5.13.8830.42291)

Mar 6, 2024

New: Latvian (lv) translation
Fixed the Colors window sometimes showing up at weird sizes if the system scaling (DPI) was changed between sessions
Fixed a crash in the Simulate Color Depth plugin (reported by @toe_head2001)
Updated the list of libraries/contributors in the About dialog with some libraries that got missed (mostly from Microsoft)
Fixed some clipped/invisible text in the installer when going through the Custom flow
Added the GPU driver version to Diagnostics info
Fixed HistogramEffect's Bins property
Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to version 1.1.30.0 (thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 5.0.12 (5.12.8735.38135) (Dec 2, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.11 (5.11.8685.3093) (Oct 12, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.10 (5.10.8674.32967) (Oct 2, 2023)

New: Edit -> Paste now supports base64-encoded images, which enables copying images from Microsoft Teams (thanks @null54 for the implementation!)
Fixed a rare bug that would cause selection tools to not work until the image was closed and reopened
Fixed: All mouse cursors will now honor the Windows setting for adjusting the mouse pointer size
Fixed a rare crash when rapidly undoing multiple actions
New: Plugins can now access the built-in JPEG and PNG FileTypes through two new methods on IFileTypesService
New: The Paint.NET Plugin API Documentation website is now live at https://paintdotnet.github.io/apidocs/
Fixed: All of the custom Direct2D effects now have runtime metadata (DisplayName, Author, Category, Description), which is useful for a UI that lets the user browse them (e.g. node editor)
New: Added convenience constructors to many Direct2D effects so that they can be used without declaring a new local variable
New: Added GaussianBlurMapEffect and BokehBlurMapEffect for use by GpuEffect plugins. They enable the blur radius to be controlled per-pixel through the use of a second input image (the "map")
New: Added a RandomNoiseEffect that GpuEffect plugins can make use of
Fixed various bugs with HlslBinaryFunctionEffect, HlslBinaryOperatorEffect, and HlslTernaryFunctionEffect (which can be used by GpuEffect plugins)
Added Distance and Dot to the list of HlslBinaryFunctions
Added Length and Mad (multiply-add) to the list of HlslTernaryFunctions
Fixed the Environment property's runtime type when accessed from an EffectConfigForm (for BitmapEffects and GpuEffects with custom UIs)
Fixed UIScaleFactor's methods for converting between DIPs and pixels
Fixed ability to work with EffectConfigForms in the Visual Studio WinForms designer
Updated the bundled AvifFileType to version 1.1.26 (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled DdsFileTypePlus to version 1.12.6 (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled WebPFileType to version 1.3.20. It now uses libwebp v1.3.2 which contains the fix for CVE-2023-4863/CVE-2023-5129 (thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 5.0.9 (5.9.8621.1636) (Aug 9, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.8 (5.8.8613.29247) (Aug 1, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.7 (5.7.8575.34822) (Jun 25, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.6 (5.6.8544.33530) (May 25, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.5 (5.5.8540.28689) (May 21, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.4 (5.4.8539.38161) (May 20, 2023)

Changes since v5.0.3:
Improved: Image->Resize has been updated
The default resampling mode is now Bicubic, which has been updated to use the Catmull-Rom ("Catrom") cubic filter. This matches the Bicubic mode of the Move Selected Pixels tool (which uses Direct2D's "HighQualityCubic" mode).
Added a new resampling mode, "Bicubic (Smooth)", which has no sharpening. It produces subjectively blurrier results, but is important for scenarios where you need to completely avoid the (usually) subtle ringing artifacts that other modes (Bicubic, Lanczos, and Adaptive) can introduce due to their added sharpness.
"Adaptive (Best Quality)" has been renamed to "Adaptive (Sharp)" and is no longer the default resampling mode. It is still a very good choice when resizing photos, but whether you use Adaptive, Bicubic, or Lanczos is up to your own personal preference.
A new option has been added, "Use gamma correction", which is enabled by default.
The text box for typing in a percentage now accepts two digits past the decimal point, e.g. 35.79%
Improved: Move Selected Pixels (free transform) has been updated
New: Added a "Multisample Bilinear" sampling mode. This has a sharper look than Anisotropic and avoids the "ringing" artifacts that can be apparent when using Bicubic with high-contrast images (like screenshots). However, it doesn't usually work as well when reducing a selected area to a much smaller size.
New: Added a "Gamma mode" button in the toolbar to toggle gamma correction on and off. The default is on, which improves the quality of rendering by preserving luminance (brightness).
Fixed a bug when using Bicubic sampling that would result in added sharpening when resizing the selected area to 1/8th its original size or smaller
Improved: The rendering quality of the canvas area has been greatly improved
Gamma correction is now used for mipmap generation and compositing, ensuring consistent luminance (brightness) and higher quality antialiasing.
Multisampling is now used for antialiasing, which eliminates pixelation distortions when zooming in, and greatly reduces aliasing artifacts when zooming out.
Improved: Thumbnails within the app now use gamma correction, which ensures consistent luminance (brightness)
New: GPU effects and plugins now support gamma correction, with linear gamma being the default rendering mode for new plugins.
This can be changed by overriding OnInitializeRenderInfo() and setting the renderInfo.GpuEffectColorContext property to GpuEffectColorContext.WorkingSpace (the default is WorkingSpaceLinear)
GPU effect plugins have better access to color management information via the IGpuEffectImage interface and its ColorContext property. All input images (e.g. Environment.SourceImage) are now provided via this interface.
In addition to the built-in effects that already render with gamma correction, the following built-in effects now also render with gamma correction:
Adjustments -> Exposure
Blurs -> Fragment
Blurs -> Motion Blur
Blurs -> Radial Blur
Blurs -> Zoom Blur
Distort -> Bulge
Distort -> Crystalize
Distort -> Dents
Distort -> Frosted Glass
Distort -> Pixelate
Distort -> Polar Inversion
Distort -> Tile Reflection
Distort -> Twist
Layers -> Rotate/Zoom
Object -> Drop Shadow
Photo -> Straighten
Render -> Julia Fractal
Render -> Mandelbrot Fractal
Fixed: Ctrl+G has been reinstated as the shortcut key for Image -> Rotate 90° Counter-Clockwise
Fixed a rendering glitch in Effects -> Distort -> Dents that would sometimes result in rows or columns of incorrectly colored pixels
Fixed: Some systems were having problems with Paint.NET not appearing in the "Open With" list in Windows File Explorer. This should now be fixed.
Fixed: When installing an update, the desktop shortcut is no longer recreated. This means you can delete it without it reappearing after every update. This was a bug accidentally reintroduced back in Paint.NET v4.3.
Increased the maximum zoom range from 1.5625% (1/64) -> 6,400% to 1% -> 10,000%
Improved the reliability of the wrapper classes for Windows COM libraries (Direct2D, etc.)
Improved the /ignoreCorruptPDNChunks command-line parameter to allow an additional type of corrupt PDN image to be partially recovered (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to version 1.11.8.0, which adds gamma correction for mipmap generation (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to version 1.1.25.0, which now uses a checkbox to enable lossless compression (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled WebPFileType plugin to version 1.3.17.0, which reduces some confusion when using lossless compression (thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 5.0.4 (5.4.8529.39949) 8529 Beta (May 10, 2023)

Improved: Image-Resize has been updated
The default resampling mode is now Bicubic, which has been updated to use the Catmull-Rom ("Catrom") cubic filter. This matches the Bicubic mode of the Move Selected Pixels tool (which uses Direct2D's "HighQualityCubic" mode).
Added a new resampling mode, "Bicubic (Smooth)", which has no sharpening. It may produces blurrier results, but is important for some scenarios if you need to completely avoid ringing artifacts that other modes (Bicubic, Lanczos, and Adaptive) can introduce due to their added sharpness.
"Adaptive (Best Quality)" has been renamed to "Adaptive (Sharp)" and is no longer the default resampling mode. It is still a very good choice when resizing photos, but whether you use Adaptive, Bicubic, or Lanczos is up to your own personal preference.
A new option has been added, "Use gamma correction", which is enabled by default.
The text box for typing in a percentage now accepts two digits past the decimal point, e.g. 35.79%
Improved: Move Selected Pixels (free transform) has been updated
New: Added a "Multisample Bilinear" sampling mode. This has a sharper look than Anisotropic and avoids the "ringing" artifacts that can be apparent when using Bicubic with high-contrast images (like screenshots). However, it doesn't usually work as well when reducing a selected area to a much smaller size.
New: Added a "Gamma mode" button in the toolbar to toggle gamma correction on and off. The default is on, which improves the quality of rendering by preserving luminance (brightness).
Fixed a bug when using Bicubic sampling that would result in added sharpening when resizing the selected area to 1/8th its original size or smaller
Improved: The rendering quality of the canvas area has been greatly improved
Gamma correction is now used for mipmap generation and compositing, ensuring consistent luminance (brightness) and higher quality antialiasing.
Multisampling is now used for antialiasing, which eliminates pixelation distortions when zooming in, and greatly reduces aliasing artifacts when zooming out.
Improved: Thumbnails within the app now use gamma correction, which ensures consistent luminance (brightness)
New: GPU effects and plugins now support gamma correction, with linear gamma being the default rendering mode for new plugins.
This can be changed by overriding OnInitializeRenderInfo() and setting the renderInfo.GpuEffectColorContext property to GpuEffectColorContext.WorkingSpace (the default is WorkingSpaceLinear)
GPU effect plugins have better access to color management information via the IGpuEffectImage interface and its ColorContext property. All input images (e.g. Environment.SourceImage) are now provided via this interface.
In addition to the built-in effects that already render with gamma correction, the following built-in effects now also render with linear gamma and/or gamma correction:
Adjustments - Exposure
Blurs - Fragment
Blurs - Motion Blur
Blurs - Radial Blur
Blurs - Zoom Blur
Distort - Bulge
Distort - Crystalize
Distort - Dents
Distort - Frosted Glass
Distort - Pixelate
Distort - Polar Inversion
Distort - Tile Reflection
Distort - Twist
Layers - Rotate/Zoom
Object - Drop Shadow
Photo - Straighten
Render - Julia Fractal
Render - Mandelbrot Fractal
Fixed: Ctrl+G has been reinstated as the shortcut key for Image - Rotate 90° Counter-Clockwise
Fixed a rendering glitch in Effects - Distort - Dents that would sometimes result in rows or columns of incorrectly colored pixels
Fixed: Some systems were having problems with Paint.NET not appearing in the "Open With" list in Windows File Explorer. This should now be fixed.
Fixed: When installing an update, the desktop shortcut is no longer recreated. This means you can delete it without it reappearing after every update. This was a bug accidentally reintroduced back in Paint.NET v4.3.
Improved: Increased the maximum zoom range from 1.5625% (1/64) - 6,400% to 1% - 10,000%
Improved the reliability of the wrapper classes for Windows COM libraries (Direct2D, etc.)
Improved the /ignoreCorruptPDNChunks to allow an additional type of corrupt PDN image to be partially recovered (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to v1.11.8.0, which adds gamma correction for mipmap generation (thanks @null54!)
Updated the bundled WebPFileType to version v1.3.17.0, which reduces some confusion when using lossless compression (thanks @null54!

New in paint.net 5.0.3 (5.3.8488.42200) (Mar 30, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.3 (5.3.8482.43103) Beta (Mar 24, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.2 (5.2.8451.6614) (Feb 20, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0.1 (5.1.8421.15424) (Jan 22, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0 (5.0.8410.34435) (Jan 11, 2023)

Welcome to Paint.NET 5.0! This major update has many performance improvements, new features including pressure sensitivity for pens and drawing tablets, and a brand new effect plugin system with GPU rendering support. Almost all of the built-in effects and adjustments now render using the GPU, greatly improving their performance and quality.
What's New:
Pressure Sensitivity:
Back by popular demand*, pressure sensitivity is now supported, enabling you to draw beautiful, natural-looking brush strokes (see above). Support for the Windows "pointer" input system (aka "Windows Ink") is required. Most devices support this, including the Surface Pen and various drawing tablets from Wacom, UGEE, and more.
Path smoothing, sometimes called stabilization, is now implemented (enabled by default in the toolbar):
There is a new spacing property in the toolbar. The default is 15% which does a great job, but sometimes you need finer control. This also enables new styles of drawing, such as the following which was drawn with a spacing value of 200%:
The newly rewritten brush engine is supported by all of the brush tools: Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, and Recolor. Support for more brush shapes and types, including custom brushes, will be making an appearance in a future update.
GPU, GPU, GPU:
Paint.NET, since v4.0, has already been using hardware accelerated rendering for drawing the canvas to the screen. In v4.1, GPU acceleration was added to a few effects (blurs, mostly). In v5.0, support for the GPU has been greatly expanded. More of the UI is now using using the GPU, including the Layers and History windows, the ruler, the image list at the top of the main windows, and the UI for the Curves and Levels adjustments. This improves performance, and also helps battery life on laptops.
In addition, (almost**) all adjustments and effects now use the GPU, resulting in much higher performance by leveraging Direct2D's imaging and effects system with pixel shaders implemented using Sergio Pedri's @sergiopedri fantastic ComputeSharp.D2D1 library. These effects are now running with full 32-bit floating point precision (128-bits per pixel), which greatly improves the quality of rendering and the accuracy of colors as they move through the processing pipeline.
Effect plugins can now use the GPU for rendering as well, and have full access to the Windows graphics libraries Direct2D, DirectWrite, and Windows Imaging Component (WIC). More on that later. (File Type plugins can also use these libraries, but GPU rendering is not supported there.)
The Move Selected Pixels tool has been upgraded to use the GPU when the Bicubic sampling option is selected. The performance of this proved to be so good that it is now the default mode (unless you are using software rendering or an Intel HD/UHD GPU, in which case Bilinear is still the default). A new Anisotropic sampling mode has been added, which also uses the GPU. Whether you use Bicubic or Anisotropic is up to personal taste; the former produces a sharper result, while the latter produces a smoother/softer result.
(Click for full-size image)
Configuration of GPU support is split into two sections: hardware acceleration for UI and the canvas, which can be enabled or disabled, and selection of the GPU that is used for rendering (tools, adjustments, and effects). By default Paint.NET will use what Windows identifies as the "performance GPU" for rendering, which ensures you get the best performance on systems with both an integrated GPU ("iGPU") and a discrete GPU ("dGPU"). Previously, Paint.NET would only ever use the iGPU, so this is a huge performance improvement on laptops with hybrid graphics. The UI/canvas will always use what Windows identifies as the "default" GPU, which is usually the iGPU, and this helps ensure better battery life.
Apply Embedded Color Profile:
Paint.NET does not have a Color Management System (CMS) like Photoshop, Krita, or The GIMP. I'm hoping to add that in a future update, but for now Image -> Apply Embedded Color Profile is a pragmatic solution that will help you make your images look correct.
Paint.NET, since v4.2, does a great job at preserving image metadata including EXIF, XMP, IPTC (new in 5.0 thanks to @null54), and color profiles. However, it does nothing with the color profile. If you've ever opened an image and the colors looked wrong inside the app and different outside of it (e.g. in your web browser), this is probably why. This command will convert the image to the sRGB color space and then remove the color profile metadata, enabling you to make edits while seeing the image in the way that it was meant to be seen.
Before and after example: (image source)
Image -> Resize Improvements:
Image -> Resize has been updated with new resampling modes: Adaptive and Lanczos. The Bicubic and Bilinear modes have been updated with improved quality, while the old implementation of Bilinear is now called Bilinear (Low Quality) and is akin to linear filtering in 3D graphics engines (only 4 samples per output pixel). Other than Bilinear (Low Quality), Nearest Neighbor, and Fant, these are all powered by Clinton Ingram's @saucecontrol amazing PhotoSauce.MagicScaler library. It produces extremely high quality results, and is also ultrafast.
Welcome to Paint.NET 5.0! This major update has many performance improvements, new features including pressure sensitivity for pens and drawing tablets, and a brand new effect plugin system with GPU rendering support. Almost all of the built-in effects and adjustments now render using the GPU, greatly improving their performance and quality.
To get the update, scroll all the way to the bottom to the big bold "Get the Update" text.
What's New
Pressure Sensitivity
Back by popular demand*, pressure sensitivity is now supported, enabling you to draw beautiful, natural-looking brush strokes (see above). Support for the Windows "pointer" input system (aka "Windows Ink") is required. Most devices support this, including the Surface Pen and various drawing tablets from Wacom, UGEE, and more.
Path smoothing, sometimes called stabilization, is now implemented (enabled by default in the toolbar):
There is a new spacing property in the toolbar. The default is 15% which does a great job, but sometimes you need finer control. This also enables new styles of drawing, such as the following which was drawn with a spacing value of 200%:
The newly rewritten brush engine is supported by all of the brush tools: Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, and Recolor. Support for more brush shapes and types, including custom brushes, will be making an appearance in a future update.
GPU, GPU, GPU!
Paint.NET, since v4.0, has already been using hardware accelerated rendering for drawing the canvas to the screen. In v4.1, GPU acceleration was added to a few effects (blurs, mostly). In v5.0, support for the GPU has been greatly expanded. More of the UI is now using using the GPU, including the Layers and History windows, the ruler, the image list at the top of the main windows, and the UI for the Curves and Levels adjustments. This improves performance, and also helps battery life on laptops.
In addition, (almost**) all adjustments and effects now use the GPU, resulting in much higher performance by leveraging Direct2D's imaging and effects system with pixel shaders implemented using Sergio Pedri's @sergiopedri fantastic ComputeSharp.D2D1 library. These effects are now running with full 32-bit floating point precision (128-bits per pixel), which greatly improves the quality of rendering and the accuracy of colors as they move through the processing pipeline.
Effect plugins can now use the GPU for rendering as well, and have full access to the Windows graphics libraries Direct2D, DirectWrite, and Windows Imaging Component (WIC). More on that later. (File Type plugins can also use these libraries, but GPU rendering is not supported there.)
The Move Selected Pixels tool has been upgraded to use the GPU when the Bicubic sampling option is selected. The performance of this proved to be so good that it is now the default mode (unless you are using software rendering or an Intel HD/UHD GPU, in which case Bilinear is still the default). A new Anisotropic sampling mode has been added, which also uses the GPU. Whether you use Bicubic or Anisotropic is up to personal taste; the former produces a sharper result, while the latter produces a smoother/softer result.
(Click for full-size image)
Configuration of GPU support is split into two sections: hardware acceleration for UI and the canvas, which can be enabled or disabled, and selection of the GPU that is used for rendering (tools, adjustments, and effects). By default Paint.NET will use what Windows identifies as the "performance GPU" for rendering, which ensures you get the best performance on systems with both an integrated GPU ("iGPU") and a discrete GPU ("dGPU"). Previously, Paint.NET would only ever use the iGPU, so this is a huge performance improvement on laptops with hybrid graphics. The UI/canvas will always use what Windows identifies as the "default" GPU, which is usually the iGPU, and this helps ensure better battery life.
Apply Embedded Color Profile
Paint.NET does not have a Color Management System (CMS) like Photoshop, Krita, or The GIMP. I'm hoping to add that in a future update, but for now Image -> Apply Embedded Color Profile is a pragmatic solution that will help you make your images look correct.
Paint.NET, since v4.2, does a great job at preserving image metadata including EXIF, XMP, IPTC (new in 5.0 thanks to @null54), and color profiles. However, it does nothing with the color profile. If you've ever opened an image and the colors looked wrong inside the app and different outside of it (e.g. in your web browser), this is probably why. This command will convert the image to the sRGB color space and then remove the color profile metadata, enabling you to make edits while seeing the image in the way that it was meant to be seen.
Before and after example: (image source)
Image -> Resize Improvements
Image -> Resize has been updated with new resampling modes: Adaptive and Lanczos. The Bicubic and Bilinear modes have been updated with improved quality, while the old implementation of Bilinear is now called Bilinear (Low Quality) and is akin to linear filtering in 3D graphics engines (only 4 samples per output pixel). Other than Bilinear (Low Quality), Nearest Neighbor, and Fant, these are all powered by Clinton Ingram's @saucecontrol amazing PhotoSauce.MagicScaler library. It produces extremely high quality results, and is also ultrafast.
Please note that the Super Sampling mode has been removed. The Adaptive mode produces superior quality, and should be used instead.
New Adjustments:
There are a handful of new adjustments in this release: Exposure, Highlights / Shadows, and Temperature / Tint. These are staples of photo editing that you have previously needed to install plugins for.
In addition, the Sepia adjustment has been improved with an Intensity slider. A value of 0 produces grayscale, 50 is equivalent to previous versions of Paint.NET, and 100 is much more saturated.
New Effects:
There's a new Straighten effect, located in the Effects -> Photo submenu, which makes it easy to rotate and automatically zoom an image so that it fits within the canvas without any transparency creeping in along the edges:
There's now a built-in Drop Shadow effect, available in the Effects -> Object submenu. With the new Direct2D GPU image processing system, this was very easy to implement, and the performance is fantastic:
Bokeh Blur Effect:
Lastly, Paint.NET now has a very high-quality Bokeh blur effect! This replaces the old Unfocus blur effect (which was Bokeh under a different name), both of which simulate the aesthetic quality of the blur produced by out-of-focus parts of an image. Developed in collaboration with Sergio Pedri @sergiopedri and Mike Pound (as seen on the Computerphile YouTube channel, like this one about Complex Bokeh Blurs), this version of Bokeh has a Quality slider that goes up to 10 instead of the usual 6 that you may have seen in other implementations such as ImageSharp's (further details available on GitHub). This produces an extremely high quality result that eliminates almost all fringing artifacts, even on gamma-corrected images or those with a lot of contrasting edges. Be sure to crank the quality up when you're also increasing the Gamma Exponent property, but be warned: it's a bit of a GPU killer!*** This is available in the Effects -> Blurs menu:
New Effect Plugin System:
There's a brand new, fully modernized system for effect plugins to use. The old system still works, and older plugins are still compatible. However, the new system has a lot of benefits and should be the basis for any new effect plugins.
The biggest new feature is hardware accelerated GPU rendering using Direct2D, its effects system, and pixel shaders. The base class for this is GpuEffect, although most plugins will want to use GpuImageEffect (or PropertyBasedGpuImageEffect to leverage IndirectUI) in order to best make use of the graph-based ("node-based") effects and image processing system. There is also GpuDrawingEffect for when you want to issue imperative drawing commands (geometry, text, etc.). If you want to see how to work with all of this, I have written some sample plugins and the source code is available on GitHub.
On the CPU side, BitmapEffect is the replacement for the "classic" Effect class, and has some goodies of its own including expanded pixel format support: you can now read the image and its layers, and produce your output, in the pixel format of your choice including BGRA32, PBGRA32, RGBA64, or even CMYK32. Anything other than BGRA32 will eventually be converted back to BGRA32, but for now this enables you to more easily perform rendering at higher precision. Eventually, layers themselves will support these other pixel formats, and this will ensure that your effect is able to read and render at native precision.
Effect plugins can now access all layers of the current image. This is a big one! In addition, there's also the ability to retrieve a composite bitmap of the whole image (all layers blended together).
Effect plugins can now access the image's metadata, including EXIF, XMP, and IPTC (thanks @null54 for the IPTC support!). This is already being used in an update for @null54's PSFilterPdn plugin.
Effect plugins can now render outside of the active selection by using the DisableSelectionClipping rendering flag. This makes it possible to implement effects like drop shadows that are drawn around the selection, not just inside of it.
Effect plugins can now add tabs to their UI! IndirectUI-based plugins (e.g. PropertyBasedGpuImageEffect) can now add tabs to their UI in arbitrary configurations. @BoltBait has been using this a lot in his updated plugin pack, and has written a tutorial on how to use it in your own plugins. It's also possible, in your rendering code, to know which tab is active, which is useful when you want to render decorations that you don't include in the final rendering (you'd have a "Finish" tab with any final configuration properties). "Classic" effects (deriving from PropertyBasedEffect) can also use tabs.
There's a new Label control which you can use to add text that isn't tied to a property, or even just for adding some whitespace. There's a new ShowHeaderLine property which you can use to remove the horizontal line from the property's header (most of the built-in effects now use this). Drop-down controls can also set Multiline to false so that the label and the dropdown are drawn on the same line. Lastly, there is a new SetTargetWhenSourceEqualsAnyValueRule property collection rule which you can use to implement, among other things, correlations between dropdown and slider controls, as seen in the new Bokeh blur and updated Gaussian Blur effects.
Here's a screenshot from @BoltBait's updated plugin pack, which makes great use of tabs and other new IndirectUI features:
Effects with custom UI (not IndirectUI-based) can use Direct2DControl to create custom controls using Direct2D, including support for hardware accelerated rendering on the GPU. There is also a Direct2DPictureBox control that you can use to display a static bitmap and render additional content above or below it.
Improved Effects and Adjustments:
Many of the existing effects have been improved and updated, in addition to all being run on the GPU now:
Layers -> Rotate / Zoom, technically a distortion effect, now has a Quality slider, a Sampling property, and redone tiling capability.
The Tiling checkbox has been replaced with a Tiling Mode dropdown where you can choose between Transparent, Wrap, or Mirror.
Setting the Sampling property to Nearest Neighbor, while also zooming in, produces a pixelated and antialiased appearance.
Adjustments -> Brightness / Contrast now uses the GPU for rendering.
Adjustments -> Hue / Saturation now uses the GPU for rendering.
Adjustments -> Posterize now uses the GPU for rendering, and also allows posterization of the alpha channel.
Adjustments -> Sepia now uses the GPU for rendering and has an intensity slider.
Effects -> Artistic -> Ink Sketch now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Artistic -> Pencil Sketch now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Blurs -> Bokeh is a new effect that replaces the Unfocus effect. It uses the GPU for rendering.
Effects -> Blurs -> Fragment now uses the GPU for rendering and has improved rendering quality.
Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian Blur has an increased range for its radius property which can now be specified in 0.1 pixel increments. It now also has a Gamma dropdown, Gamma Exponent slider, and a Quality slider.
The Gamma dropdown defaults to "sRGB (2.2)" which ensures gamma-correct results.
Setting this to "Linear (1.0)" will produces the same results as previous versions of Paint.NET.
The Gamma Exponent slider can be used to increase the prominence of brighter regions of the image. Values less than 1 produce a strange color bleeding effect that can be fun.
The quality level ranges from 1 to 4. The first 3 correspond to the optimization property of Direct2D's Gaussian Blur effect, while the 4th level is a new, custom implementation that renders at an obscenely high level of quality and improves results with gamma-corrected or gamma-exaggerated rendering.
Previous versions of Paint.NET (v4.1 - v4.3) always rendered equivalently to a quality value of 3.
Warning: the 4th quality level is a GPU killer*** -- even the fastest GPUs will struggle with this one!
Effects -> Blurs -> Motion Blur now has an Edge Mode property to control how pixel samples outside of the image are determined.
Effects -> Blurs -> Radial Blur has improved rendering quality, and its quality slider can now be set between 1.0 and 8.0 in steps of 0.1.
Effects -> Blurs -> Zoom Blur now uses the GPU for rendering, has improved rendering quality, and a Focus property to control the balance between the foreground and background. It now also has a quality slider thar can be set between 1.0 and 8.0 in steps of 0.1.
Effects -> Distort -> Bulge now uses the GPU for rendering, has improved rendering quality, and an Edge Behavior property.
Effects -> Distort -> Crystalize now uses the GPU for rendering and has improved rendering quality.
Effects -> Distort -> Dents now uses the GPU for rendering, has improved rendering quality, and an Angle property.
Effects -> Distort -> Frosted Glass now uses the GPU for rendering, has improved rendering quality, a Diffusion property, and a Randomize button.
The Diffusion property controls how pixels are distributed between the Minimum and Maximum Scatter Radius. Lower values will distribute pixels closer to the minimum radius, a value of 1.0 (the default) will evenly distribute pixels, and higher values will distribute pixels closer to the maximum radius.
Previously, the randomization would be reset every time you changed one of the property sliders. Now you can modify the effect in a more stable way and only re-randomize when you want to.
Effects -> Distort -> Pixelate now lets you specify a Scale Down and a Scale Up mode (pixelation is implemented by first scaling the image down, and then scaling it back up). This allows you to fine-tune the look of the effect for what you want to achieve.
Effects -> Distort -> Polar Inversion now runs on the GPU which has greatly improved its performance, and it has improved rendering quality.
Effects -> Distort -> Tile Reflection now runs on the GPU, has improved rendering quality, and an Edge Behavior property which can produce some really interesting results.
Effects -> Distort -> Twist now renders on the GPU and has improved rendering quality.
Effects -> Noise -> Add Noise now runs on the GPU and has a Randomize button. It will not re-randomize on every property change like it used to.
Effects -> Photo -> Glow now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Photo -> Sharpen was completely rewritten to produce much better results. It now has a Threshold slider.
Effects -> Photo -> Soften Portrait now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Photo -> Vignette now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Render -> Clouds now has a large number of additional blend modes.
Effects -> Render -> Julia Fractal and Mandelbrot Fractal now run on the GPU and are significantly faster. Depending on your CPU and GPU, you will see a performance improvement between 2x to 100x. You can also now choose a Blend Mode for these effects.
Effects -> Render -> Turbulence now has a Blend Mode dropdown instead of a Blend checkbox.
Effects -> Stylize -> Emboss now runs on the GPU and is significantly faster.
Effects -> Stylize -> Edge Detect has been completely rewritten. Instead of an Angle property, it now has Strength and Blurring sliders, an Algorithm dropdown (Sobel or Prewitt), and an Overlay Edges checkbox.
Miscellaneous:
There are a lot of smaller changes throughout the app as well:
The Line/Curve tool has higher quality antialiasing, and a new Straight mode (in addition to Spline and Bezier).
The Shapes tool has higher quality antialiasing as well.
The brightness of the transparency checkerboard can now be configured in Settings.
Thumbnails in the Layers window have been made larger by 20%, making them easier to see at a glance.
IPTC metadata is now preserved. Plugins can also read/write IPTC metadata. Thanks to @null54 for implementing this!
You can now click-and-hold on +/- buttons in the toolbar instead of repeatedly clicking on them.
The selection is now rendered using the GPU, which helps with both performance and battery life.
Effects now run at a higher, smoother framerate. Previously the screen was updated at a fixed 20 frames-per-second, but now these updates are done as soon as possible. On a fast system with a high-refresh rate monitor you will really see the difference.
On non-English systems, Paint.NET will attempt to auto-localize the submenu names that effect plugins specify. For example: an Italian user will now see just a "Sfocature" sub-menu instead of both "Sfocature" and "Blurs".
32-bit CMYK images are now correctly imported. They are transformed to 32-bit BGRA sRGB and the color profile is removed. Thanks to Clinton Ingram @saucecontrol for suggesting and consulting on this.
There has been significant optimization through the rendering engine to reduce and remove transient allocations. Most rendering code is now able to run completely free of allocations. The whole app feels smoother! (When I've run v4.3.12 and v5.0 side-by-side, the new version was noticeably smoother at updating the canvas.)
The app has been updated to run on .NET 7, and all legacy C++/CLI code has been ported to C# with the help of Tanner Gooding's excellent TerraFX.Interop.Windows library.
The bundled AvifFileType plugin has been updated to version 1.1.22.0 (thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 5.0 Build 8407 Beta (Jan 8, 2023)

New in paint.net 5.0 Build 8376 Alpha (Dec 7, 2022)

New in paint.net 5.0 Build 8368 Alpha (Dec 1, 2022)

New in paint.net 5.0 Build 8361 Alpha (Nov 23, 2022)

Pressure Sensitivity:
Back by popular demand*, pressure sensitivity is now supported, enabling you to draw beautiful, natural-looking brush strokes (see above). Support for the Windows "pointer" input system (aka "Windows Ink") is required. Most devices support this, including the Surface Pen and various drawing tablets from Wacom, UGEE, and more.
Path smoothing, sometimes called stabilization, is now implemented (enabled by default in the toolbar)
There is a new spacing property in the toolbar. The default is 15% which does a great job, but sometimes you need finer control. This also enables new styles of drawing, such as the following which was drawn with a spacing value of 200%
The newly rewritten brush engine is supported by all of the brush tools: Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, and Recolor. Support for more brush shapes and types, including custom brushes, will be making an appearance in a future update.
GPU, GPU, GPU:
Paint.NET, since v4.0, has already been using hardware accelerated rendering for drawing the canvas to the screen. In v4.1, GPU acceleration was added to a few effects (blurs, mostly). In v5.0, support for the GPU has been greatly expanded. More of the UI is now using using the GPU, including the Layers and History windows, the ruler, the image list at the top of the main windows, and the UI for the Curves and Levels adjustments. This improves performance, and also helps battery life on laptops.
In addition, (almost**) all adjustments and effects now use the GPU, resulting in much higher performance by leveraging Direct2D's imaging and effects system with pixel shaders implemented using Sergio Pedri's @sergiopedri fantastic ComputeSharp.D2D1 library. These effects are now running with full 32-bit floating point precision (128-bits per pixel), which greatly improves the quality of rendering and the accuracy of colors as they move through the processing pipeline.
Effect plugins can now use the GPU for rendering as well, including full access to Windows graphics libraries (Direct2D, DirectWrite, and Windows Imaging Component (WIC)). More on that later. (File Type plugins can also use these libraries, but GPU rendering is not supported there.)
The Move Selected Pixels has been upgraded to use the GPU when the Bicubic sampling option is selected. The performance of this was so good that it is now the default mode (unless you are using software rendering or an Intel HD/UHD GPU, in which case Bilinear is still the default). A new Anisotropic sampling mode has been added, which also uses the GPU. Whether you use Bicubic or Anisotropic is up to personal taste; the former produces a sharper result, while the latter produces a smoother/softer result.
Configuration of GPU support is split into two sections: hardware acceleration for UI/canvas, which can be enabled or disabled, and selection of the GPU that is used for rendering (tools, adjustments, and effects). By default, Paint.NET will use what Windows identifies as the "performance GPU" for rendering, which ensures you get the best performance on laptops that have both an integrated GPU ("iGPU") and a discrete GPU ("dGPU"). Previously, Paint.NET would only ever use the iGPU. The UI/canvas will always use what Windows identifies as the "default" GPU, which is usually the iGPU, and this helps ensure better battery life
Apply Embedded Color Profile:
Paint.NET does not have a Color Management System (CMS) like Photoshop, Krita, or The GIMP. I'm hoping to add that in a future update, but for now Image -> Apply Embedded Color Profile is a pragmatic solution that will help you make your images look correct.
Paint.NET, since v4.2, does a great job at preserving image metadata, including color profiles. However, it does nothing with the color profile. If you've ever opened an image and the colors looked wrong inside the app and different outside of it (e.g. in your web browser), this is probably why. This command will convert the image to the sRGB color space and then remove the color profile metadata, enabling you to make edits while seeing the image in the way that it was meant to be seen.
Image -> Resize Improvements:
Image -> Resize has been updated with new resampling modes: Adaptive and Lanczos. The Bicubic and Bilinear modes have been updated with improved quality, while the old implementation of Bilinear is now called Bilinear (Low Quality) and is akin to linear filtering in 3D graphics engines (only 4 samples per output pixel). Other than Bilinear (Low Quality), Nearest Neighbor, and Fant, these are all powered by Clinton Ingram's @saucecontrol amazing PhotoSauce.MagicScaler library. It produces extremely high quality results, and is also ultrafast.
New Adjustments:
There are a handful of new adjustments in this release: Exposure, Highlights & Shadows, and Temperature & Tint. These are staples of photo editing that you have previously needed to install plugins for
In addition, the Sepia adjustment has been improved with an Intensity slider. A value of 0 produces grayscale, 50 is equivalent to previous versions of Paint.NET, and 100 is much more saturated
New Effects:
There's a new Straighten effect, located in the Effects -> Photo submenu, which makes it easy to rotate and automatically zoom an image so that it fits within the canvas without any transparency creeping in along the edges
There's now a built-in Drop Shadow effect, available in the Effects -> Object submenu. With the new Direct2D GPU image processing system, this was very easy to implement, and the performance is fantastic
Bokeh Blur Effect:
Lastly, Paint.NET now has a very high-quality Bokeh blur effect! Similar to the older Unfocus blur effect, this simulates the aesthetic quality of the blur produced by out-of-focus parts of an image. Developed in collaboration with Sergio Pedri @sergiopedri and Mike Pound (as seen on the Computerphile YouTube channel, like this one about Complex Bokeh Blurs), this version of Bokeh has a Quality slider that goes up to 10 instead of the usual 6 that you may have seen in other implementations such as ImageSharp's (further details available on GitHub). This produces an extremely high quality result that eliminates almost all fringing artifacts, even on images with a large dynamic range and a lot of contrasting edges. Be sure to crank the quality up when you're also increasing the Gamma property, but be warned: it's a bit of a GPU killer!*** This is available in the Effects -> Blurs menu
New Effect Plugin System:
There's a brand new, fully modernized system for effect plugins to use. The old system still works, and older plugins are still compatible. However, the new system has a lot of benefits and should be the basis for any new effect plugins.
The biggest new feature is hardware accelerated GPU rendering using Direct2D, its effects system, and pixel shaders. The base class for this is GpuEffect, although most plugins will want to use GpuImageEffect (or PropertyBasedGpuImageEffect to leverage IndirectUI) in order to best make use of the graph-based ("node-based") effects and image processing system. There is also GpuDrawingEffect for when you want to issue imperative drawing commands (geometry, text, etc.). If you want to see how to work with all of this, I have written some sample plugins and the source code is available on GitHub.
On the CPU side, BitmapEffect is the replacement for the "classic" Effect class, and has some goodies of its own including expanded pixel format support: you can now read the image and its layers, and produce your output, in the pixel format of your choice including BGRA32, PBGRA32, RGBA64, or even CMYK32. Anything other than BGRA32 will eventually be converted back to BGRA32, but for now this enables you to more easily perform rendering at higher precision. Eventually, layers themselves will support these other pixel formats, and this will ensure that your effect is able to read and render at native precision.
Effect plugins can now access all layers of the current image. This is a big one! In addition, there's also the ability to retrieve a composite bitmap of the whole image (all layers blended together).
Effect plugins can now access the image's metadata, including EXIF, XMP, and IPTC (thanks @null54 for the IPTC support!). This is already being used in an update for @null54's PSFilterPdn plugin.
Effect plugins can now render outside of the active selection by using the DisableSelectionClipping rendering flag. This makes it possible to implement effects like drop shadows that are drawn around the selection, not just inside of it.
Effect plugins can now add tabs to their UI! IndirectUI-based plugins (e.g. PropertyBasedGpuImageEffect) can now add tabs to their UI in arbitrary configurations. @BoltBait has been using this a lot in his updated plugin pack, and has written a tutorial on how to use it in your own plugins. It's also possible, in your rendering code, to know which tab is active, which is useful when you want to render decorations that you don't include in the final rendering (you'd have a "Finish" tab with any final configuration properties). "Classic" effects (deriving from PropertyBasedEffect) can also use tabs.
There's a new Label control which you can use to add text that isn't tied to a property, or even just for adding some whitespace. There's a new ShowHeaderLine property which you can use to remove the horizontal line from the property's header (most of the built-in effects now use this). Drop-down controls can also set Multiline to false so that the label and the dropdown are drawn on the same line.
Effects with custom UI (not IndirectUI-based) can use Direct2DControl to create custom controls using Direct2D, including support for hardware accelerated rendering on the GPU. There is also a Direct2DPictureBox control that you can use to display a static bitmap and render additional content above or below it.
Improved and Updated Effects:
Many of the existing effects have been improved and updated, in addition to all being run on the GPU now:
Layers -> Rotate / Zoom, technically a distortion effect, now has a Quality slider, a Sampling property, and redone tiling capability.
The Tiling checkbox has been replaced with a Tiling Mode dropdown where you can choose between Transparent, Wrap, or Mirror.
Setting the Sampling property to Nearest Neighbor, while also zooming in, produces a pixelated and antialiased appearance.
Effects -> Blurs -> Gaussian Blur has an increased range for its radius property which can now be specified in 0.1 pixel increments. It now also has a Gamma property and a Quality slider.
The Gamma property can be used to increase the prominence of brighter regions of the image. Values less than 1 produce a strange color bleeding effect that can be fun.
The quality level ranges from 1 to 4. The first 3 correspond to the optimization property of Direct2D's Gaussian Blur effect, while the 4th level is a custom implementation that renders at an obscenely high level of quality and is intended for use with a raised Gamma value.
Previous versions of Paint.NET (v4.1 - v4.3) always rendered equivalently to a quality value of 3.
Warning: the 4th quality level is a GPU killer*** -- even the fastest GPUs will struggle with this one!
Effects -> Blurs -> Motion Blur now has an Edge Mode property to control how pixel samples outside of the image are determined.
Effects -> Blurs -> Radial Blur has improved rendering quality, and its quality slider can now be set between 1.0 and 8.0 in steps of 0.1.
Effects -> Blurs -> Zoom Blur has improved rendering quality and a Focus property to control the balance between the foreground and background. It now also has a quality slider thar can be set between 1.0 and 8.0 in steps of 0.1.
Effects -> Distort -> Bulge now has an Edge Behavior property and a Quality slider.
Effects -> Distort -> Dents now has an Angle property, and its Quality slider now goes up to 8 instead of 5.
Effects -> Distort -> Frosted Glass now has a Diffusion property and a Randomize button. Its Quality slider now also goes up to 8 instead of 5.
The Diffusion property controls how pixels are distributed between the Minimum and Maximum Scatter Radius. Lower values will distribute pixels closer to the minimum radius, a value of 1.0 (the default) will evenly distribute pixels, and higher values will distribute pixels closer to the maximum radius.
Previously, the randomization would be reset every time you changed one of the property sliders. Now you can modify the effect in a more stable way and only re-randomize when you want to.
Effects -> Distort -> Pixelate now lets you specify a Scale Down and a Scale Up mode (pixelation is implemented by first scaling the image down, and then scaling it back up). This allows you to fine-tune the look of the effect for what you want to achieve.
Effects -> Distort -> Polar Inversion is just a lot faster now that it's running on the GPU! Its Quality slider now also goes up to 8 instead of 5.
Effects -> Distort -> Tile Reflection now has an Edge Behavior property, which can produce some really interesting results ... Its Quality slider now also goes up to 8 instead of 5.
Effects -> Noise -> Add Noise now has a Randomize button. It will not re-randomize on every property change like it used to.
Effects -> Photo -> Sharpen was completely rewritten to produce much better results. It now has a Threshold slider.
Effects -> Render -> Clouds now has a large number of additional blend modes.
Effects -> Render -> Julia Fractal and Mandelbrot Fractal are immensely faster now that they're running on the GPU. Depending on your CPU and GPU, the difference can be 30x or even 100x.
You can now also choose a Blend Mode for these effects.
Effects -> Render -> Turbulence now has a Blend Mode dropdown instead of a Blend checkbox.
Effects -> Stylize -> Edge Detect has been completely rewritten. Instead of an Angle property, it now has Strength and Blurring sliders, an Algorithm dropdown (Sobel or Prewitt), and an Overlay Edges checkbox.
Miscellaneous:
There are a lot of smaller changes throughout the app as well:
The Line/Curve tool has higher quality antialiasing, and a new Straight mode (in addition to Spline and Bezier).
The Shapes tool has higher quality antialiasing as well.
The brightness of the transparency checkerboard can now be configured in Settings.
Thumbnails in the Layers window have been made larger by 20%, making them easier to see at a glance.
IPTC metadata is now preserved. Plugins can also read/write IPTC metadata. Thanks to @null54 for implementing this!
You can now click-and-hold on +/- buttons in the toolbar instead of repeatedly clicking on them.
The selection is now rendered using the GPU, which helps with both performance and battery life.
Effects now run at a higher, smoother framerate. Previously the screen was updated at a fixed 20 frames-per-second, but now these updates are done as soon as possible. On a fast system with a high-refresh rate monitor you will really see the difference.
On non-English systems, Paint.NET will attempt to auto-localize the submenu names that effect plugins specify. For example: an Italian user will now see just a "Sfocature" sub-menu instead of both "Sfocature" and "Blurs".
32-bit CMYK images are now correctly imported. They are transformed to 32-bit BGRA sRGB and the color profile is removed. Thanks to Clinton Ingram @saucecontrol for suggesting and consulting on this.
There has been significant optimization through the rendering engine to reduce and remove transient allocations. Most rendering code is now able to run completely free of allocations. The whole app feels smoother! (When I've run v4.3.12 and v5.0 side-by-side, the new version was noticeably smoother at updating the canvas.)
The app has been updated to run on .NET 7, and all legacy C++/CLI code has been ported to C# with the help of Tanner Gooding's excellent TerraFX.Interop.Windows library.

New in paint.net 4.3.12 (Aug 21, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.11 (May 25, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.10 (Mar 10, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.9 (Mar 9, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.9 Build 8099 Beta (Mar 6, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.8 (Feb 17, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.8 Build 8079 (Feb 13, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.7 (Jan 4, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.6 (Jan 4, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.5 (Jan 3, 2022)

New in paint.net 4.3.3 (Nov 22, 2021)

New: The app has been migrated to .NET 6, which has improved both rendering and startup performance
New translation: Catalan (ca)
New translation: Corsican (co)
New translation: Thai (th)
Changed: The /createMsi command for the installer has been removed. Instead, you can now download MSIs directly from the GitHub releases page.
Improved various UI controls for Dark Theme, e.g. scrollbars (Win10 v1809+ only)
Fixed the way various UI controls look on Windows 11, e.g. buttons and drop-down lists
Fixed the View -> Zoom to Window command when using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+B), which was resetting instead of toggling the zoom level
Improved performance during the "extracting" stage of the installer by migrating away from Nullsoft Scriptable Installer System (NSIS)
Reduced the download size on ARM64 by about 33%
Fixed a rendering bug in the Dents and Polar Inversion effects
Fixed a memory leak in the selection renderer that was consuming gigabytes of GPU memory, resulting in crashes. Thanks to @Zagna for finding this and testing the fix!
Fixed some GDI object leaks, particularly with the Save Configuration dialog, which would eventually result in a crash. Thanks @rechlin for finding and reporting this!
Fixed a memory leak in Settings -> Tools. Thanks @otuncelli for finding this!
Fixed an issue that was preventing new plugins from loading their native DLL dependencies as specified in their .deps.json file
Fixed the app crashing after an effect plugin crashes when you choose to restart the app
Fixed a crash while drawing a selection, right-clicking on the History window before releasing the left mouse button, and then clicking to redo a history entry
Fixed a text rendering bug in some parts of the UI, mostly in Effects, as reported by @midora
Fixed the "untitled:" file name argument prefix, which was preventing Window Clippings from being able to send screenshot
Fixed some registry keys that were not being deleted during uninstall
Fixed the PdnRepair utility on Windows 7
Fixed some inconsistencies with the MSI as compared to v4.2.16 which were causing problems for some deployments
Updated the bundled AvifFileType to v1.1.17.0, courtesy of @null54, which updates the AOM version and fixes a crash when reading large EXIF blocks.

New in paint.net 4.3.3 Beta Build 7991 (Nov 18, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3.3 Alpha Build 7988 (Nov 15, 2021)

New: The app has been migrated to .NET 6, which has resulted in improved rendering and startup performance
Improved: The download size is now much smaller for ARM64 by about 33%
Improved various UI elements for Dark Theme, e.g. scrollbars and drop-down lists (Windows 10 v1809+ only)
Fixed the way various UI controls look on Windows 11, e.g. buttons and dropdown lists
Fixed the View -> Zoom to Window command when using the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+B), which was resetting instead of toggling the zoom level
Fixed a rendering bug in the Dents and Polar Inversion effects, which was reported over at https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118746-paintnet-update-changed-the-way-the-dents-distortion-filter-works-causing-unwanted-artifactsglitches-was-this-an-intended-change/
Fixed a memory leak with the selection renderer, which would cause gigabytes of GPU memory usage and crashes
Fixed some GDI object leaks, which would eventually result in a crash
Fixed a crash while drawing a selection, right clicking on the History window without releasing the left mouse button, and then clicking to redo a history entry
Fixed an issue that was preventing new plugins from loading their native DLL dependencies as specified in their .deps.json file
Fixed the app itself crashing after an effect crash is trapped and when you choose to restart the app
Fixed a text rendering bug in some parts of the UI, as reported by @midora over at https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118866-paintnet-43-footnote-of-indirectui-control-in-filetype-shows-artifacts-after-scrolling/
Fixed the "untitled:" file name argument prefix, which was preventing Window Clippings from being able to send screenshots
Changed: The /createMsi command for the installer has been removed. Instead, you can now download the MSIs directly from the GitHub releases page.
Fixed a few issues when using the MSI directly. The execution context was fixed, and it will no longer delete the desktop shortcut or Start Menu shortcut if executing the MSI for a second time.
Fixed some registry keys that were not being deleted during uninstall
Improved performance during the "extracting" stage of the installer by migrating away from NSIS. This has also helped improve compression, although other changes have resulted in a net increase in the download size (but with improved performance for the app).
Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to v1.1.16.0 (thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 4.3.2 (Oct 4, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3.1 (Sep 27, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 (Sep 22, 2021)

This version has been migrated from .NET Framework to .NET 5, includes major performance optimizations across the entire app, and adds native support for ARM64 devices such as the Microsoft Surface Pro X.
New: The app has been migrated to .NET 5, and performance has been greatly improved as a result.
New: ARM64 is now natively supported, which improves performance on devices such as the Surface Pro X.
New: .NET no longer needs to be installed on the system because the app now uses self-contained deployment.
New: Portable ZIPs are now available. Please note that portable installations do not currently update automatically.
Improved performance of most effects and other compute-intensive tasks by about 20% on average, due to .NET 5's improved code generation (JIT).
Improved startup performance for the Microsoft Store release. Previously, .NET Framework's NGEN was unavailable for Store apps, but now .NET 5 enables self-contained deployment along with ReadyToRun + crossgen, which serves the same purpose.
Improved performance: Many areas of the app have been optimized to use SIMD (SSE2/3/4.1, AVX2) on x86/x64:
Drawing on an image with a large number of layers is faster
Drawing with the Gradient Tool's alpha mode is faster
Drawing with the Recolor tool is faster
Drawing with the Eraser or Clone Stamp tool is faster when using a color whose alpha value is less than 255
Drawing with the Overwrite blend mode is faster
Drawing with the Shapes tool is faster, due to improved compositing performance
Drawing with a brush tool without antialiasing is faster
Tile compression has lower overhead due to being optimized for SSE2 and AVX2
Working with complex selections is faster
Many other optimizations all throughout the application and rendering engine
Improved performance of loading custom Shapes by ~16x on 2nd and subsequent app starts.
Improved performance of the Magic Wand tool by a substantial amount.
Improved performance of the Paint Bucket tool by a substantial amount.
Improved performance of the Paint Bucket when changing the color or certain other toolbar settings by not recalculating the stencil buffer for the filled area. Changes should now be visible immediately.
Improved performance of Polar Inversion by 3x, mostly as a corollary to fixing a bug that was causing hangs, and a little bit due to .NET 5.
Improved performance on systems without HyperThreading by reserving 1 core for the UI. Performance is also improved on systems with it by utilizing more of the logical cores.
Improved performance while installing or updating the app, due to no longer needing the "Optimizing performance for your system" stage (NGEN has been replaced with ReadyToRun via crossgen).
Improved memory usage when custom shapes are installed so they don't litter the heap with hundreds of thousands of boxed value types (e.g. floats and points).
Improved selection antialiasing quality by using a 4x4 super sampling filter instead of a 3x3 super sampling filter. The code has also been optimized to use SSSE3 on x86/x64.
Improved: Effect and File Type plugins can now be organized into folders. The plugin loader will recursively search for DLLs up to 1 folder deep.
Fixed a bug when saving with "Auto Detect" bit-depth which was causing fidelity loss on some images that already had 256 colors or less. This was reported here: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118401-images-already-with-256-or-fewer-colors-being-dithered-when-saved-with-palette/
Fixed: There were some issues with zooming in/out using the keyboard, where the anchoring point was not calculated correctly, causing the canvas to drift in the wrong direction.
Fixed the inability to use middle-mouse panning after using a selection tool and pressing delete before releasing the mouse button.
Improved: Plugins are now loaded into isolated AssemblyLoadContexts, which improves stability and resiliency to various problems with versioning, loading dependencies, plugin bugs, and incorrect plugin installation.
Fixed a crash when trying to draw a fixed-size rectangle selection that was larger than the image.
Fixed a bug with the Tolerance slider where both 58% and 59% would be displayed as 58%, due to a rounding issue. The correct value was actually being used, it just wasn't being displayed correctly.
Added a /disablePlugins command-line argument to aid in troubleshooting various issues with app startup and incorrect plugin installation.
New: Additional directories can now be specified for plugin discovery, which (e.g.) enables the use of OneDrive for storing plugins. See here for more info: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118583-feature-request-set-custom-app-files-plugins-folder/?do=findComment&comment=586013
Note that this does not work with the portable version of the app, but you can install plugins next to the app so it isn't necessary.
Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to v1.1.15.0, courtesy of @null54, which includes support for multi-layer AVIF files, and adds native support for ARM64. See the project's GitHub Releases page for more information.
Updated the bundled DdsFileTypePlus plugin to v1.10.10.0, courtesy of @null54, which adds native support for ARM64. See the project's GitHub Releases page for more information.
Updated the bundled WebPFileType plugin to v1.3.7.0, courtesy of @null54, which adds native support for ARM64. See the project's GitHub Releases page for more information.
Changed: FileType.IsReflexive() is now deprecated via [Obsolete], and is no longer honored. However, the Save Configuration dialog will no longer try to generate previews for FileTypes that do not specify any file extensions for loading, which is what this method was being used for.
Known Issue: Due to crashing, GPU accelerated effects (Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur) on ARM64 will actually use the CPU for rendering.

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7929 (Sep 17, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7921 (Sep 8, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7918 (Sep 5, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7917 (Sep 4, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7916 (Sep 3, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7906 (Aug 24, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7904 (Aug 23, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7894 (Aug 12, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7881 (Jul 30, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7879 (Jul 29, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.3 Alpha Build 7878 (Jul 28, 2021)

New: ARM64 is now natively supported
Improved: Selection antialiasing quality is now better by way of using a 4x4 super sampling filter instead of 3x3. The code has also been optimized to use SSSE3 on x86/x64.
Improved: Performance should be significantly better on systems without HyperThreading (by reserving 1 core for the UI), and also a bit better on systems with it (by utilizing more of the logical cores)
Improved: Effect and File Type plugins can now be organized into folders -- the plugin loader will recursively search for DLLs up to 1 folder deep
Fixed: There were some issues with zooming in/out using the keyboard, where the anchoring (centering) point was not calculated correctly, causing the canvas to drift in the wrong direction.
Fixed: If a download fails in the Prerequisites Installer, it will retry and resume up to 10 times, thus greatly improving its reliability for downloading things like .NET 5 and the Visual C++ Runtime
Changed: A processor that supports SSSE3 (yes 3 S's) is now required for x86/x64 systems (previously only SSE2 was required). All CPUs released since about 2006 (e.g. Core 2 Duo) support this.
Known Issue: Due to crashing, GPU accelerated effects (Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur) on ARM64 will actually use the CPU for rendering.
Improved: Many areas of the app have been optimized to use SIMD (SSE2/3/4.1, AVX2) on x86/x64:
Drawing on an image with a large number of layers is faster
Drawing with the Gradient Tool's alpha mode is faster
Drawing with the Recolor tool is faster
Drawing with the Erase or Clone Stamp tool is faster when using a color whose alpha value is less than 255
Drawing with the Overwrite blend mode is faster
Drawing with the Shapes tool is faster, due to improved compositing performance
Drawing with a brush tool without antialiasing is faster
Tile compression has lower overhead due to being optimized for SSE2 and AVX2
Working with complex selections is faster
Many other optimizations all throughout the application and rendering engine

New in paint.net 4.2.17 Alpha Build 7858 (Jul 7, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.16 (Apr 23, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.16 Build 7772 Beta (Apr 13, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.16 Build 7765 Beta (Apr 6, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.15 (Jan 25, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.15 Beta Build 7690 (Jan 21, 2021)

New in paint.net 4.2.14 Beta Build 7574 (Sep 27, 2020)

New in paint.net 4.2.14 Beta (Sep 26, 2020)

New in paint.net 4.2.13 (Aug 5, 2020)

New in paint.net 4.2.12 (May 30, 2020)

New in paint.net 4.2.11 (May 21, 2020)

New: XMP metadata is now preserved for supported file types (PDN, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, JPEG XR, HEIC, AVIF, WEBP)
New: Belarusian (be) translation
New: Greek (el) translation
New: Slovenian (sl) translation
New: Added a right-click context menu to the image thumbnail/tab. It contains commands for Copy Path, Open Containing Folder, Save, Save As, and Close.
New: The items in the File -> Open Recent menu now have a tooltip with the full file path for the image
Changed: The selection outline animation is now smoother (2x the framerate)
Fixed: Saving with the HEIC file type is no longer limited to a max Quality value of 90. This limitation was in place because of a crash due to heap corruption, which no longer happens.
Fixed: The NVIDIA sharpening setting will no longer cause trippy distortions in the canvas area
Fixed an issue with loading very small TGA images, first reported here: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/116100-tga-rle-truecolor-1x1-image-failed-to-load/. Thanks @null54 for the fix!
Fixed: Error dialogs when opening images now consistently show the file path
Fixed a PropertyNotFoundException error message when saving JPEG images with a particular ordering of metadata. This was due to a bug in Windows 7's WIC JPEG codec.
Fixed clipped text rendering in the Curves adjustment dialog in some non-English translations.
Fixed a crash when running the app with a DPI scaling setting of 500%
Fixed a crash that would sometimes happen when running effects with very small selections
Fixed some IndirectUI controls not honoring their default values if also initialized in read only (disabled) mode. Thanks @BoltBait for the fix!
Fixed a memory leak in the effect system that was causing 1 orphaned thread per effect invocation
Changed: Removed the use of NTFS Transactions, which was causing trouble with OneDrive. Microsoft has also deprecated this technology.
New: Added /openCrashLogFolder command-line argument. This is intended for simplifying troubleshooting workflows.
New: Added /forceUpdateCheck command-line argument. This is intended for troubleshooting scenarios to simplify acquiring the latest version, e.g. "just run paintdotnet:/forceUpdateCheck" instead giving a longer list of buttons to click on.
Updated WebPFileType plugin to version 1.3.4.0, which adds XMP metadata support. Thanks @null54!
Updated DDSFileTypePlus plugin to version 1.10.3. This fixes an issue with saving in the A1R5G5B5, A4R4G4B4, and R5G6B5 formats, and adds support for reading files that use a 'BC7' FourCC. Thanks @null54!

New in paint.net 4.2.10 (Feb 14, 2020)

New in paint.net 4.2.9 (Feb 1, 2020)

This updates improves performance and significantly reduces memory usage, adds two new translations, and fixes a number of small issues.
Reduced overall memory usage (commit size) by up to 1/3rd by eliminating the per-image scratch buffer
Greatly improved performance when finishing actions of most tools by employing a shared cache between the render and commit code paths
Reduced memory usage when working with many tools by consolidating homogenous tiles (those that are comprised of a single color value)
Significantly improved performance of most history actions (commit, undo, redo) by switching from NTFS compression to multithreaded LZ4 compression for history files
Significantly improved performance of undo/redo with very complex selections (e.gfrom the Magic Wand tool)
Improved performance of Image -> Flatten (also affects flattening when saving)
Improved performance of the Invert Colors and Desaturate adjustments by disabling hardware acceleration for them (too much overhead in copying tiles to the GPU for such trivial rendering kernels)
Improved performance when saving by moving thumbnail rendering for the File -> Open Recent menu to a background thread
Reduced memory usage when printing, and removed a rare crash that was related to its use of the (now removed) scratch buffer
Improved performance of effect rendering when a complex selection is active (improved caching)
New: Added a "busy spinner" to the canvas when using the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools
New translation: Hebrew (HE)
New translation: Slovak (SK)
Fixed a really goofy crash that required drawing with the paintbrush and, without letting go of the mouse button, moving the mouse into the toolbar and then using the mouse wheel to change the brush width
Fixed a layout bug with the image list button
Fixed an error that prevented saving some images as JPEGs if they had EXIF Interop metadata (PropertyNotFoundException)
Fixed a crash when running on a CPU that supports AVX but with an OS that is configured to not support it (via bcdedit /set xsavedisable 1)
Fixed a crash when pressing the spacebar after switching to a tool but before it has received any mouse input events
Fixed a rare crash when opening the Levels adjustments with certain types of selections
Fixed a crash when checking for updates with an expired alpha/beta build
Fixed a crash (FileLoadException) when DLLs are not updated correctly by the updater
Updated WebPFileType plugin to version 1.3.2 (thanks @null54!)
Updated DDSFileTypePlus plugin to version 1.9.9This adds support for X8B8G8R8 and R8G8B8 formats, and fixes a visual glitch when previewing cube maps in some formats(thanks @null54!)

New in paint.net 4.2.8 (Dec 4, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.7 (Nov 26, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 (Nov 22, 2019)

Іmрrоvеd thе іnрut hаndlіng ѕуѕtеmѕ tо uѕе WМ_РОІNТЕR, whісh еnаblеѕ glіtсh-frее drаwіng whеn uѕіng а реn оr ѕtуluѕ (е.g. Ѕurfасе Реn, Wасоm/Ugее tаblеt) (ѕее hеrе: httрѕ://fоrumѕ.gеtраіnt.nеt/tоріс/113173-thе-fіrѕt-5mm-оf-а-frееhаnd-lіnе-аrе-ѕtrаіght-whеn-uѕіng-а-tаblеt/ ). Тhіѕ wіll аlѕо bе thе bаѕіѕ fоr аddіng рrеѕѕurе ѕеnѕіtіvіtу іn а futurе rеlеаѕе (v4.3).
Аddеd а „Nаtіvе роіntеr іnрut“ ѕеttіng іf а „роіntеr“ dеvісе іѕ аvаіlаblе (реn, tаblеt, tоuсh ѕсrееn). Dіѕаblіng thіѕ wіll саuѕе аnу роіntеr dеvісе tо bе еmulаtеd аѕ а mоuѕе, whісh mау bе mоrе соmраtіblе but аt thе соѕt оf ѕmооthnеѕѕ. Роіntеr dеvісеѕ аrе lіѕtеd іn Ѕеttіngѕ -> Dіаgnоѕtісѕ.
Rеmоvеd thе „Fluіd mоuѕе іnрut“ ѕеttіng bесаuѕе thе uѕе оf GеtМоuѕеМоvеРоіntѕЕх() hаѕ bееn rеmоvеd (іt’ѕ а vеrу buggу аnd brоkеn АРІ). Тhіѕ fіnаllу fіхеѕ а numbеr оf wеіrd іѕѕuеѕ rеlаtеd tо еrrаtіс оr „ѕсrіbblу“ drаwіng.
Іmрrоvеd реrfоrmаnсе оf Моvе Ѕеlесtеd Ріхеlѕ, Ѕhареѕ, аnd Grаdіеnt tооlѕ whеn rеlеаѕіng thе mоuѕе buttоn аt thе еnd оf drаg-аnd-drор gеѕturе. Рrеvіоuѕlу, аnуthіng rеndеrеd bеtwееn thе lаѕt mоuѕе „mоvе“ аnd „uр“ еvеntѕ wаѕ rе-rеndеrеd, rеѕultіng іn thе арреаrаnсе оf а dеlау/lаg.
Grеаtlу іmрrоvеd реrfоrmаnсе оf lауеr thumbnаіlѕ whеn ѕwіtсhіng bеtwееn іmаgеѕ
Іmрrоvеd: Тhе іmаgе lіѕt аt thе tор саn nоw bе ѕсrоllеd bу сlісkіng thе аrrоw buttоnѕ аnd hоldіng thе mоuѕе dоwn, јuѕt lіkе а rеgulаr ѕсrоll bаr buttоn. (Рrеvіоuѕlу уоu hаd tо сlісk rереаtеdlу). Тhіѕ іmрrоvеѕ uѕаbіlіtу, but wаѕ аlѕо nоtеd аѕ bеіng іmроrtаnt fоr ассеѕѕіbіlіtу.
Іmрrоvеd: Ѕmооth ѕсrоllіng аnіmаtіоnѕ hаvе bееn rеmоvеd frоm thе іmаgе lіѕt аnd lауеrѕ lіѕt duе tо thеm јuѕt nоt wоrkіng vеrу wеll.
Іmрrоvеd wіndоw сhrоmе/thеmіng whеn thе арр іѕ runnіng іn Rеmоtе Dеѕktор оn Wіndоwѕ 10
Сhаngеd: Тhе ѕіzе оf thе dеfаult/іnіtіаl іmаgе („Untіtlеd“) іѕ nоw ѕсаlеd ехасtlу bу ѕуѕtеm DРІ ѕеttіng (рrеvіоuѕlу ѕсаlеd bу іntеgеr/flооr оf DРІ ѕеttіng). Ѕо аt 150% DРІ ѕсаlіng thіѕ іmаgе wіll nоw bе 1200×900 іnѕtеаd оf 800×600.
Fіхеd ѕоmе hіgh-DРІ lауоut bugѕ wіth thе Lауеr Рrореrtіеѕ dіаlоg, whіlе аlѕо рrераrіng thіѕ UІ fоr futurе аddіtіоnѕ
Fіхеd а сrаѕh (ОutОfVіdеоМеmоrуЕхсерtіоn) оn ѕуѕtеmѕ wіth hуbrіd GРU ѕеtuрѕ thаt аrе соnfіgurеd wrоng. Тhіѕ ѕееmѕ tо bе а bug іn Wіndоwѕ аnd DіrесtХ. А „hуbrіd GРU“ ѕеtuр іѕ аn Іntеl іGРU оr АМD АРU раіrеd wіth а dіѕсrеtе GРU іn а lарtор.
Іmрrоvеd hаndlіng оf thе drеаdеd „NоНаrdwаrеDеvісеЕхсерtіоn“ сrаѕh: Тhе uѕеr wіll bе nоtіfіеd оf hоw tо fіх thіѕ. Іt hарреnѕ оnlу оn 2nd gеnеrаtіоn Іntеl Соrе ѕуѕtеmѕ wіth NVІDІА „Орtіmuѕ“ GРUѕ (GеFоrсе оr Quаdrо) whеn thе NVІDІА Соntrоl Раnеl іѕ ѕеt tо fоrсе аррѕ (оr јuѕt Раіnt.NЕТ) tо uѕе thе NVІDІА GРU. Тhіѕ іѕ а bug іn thе NVІDІА drіvеr аnd/оr іn DіrесtХ.
Fіхеd іmаgеѕ bеіng раѕtеd іnсоrrесtlу frоm Оutlооk 2016/365. Тhіѕ іѕ асtuаllу а bug іn Оutlооk: іt рutѕ РNGѕ оn thе сlірbоаrd thаt аrе аrbіtrаrіlу сrорреd аnd ѕсаlеd fоr ѕоmе rеаѕоn, аnd ѕресіfіеѕ thеу аrе thе рrеfеrrеd fоrmаt tо uѕе whеn раѕtіng. Тhіѕ соmрlеtеlу bоgglеѕ mу mіnd, іt’ѕ јuѕt rеаllу wеіrd, І саn’t іmаgіnе whу іt’ѕ dоnе thіѕ wау.
Fіхеd ѕоmе сlірbоаrd іmаgе hаndlіng fоr рlugіnѕ (rеgulаr Сору/Раѕtе іѕ unаffесtеd)
Сhаngеd: ЅЅЕ2 іѕ nоw rеquіrеd fоr 32-bіt/х86 ѕуѕtеmѕ (рrеvоuѕlу, оnlу ЅЅЕ wаѕ rеquіrеd). Ѕее blоg роѕt: httрѕ://blоg.gеtраіnt.nеt/2019/10/14/раіnt-nеt-v4-2-6-wіll-rеquіrе-ѕѕе2-оn-32-bіt-х86/
Uрdаtеd bundlеd WеbРFіlеТуре рlugіn tо v1.3.1.0 (thаnkѕ @null54!)
Uрdаtеd bundlеd DDЅFіlеТуреРluѕ рlugіn tо v1.9.8.0 (thаnkѕ @null54!)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 Beta Build 7263 (Nov 20, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 Alpha Build 7258 (Nov 15, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 Alpha Build 7256 (Nov 13, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 Alpha Build 7254 (Nov 12, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.6 Alpha Build 7250 (Nov 8, 2019)

Improved input handling systems to use WM_POINTER, which enables glitch-free drawing when using a pen or stylus (e.g. Surface w/ Pen). This will also be the basis for adding pressure sensitivity in a future release (v4.3). Note that Windows 7 is unaffected by this.
Greatly improved performance of layer thumbnails when switching between images
Fixed a crash (OutOfVideoMemoryException) on systems with hybrid GPU setups that are configured wrong. This seems to be a bug in Windows and DirectX. A "hybrid GPU" setup is an Intel iGPU or AMD APU paired with a discrete GPU in a laptop.
Improved handling of the dreaded "NoHardwareDeviceException" crash: The user will be notified of how to fix this. It happens only on 2nd generation Intel Core systems with NVIDIA "Optimus" GPUs (GeForce or Quadro) when the NVIDIA Control Panel is set to force apps (or just Paint.NET) to use the NVIDIA GPU. This is a bug in the NVIDIA driver and/or in DirectX.
Improved performance of Move Selected Pixels, Shapes, and Gradient tools when releasing the mouse button at the end of drag-and-drop gesture. Previously, anything rendered between the last mouse "move" and "up" events was re-rendered, resulting in the appearance of a delay/lag.
Fixed some clipboard image handling for plugins (regular Copy/Paste is unaffected)
Improved window chrome/theming when the app is running in Remote Desktop on Windows 10
Fixed images being pasted incorrectly from Outlook 2016/365. This is actually a bug in Outlook: it puts PNGs on the clipboard that are arbitrarily cropped and scaled for some reason, and specifies they are the preferred format to use when pasting. This completely boggles my mind, it's just really weird, I can't imagine why it's done this way.
Changed: The size of the default/initial image ("Untitled") is now scaled exactly by system DPI setting (previously scaled by integer/floor of DPI setting). So at 150% DPI scaling this image will now be 1200x900 instead of 800x600.
Fixed some high-DPI layout bugs with the Layer Properties dialog, while also preparing this UI for future additions
Updated bundled WebPFileType plugin to v1.3.1.0 (thanks @null54!)
Updated bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to v1.9.8.0 (thanks @null54!)
Changed: SSE2 is now required for 32-bit/x86 systems (prevously, only SSE was required).

New in paint.net 4.2.5 (Oct 2, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.4 (Sep 21, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.3 (Sep 20, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.2 (Sep 19, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.2 Beta Build 7198 (Sep 17, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.2 Beta Build 7192 (Sep 11, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.2 Beta Build 7186 (Sep 5, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.1 (Aug 8, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.1 Beta Build 7152 (Aug 2, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.1 Beta Build 7151 (Aug 2, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2.0 (Jul 15, 2019)

New: Support for loading and saving HEIC images (Windows 10 v1809+ and codec installation is required). Please note that the “Quality” slider when saving is limited to a value of 90 (out of 100) while Microsoft investigates and fixes a crash in their codec.
New: Keyboard shortcuts for changing the current layer. You can see these in the Layers menu with the “Go to …” commands. Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the layer above/below, and Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the top/bottom layer.
Fixed: Optimized rendering engine to remove huge lag spikes (30+ seconds) when zooming or panning very large images (e.g. 32K x 32K pixels).
Improved: BMP now supports saving in 32-bit (with alpha!) and 8-bit indexed.
Improved: Added DIB and RLE file extensions to the BMP file type.
Improved: PNG, JPEG, and TIFF now support loading and saving of much larger images.
New: PNGs can now be saved as “interlaced”.
Improved: JPEG now has configuration for the chroma subsampling mode (4:4:4, 4:2:2, and 4:2:0). The default is now 4:2:2 instead of the unconfigurable 4:2:0 of older versions. This may result in larger file sizes, but higher quality, as compared to previous versions.
Improved: TIFF now supports saving at 24-bit and 8-bit color depths.
Improved performance of saving for file types where “Auto” bit-depth is supported but is not the current choice.
Improved temporary memory usage when saving images at 8-bit color depth.
Improved: TGA images now load about 4x faster (thanks @null54!)
Fixed: 8-bit TGA images should now load correctly (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Some 32-bit TGA images were showing up as completely transparent due to their use of an obscure alpha channel type (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Improved: Added error reporting to the Save Configuration dialog. Instead of just saying “Preview: (error)”, you’ll also get the standard error dialog that includes the exception which can used for troubleshooting.
Fixed a number of performance issues in the Save Configuration dialog. Especially with large images, it should now be much faster to change options and to click OK/Cancel.
Fixed flickering in the Save Configuration dialog when changing options.
Fixed: Windows Explorer thumbnails for some image types (PDN, DDS, TGA) were not rendering their alpha (transparency) correctly, resulting in color skew. You may not see the effect of this fix for a particular image until that image is resaved or you clear Explorer’s thumbnail cache.
Fixed: Mouse cursors now scale appropriately for non-integer UI scales (e.g. 125% or 175%)
Fixed: AltGr should now work correctly with the Text tool. It will not trigger shortcuts like File->Save All, or Edit->Paste into New Image. (thanks @Bruce Bowyer-Smyth for the fix!)
Changed: Image->Resize supports Super Sampling again, and favors this over Fant when using Best Quality. Fant is still available, but is no longer chosen automatically.
Changed: Holding Ctrl when starting to move a selection with the Move Selected Pixels tool will no longer leave behind a copy of the selected area
Fixed: Bicubic resampling in the Move Selected Pixels tool was not correctly handling the alpha channel in some cases. This fix has required a reduction in performance.
Improved: When using Edit->Copy, a 32-bit BGRA bitmap in the DIBV5 format is now placed onto the clipboard so that other apps can read the alpha channel.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, DIBV5’s are now supported if they have an alpha channel. If they don’t, then the regular DIB loader is used which has some heuristics for detecting an incorrectly defined alpha channel and correcting for it.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, PNG is now the highest priority format. This maximizes the ability to maintain alpha/transparency, but it does mean that images coming from Microsoft Office apps will appear larger than they used to. This is either a bug or a feature of Microsoft Office. For some reason it places PNGs on the clipboard that are 25%+ larger than the DIB/DIBV5 bitmap that it also places on the clipboard (but which don’t have alpha/transparency).
Fixed: DIBV5 bitmaps should now work with Edit->Paste, which improves alpha channel handling. (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Top-down DIBs should now work correctly with Edit->Paste. (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Improved CPU usage for thumbnail updates (layers and image tabs) in many cases.
Improved: Slightly increased the size of the Settings dialog to reduce the need for scrolling in a few important situations
Fixed: Simple message boxes can now be closed with the ESC key
Fixed: Magic Wand now works on very large images (e.g. 65535 x 65535 pixels) without an error.
New: Plugins that use IndirectUI can now use a UriProperty with a LinkLabel control (thanks @null54!)
New: Effect plugins can now more easily make use of the clipboard via the IClipboardService. It will handle all of the tricky clipboard issues such as threading, native data marshaling, and avoiding security vulnerabilities that exist in the standard WinForms and WPF clipboard APIs.
New: FileType plugins can now specify separate lists of extensions for loading and saving.
Blocked the WebP FileType v1.1.0.0 plugin due to instability. An update is already available.
Blocked the ImAgif FileType v0.12.0.1084 plugin due to incompatibility. An update will hopefully soon be available.

New in paint.net 4.2 Beta Build 7121 (Jul 2, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.2 Beta Build 7116 (Jun 26, 2019)

New: Support for loading HEIF/HEIC images (Windows 10 v1809+ required). Saving is not yet supported.
New: Keyboard shortcuts for changing the current layer. You can see these in the Layers menu with the "Go to ..." commands. Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the layer above/below, and Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the top/bottom layer.
New: PNGs can now be saved as "interlaced"
New: Plugins that use IndirectUI can now use a UriProperty with a LinkLabel control (thanks @null54!)
New: Effect plugins can now more easily make use of the clipboard via the IClipboardService. It will handle all of the tricky clipboard issues such as threading, native data marshaling, and avoiding security vulnerabilities that exist in the standard WinForms and WPF clipboard APIs.
New: FileType plugins can now specify separate lists of extensions for loading and saving
Changed: Image->Resize supports Super Sampling again, and favors this over Fant when using Best Quality. Fant is still available, but is no longer chosen automatically.
Changed: Holding Ctrl when starting to move a selection with the Move Selected Pixels tool will no longer leave behind a copy of the selected area
Improved: When using Edit->Copy, a 32-bit BGRA bitmap in the DIBV5 format is now placed onto the clipboard so that other apps can read the alpha channel.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, DIBV5's are now supported if they have an alpha channel. If they don't, then the regular DIB loader is used which has some heuristics for detecting an incorrectly defined alpha channel and correcting for it.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, PNG is now the highest priority format. This maximizes the ability to maintain alpha/transparency, but it does mean that images coming from Microsoft Office apps will appear larger than they used to. This is either a bug or a feature of Microsoft Office. For some reason it places PNGs on the clipboard that are 25%+ larger than the DIB/DIBV5 bitmap that it also places on the clipboard (but which don't have alpha/transparency).
Improved: BMP now supports saving in 32-bit (with alpha!) and 8-bit indexed.
Improved: PNG and JPEG now supports loading and saving of much larger images.
Improved: JPEG now has configuration for subsampling mode (4:4:4, 4:2:2, and 4:2:0). The default is now 4:2:2 instead of the (unconfigurable) 4:2:0 of older versions.
Improved: TIFF now supports saving at 24- and 8-bit color depths.
Improved: TGA images now load about 4x faster (thanks @null54!)
Improved: Added error reporting to the Save Configuration dialog. Instead of just saying "Preview: (error)", you'll also get the standard error dialog that includes the exception which can used for troubleshooting.
Improved CPU usage for thumbnail updates (layers and image tabs) in many cases.
Improved performance of saving for file types where "Auto" bit-depth is supported but not the current choice.
Improved temporary memory usage when saving images at 8-bit color depth.
Improved: Slightly increased the size of the Settings dialog to reduce the need for scrolling in a few important situations
Fixed: AltGr should now work correctly with the Text tool. It will not trigger shortcuts like File -> Save All, or Edit -> Paste into New Image. (thanks @Bruce Bowyer-Smyth for the fix!)
Fixed: Mouse cursors now scale appropriately for non-integer UI scales (e.g. 125% or 175%)
Fixed a number of performance issues in the Save Configuration dialog. Especially with large images, it should now be much faster to change options and to click OK/Cancel.
Fixed flickering in Save Configuration dialog when changing options.
Fixed: Optimized rendering engine to remove huge lag spikes (30+ seconds) when zooming or panning very large images (e.g. 32K x 32K pixels).
Fixed: 8-bit TGA images should now load correctly (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Some 32-bit TGA images were showing up as completely transparent due to their use of an obscure alpha channel type (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Simple message boxes can now be closed with the ESC key
Fixed: Some TIFFs could not be resaved as a JPEG due to having too much metadata (usually from Adobe Photoshop). The metadata is now discarded if necessary.
Fixed: Magic Wand now works on very large images (e.g. 65535 x 65535 pixels) without an error.
Fixed: DIBV5 bitmaps should now work with Edit->Paste, which improves alpha channel handling. (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Top-down DIBs should now work correctly with Edit->Paste. (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Blocked the WebP FileType v1.1.0.0 plugin due to instability. An update is already available.
Blocked the ImAgif FileType v0.12.0.1084 plugin due to incompatibility. An update will hopefully soon be available.

New in paint.net 4.2 Beta Build 7111 (Jun 22, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.7 Alpha Build 7107 (Jun 18, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.7 Alpha Build 7104 (Jun 15, 2019)

New: Keyboard shortcuts for changing the current layer. You can see these in the Layers menu with the "Go to ..." commands. Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the layer above/below, and Ctrl+Alt+PgUp/PgDown will go to the top/bottom layer.
New: PNGs can now be saved as "interlaced"
New: Plugins that use IndirectUI can now use a UriProperty with a LinkLabel control (thanks @null54!)
New: Effect plugins can now more easily make use of the clipboard via the IClipboardService. It will handle all of the tricky clipboard issues such as threading, native data marshaling, and avoiding security vulnerabilities that exist in the standard WinForms and WPF clipboard APIs.
Improved: When using Edit->Copy, a 32-bit BGRA bitmap in the DIBV5 format is now placed onto the clipboard so that other apps can read the alpha channel.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, DIBV5's are now supported if they have an alpha channel. If they don't, then the regular DIB loader is used which has some heuristics for detecting an incorrectly defined alpha channel and correcting for it.
Improved: When using Edit->Paste, PNG is now the highest priority format. This maximizes the ability to maintain alpha/transparency, but it does mean that images coming from Microsoft Office apps will appear larger than they used to. This is either a bug or a feature of Microsoft Office. For some reason it places PNGs on the clipboard that are 25%+ larger than the DIB/DIBV5 bitmap that it also places on the clipboard (but which don't have alpha/transparency).
Fixed: 8-bit TGA images should now load correctly (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Some 32-bit TGA images were showing up as completely transparent due to their use of an obscure alpha channel type (thanks @null54 for the fix!)
Fixed: Simple message boxes can now be closed with the ESC key
Fixed: Some TIFFs could not be resaved as a JPEG due to having too much metadata (usually from Adobe Photoshop). The metadata is now discarded if necessary.
Changed: Blocked the WebP FileType v1.1.0.0 plugin due to instability. An update is already available.
Changed: Blocked the ImAgif FileType v0.12.0.1084 plugin due to incompatibility. An update will hopefully soon be available.

New in paint.net 4.1.7 Alpha Build 7079 (May 21, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.7 Alpha Build 7077 (May 20, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.7 Alpha Build 7070 (May 20, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.6 (Mar 19, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.6 Beta Build 7012 (Mar 14, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.6 Alpha Build 7000 (Mar 2, 2019)

New in paint.net 4.1.5 (Dec 5, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.1.5 Beta (Dec 3, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.1.4 Beta (Nov 5, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.1.3 (Oct 25, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.1.2 (Oct 23, 2018)

Improved startup performance if "a lot" of effect plugins are installed. More optimizations are coming in the next update.
Fixed: Pixel grid no longer draws some dots darker than others at some zoom levels, as reported at https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/112794-pixel-grid-rendering-problems-when-zooming/
Fixed: Radial Blur was not handling alpha correctly
Fixed: IndirectUI ColorWheel swatch is now rendered correctly (without the fading alpha gradient)
Fixed: The tooltip describing the shortcut key for tools now indicates how many times to press the key (e.g., press S four times for Magic Wand selection)
Fixed: Pressing Escape to deselect now works with all tools (this bug was introduced in v4.0)
Fixed: Images with variable alpha were not displaying correctly at some zoom levels. They were "too dark" in translucent regions. Reported here: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/112184-some-zoom-levels-display-alpha-as-extra-opaque/
Fixed: For the Store release, launching with the paintdotnet: protocol no longer shows an error if no parameters are provided (thanks @Bruce Bowyer-Smyth!)
Fixed a crash for some effects that were rendering too quickly
Fixed a bug in the Image>Resize dialog where the asterisk and the note about which resampling mode was being used, e.g. "* Bicubic will be used," weren't going away or updating correctly
New: Added a /set:SETTING=VALUE command-line parameter. This is specifically useful for disabling hardware acceleration if the app won't start or you can't reach the Settings dialog. This is also necessary for the Store release whose virtualized registry cannot be edited. To launch the Store version with hardware acceleration disabled, go to Start -> Run and type in "paintdotnet:/set:UI/EnableHardwareAcceleration=false" (without quotes) and press OK
New: Added detection for when "Diebold Warsaw" is causing Paint.NET to crash. The error message will indicate this cause.
Fixed: Addressed CVE-2018-18446. Credit goes to Bruce Bowyer-Smyth.
Fixed: Addressed CVE-2018-18447. Credit goes to Soroush Dalili from NCC Group.

New in paint.net 4.1.1 (Sep 12, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.1 (Sep 6, 2018)

Іmрrоvеd: Gаuѕѕіаn Вlur, Моtіоn Вlur, аnd Rаdіаl Вlur nоw rеndеr uѕіng thе GРU аnd аrе ѕіgnіfісаntlу fаѕtеr
Сhаngеd: Тhе fоllоwіng еffесtѕ аrе nоw rеndеrеd uѕіng thе GРU: Еdgе Dеtесt, Ріхеlаtе, аnd Rеlіеf
Сhаngеd: Тhе fоllоwіng аdјuѕtmеntѕ аrе nоw rеndеrеd uѕіng thе GРU: Вlасk & Whіtе, Іnvеrt Соlоrѕ
Nеw Еffесt: Dіѕtоrt -> Моrрhоlоgу (uѕеѕ thе GРU)
Nеw Еffесt: Rеndеr -> Тurbulеnсе (uѕеѕ thе GРU)
Nеw: Вісubіс rеѕаmрlіng іѕ nоw ѕuрроrtеd fоr thе Моvе Ѕеlесtеd Ріхеlѕ tооl. А СРU wіth 6 оr mоrе соrеѕ іѕ hіghlу rесоmmеndеd іf уоu wаnt tо mаkе іt thе dеfаult mоdе frоm wіthіn Ѕеttіngѕ -> Тооlѕ.
Nеw: Еdіt -> Сору Ѕеlесtіоn. Тhіѕ wіll сору thе сurrеnt ѕеlесtіоn’ѕ gеоmеtrу tо thе сlірbоаrd аѕ ЈЅОN tехt.
Nеw: Еdіt -> Раѕtе Ѕеlесtіоn. Тhіѕ wіll аррlу thе ѕеlесtіоn frоm thе сlірbоаrd tо thе сurrеnt ѕеlесtіоn. Аll 5 ѕеlесtіоn соmbіnе mоdеѕ аrе ѕuрроrtеd.
Сhаngеd: Тhе Техt tооl nоw uѕеѕ Роіntѕ fоr fоnt ѕіzе mеаѕurеmеnt. Yоu саn аlѕо еlесt tо uѕе thе оld fоnt ѕіzе mеtrіс, „Fіхеd (96 DРІ)“ vіа thе drорdоwn tо thе rіght оf thе fоnt ѕіzе.
Fіхеd: Тhе Техt tооl’ѕ rесеntеrіng аlgоrіthm whеn tуріng rеасhеѕ thе еdgе оf thе vіеwроrt ѕhоuld bе bеttеr
Nеw: Аddеd +/- buttоnѕ tо thе Тоlеrаnсе аnd Наrdnеѕѕ ѕlіdеrѕ.
Сhаngеd: Іnсrеаѕеd mах zооm lеvеl tо 6400%
Nеw: Тhе mоuѕе whееl mау nоw bе uѕеd tо ѕсrоll а lоng mеnu, ѕuсh аѕ whеn а lоt оf еffесtѕ аrе іnѕtаllеd (thаnkѕ @tое_hеаd2001!)
Сhаngеd: Fоr Wіndоwѕ 7 ЅР1 uѕеrѕ, thе Рlаtfоrm Uрdаtе frоm 2013 іѕ nоw rеquіrеd (іt соntаіnѕ Dіrесt2D v1.1)
Fіхеd: Тhе „Fіnіѕh“ buttоn wаѕn’t wоrkіng іf іt wаѕ іn аn оvеrflоw соntаіnеr (thаnkѕ @tое_hеаd2001!)
Fіхеd: Ореnіng сеrtаіn lаrgе іmаgеѕ аnd thеn zооmіng wіth thе mоuѕе whееl wоuld ѕоmеtіmеѕ rеѕult іn thе ѕсrоll роѕіtіоn bеіng соmрlеtеlу wrоng
Сhаngеd: Ніdіng а lауеr nо lоngеr аutо-ѕеlесtѕ thе nеаrеѕt vіѕіblе lауеr. Yоu саn rе-еnаblе thіѕ іn Ѕеttіngѕ, аlthоugh thіѕ ѕеttіng mау bе rеmоvеd іn а futurе vеrѕіоn.
Nеw: Fоr thе Wіndоwѕ Ѕtоrе rеlеаѕе, thе раіntdоtnеt: рrоtосоl саn nоw bе uѕеd tо lаunсh thе арр ѕо thаt уоu саn ѕресіfу соmmаnd-lіnе раrаmеtеrѕ. Fоr ехаmрlе, уоu саn gо tо Ѕtаrt -> Run аnd tуре іn раіntdоtnеt:“раth tо fіlе1.рng“ раth_tо_fіlе_2.рng thеn bоth іmаgеѕ wіll bе ореnеd (еvеn іf Раіnt.NЕТ іѕ аlrеаdу ореn)
Nеw: Аddеd Нерtаgоn (7-ѕіdеd роlуgоn) аnd Осtаgоn (8-ѕіdеd роlуgоn) ѕhареѕ
Fіхеd thе hіgh-DРІ іnѕеt-tехt ѕсаlіng fоr thе Ѕhаре ѕеlесtоr (е.g. Реntаgоn wіth аn іnѕеt „5“)
Nеw: Раlеttеѕ аrе nоw аlѕо lоаdеd frоm Dосumеntѕ/раіnt.nеt Арр Fіlеѕ/Раlеttеѕ. Тhіѕ fоldеr nаmе іѕ nоt lосаlіzеd ѕо thаt іnѕtаllаtіоn ѕсrірtѕ mау еаѕіlу mаkе uѕе оf іt
Fіхеd: Vіеw -> Ріхеl Grіd wіll nоw соrrесtlу аdјuѕt tо dуnаmіс сhаngеѕ іn thе thеmе (lіght vѕ. dаrk)
Fіхеd: Тhе bасkgrоund соlоr fоr thе Тоlеrаnсе ѕlіdеr hаѕ bееn соrrесtеd fоr nоn-dаrk thеmеѕ
Сhаngеd: Rеmоvеd ѕhоrtсut kеуѕ fоr аll buіlt-іn Аdјuѕtmеntѕ ехсерt fоr Іnvеrt Соlоrѕ (Сtrl+Ѕhіft+І). Тhіѕ іѕ bеіng dоnе tо frее uр ѕhоrtсut kеуѕ fоr оthеr funсtіоnаlіtу.
Nеw: Аddеd а ѕhоrtсut kеу tо trіggеr а full .NЕТ gаrbаgе соllесtіоn: Сtrl+Аlt+Ѕhіft+` (tісk/tіldе). Тhіѕ ѕhоuld оnlу еvеr bе nееdеd fоr trоublеѕhооtіng рurроѕеѕ.
Nеw: Ваttеrу Ѕаvеr Моdе іn Wіndоwѕ 10 іѕ nоw rеѕресtеd, whеthеr еnаblеd mаnuаllу оr duе tо lоw bаttеrу. UІ аnіmаtіоnѕ wіll bе dіѕаblеd.
Nеw: Lоng fіlе раthѕ (>МАХ_РАТН) аrе nоw ѕuрроrtеd оn Wіndоwѕ 10, аѕ lоng аѕ thе grоuр роlісу ѕеttіng іѕ еnаblеd („Еnаblе Wіn32 lоng раthѕ“)
Nеw fоr рlugіn dеvеlореrѕ: Тhе ІndіrесtUІ Соlоr Whееl соntrоl nоw ѕuрроrtѕ аn аlрhа ѕlіdеr. То uѕе thіѕ, ѕеt thе rаngе (mіn/mах vаluеѕ) оf thе Іnt32РrореrtуСоntrоl tо [Іnt32.МіnVаluе, Іnt32.МахVаluе] (thаnkѕ @ВоltВаіt!)
Nеw fоr рlugіn dеvеlореrѕ: thеrе іѕ а nеw FіlеСhооѕеr рrореrtу соntrоl tуре fоr ѕtrіng рrореrtіеѕ (thаnkѕ @tое_hеаd2001!)
Nеw fоr рlugіn dеvеlореrѕ: thеrе іѕ а nеw ВіnаrуРіхеlОр.Аррlу(Ѕurfасе, Ѕurfасе, Ѕurfасе, Rесtаnglе) mеthоd оvеrlоаd (thаnkѕ @ВоltВаіt!)
Сhаngеd: Тhе ІndіrесtUІ tехt соntrоl nоw hаѕ а vеrtісаl ѕсrоll bаr whеn multіlіnе mоdе іѕ еnаblеd (thаnkѕ @tое_hеаd2001!)
Сhаngеd: Vіѕuаl С++ аnd ОреnМР runtіmеѕ аrе nоw оnlу lоаdеd frоm thе „арр lосаl“ сору (nеvеr frоm thе ѕуѕtеm dіrесtоrу). Тhіѕ fіхеѕ а numbеr оf hеаdасhеѕ, аnd аlѕо wоrkѕ аrоund а соmраtіbіlіtу іѕѕuе wіth thе Ѕurfасе Gо
Fіхеd: Сrаѕh whеn drаg-аnd-drорріng іmаgеѕ оntо Раіnt.NЕТ whеn а tооl wаѕ асtіvе but wіth unсоmmіttеd сhаngеѕ
Fіхеd а vеrу оld аnd nаѕtу сrаѕh, „ІnvаlіdОреrаtіоnЕхсерtіоn: ЅсrаtсhЅurfасе аlrеаdу bоrrоwеd“

New in paint.net 4.1 Build 6808 Beta (Aug 28, 2018)

GPU-powered Effects! Some of the effects have been rewritten to use Direct2D’s image processing system, and the results are phenomenal for performance. Gaussian Blur is actually fast now and no longer takes ages to complete for large images or radii, and the same goes for both Motion Blur and Radial Blur (although Radial Blur does currently need a pretty powerful GPU). A few other effects were converted for the sake of completeness and for my own learning, and there are two new ones (Morphology and Turbulence). This is where most of my time (the aforementioned “last 7 months”) and sweat was spent: getting a GPU-based effect rendering system up and running end-to-end was no small feat! Expect to see more effects converted over to the GPU in subsequent updates as this tech matures. I am also planning to make the GPU available for plugins to use in a future update.
image.png
Copy/Paste for Selections. You can now copy the active selection to the clipboard, as well as paste from the clipboard to the active selection (all selection combine modes are supported). This copies only the selection, not the pixels that are within the selection. You can then apply the selection to another layer or image, or just save it for later. Because the selection is copied to the clipboard as JSON text, you can use external utilities to maintain them or even do processing on them (you aren’t limited to Paint.NET’s built-in selection operations, in other words). For example: if you want to save and reuse 5 selections, just open up 5 copies of Notepad and use them as a storage buffer. You can also use Paste Selection when a regular image is on the clipboard: if the image is from Paint.NET, the embedded selection will be used, otherwise the image’s size will be converted to a selection (a rectangle anchored to x=0,y=0 with the same width and height as the image). More formal documentation for the data format will be available soon.
image.png
Bicubic resampling for the Move Selected Pixels tool. This can produce much higher quality results than Bilinear resampling. It is very CPU-intensive, so a fast CPU with 6+ cores is highly recommended if you plan to use it a lot. The default is still Bilinear, so if you’d prefer to always use Bicubic you can change it from Settings -> Tools.
image.png
New +/- buttons for Tolerance and Hardness. This is a great quality-of-life improvement, especially for the Magic Wand when you’re trying to find just the right value for Tolerance.
image.png
Change log since 4.0.21:
Improved: Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, and Radial Blur now render using the GPU and are significantly faster
Changed: The following effects are now rendered using the GPU: Edge Detect, Pixelate, and Relief
Changed: The following adjustments are now rendered using the GPU: Black & White, Invert Colors
New Effect: Distort -> Morphology (uses the GPU)
New Effect: Render -> Turbulence (uses the GPU)
New: Bicubic resampling is now supported for the Move Selected Pixels tool. It is very CPU-intensive, so a CPU with 6 or more cores is highly recommended.
New: Edit -> Copy Selection. This will copy the current selection’s geometry to the clipboard as JSON text.
New: Edit -> Paste Selection. This will apply the selection from the clipboard to the current selection. All 5 selection combine modes are supported.
Changed: The Text tool now uses Points for font size measurement. You can also elect to use the old font size metric, “Fixed (96 DPI)” via the dropdown to the right of the font size.
Fixed: The Text tool’s recentering algorithm when typing reaches the edge of the viewport should be better
New: Added +/- buttons to the Tolerance and Hardness sliders.
Changed: Increased max zoom level to 6400%
New: The mouse wheel may now be used to scroll a long menu, such as when a lot of effects are installed (thanks @toe_head2001!)
Changed: For Windows 7 SP1 users, the Platform Update from 2013 is now required.
Fixed: Opening certain large images and then zooming with the mouse wheel would sometimes result in the scroll position being completely wrong
Changed: Hiding a layer no longer auto-selects the nearest visible layer. You can re-enable this in Settings
New: For the Windows Store release, the paintdotnet: protocol can now be used to launch the app so that you can specify command-line parameters. For example, you can go to Start -> Run and type in paintdotnet:”path to file1.png” path_to_file_2.png and both images will be opened (even if Paint.NET is already open)
New: Added Heptagon (7-sided polygon) and Octagon (8-sided polygon) shapes
Fixed the high-DPI inset-text scaling for the Shape selector (e.g. Pentagon with an inset “5”)
New: Palettes are now also loaded from Documents/paint.net App Files/Palettes. This folder name is not localized, and so is easy to rely on for installation scripts.
Fixed: View -> Pixel Grid will now correctly adjust to changes in the theme (light vs. dark)
Fixed: The background color for the Tolerance slider has been corrected for non-dark themes
Changed: Removed shortcut keys for all built-in Adjustments except for Invert Colors (Ctrl+Shift+I). This is being done to free up shortcut keys for other functionality.
New: Added a shortcut key to trigger a full .NET garbage collection: Ctrl+Alt+Shift+` (tick/tilde). This should only ever be needed for troubleshooting purposes.
New: Battery Saver Mode in Windows 10 is now respected, whether enabled manually or due to low battery. UI animations will be disabled.
New for plugin developers: The IndirectUI Color Wheel control now supports an alpha slider. To use this, set the range (min/max values) of the Int32PropertyControl to [Int32.MinValue, Int32.MaxValue] (thanks @BoltBait!)
New for plugin developers: there is a new FileChooser property control type for string properties (thanks @toe_head2001!)
New for plugin developers: there is a new BinaryPixelOp.Apply(Surface, Surface, Surface, Rectangle) method overload (thanks @BoltBait!)
Changed: The IndirectUI text control now has a vertical scroll bar when multiline mode is enabled (thanks @toe_head2001!)
Fixed a very old and nasty crash, “InvalidOperationException: ScratchSurface already borrowed”

New in paint.net 4.0.21 (Jan 26, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.20.6579.36043 (Jan 10, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.0.20 Build 6577 Beta (Jan 4, 2018)

New in paint.net 4.0.20 Build 6560 Beta (Dec 18, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.19 Build 4.19.6484.39094 (Oct 3, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.18.6473.28643 (Oct 1, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.17 Build 6411.1908 (Jul 21, 2017)

This update improves performance and fixes a lot of small issues:
Added: "Fluid mouse input" option in Settings -> UI -> Troubleshooting. If you see major glitches while drawing, try disabling this.
Improved: Default brush size, font size, and corner radius size now scales with major DPI scaling levels (brush size of 2 at 100% scaling, brush size of 4 at 200% scaling, etc)
Improved: Default image size now scales with major DPI scaling levels (800x600 at 100%, 1600x1200 at 200%, etc.)
Improved performance and drawing latency by removing explicit calls to System.GC.Collect() except when low memory conditions are encountered
Improved performance by greatly reducing object allocation amplification by reducing the concurrency level when using ConcurrentDictionary, and by removing WeakReference allocations in favor of direct GCHandle usage
Improved: Performance and battery usage by ensuring animations always run at the monitor's actual refresh rate
Improved (reduced) CPU usage when moving the mouse around the canvas
Removed: "Hold Ctrl to hide handle" from the Text tool because it was not useful and caused lots of confusion
Fixed: Various high-DPI fixes, including horrible looking mouse cursors caused by a bug in the latest .NET WinForms update
Fixed: Gradient tool no longer applies dithering "outside" of the gradient (in areas that should have a solid color)
Fixed: Very slow performance opening the Effects menu when lots of plugins are installed after installing the Windows 10 Creators Update
Fixed: When cropping and then performing an undo, the scroll position was totally wrong
Fixed a rendering glitch in the Save Configuration dialog (it would "wiggle")
Fixed: At certain brush sizes, the brush indicator on the canvas had a visual glitch in it due to a bug in Direct2D
Fixed: Text tool buttons for Bold, Italics, Underline were not localized for a few languages
Fixed a rare crash in the taskbar thumbnails
Fixed: Drawing with an aliased brush and opaque color (alpha=255) sometimes resulted in non-opaque pixels due to a bug in Direct2D's ID2D1RenderTarget::FillOpacityMask
Fixed: "Olden" effect should no longer cause crashes (it still has some rendering artifacts due to its multithreading problems, however)

New in paint.net 4.16.6315.38530 (Apr 18, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.15.6309.42632 (Apr 11, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.14.6309.5077 (Apr 10, 2017)

New in paint.net 4.13.6191.1824 (Dec 13, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.12.6099.39434 (Sep 13, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.11.6097.34417 (Sep 11, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.10.6033.29846 (Jul 8, 2016)

New: The canvas may now be scrolled past the edge of the image
New: When holding the spacebar, you may scroll using the keyboard arrow keys (in addition to click-and-drag panning). Holding Ctrl will scroll at 10x the rate.
New: You can now hold Ctrl+Shift while clicking on the floating window icons in order to reset their location and docking. Ctrl+Shift along with the appropriate hotkey (F5, F6, F7, F8) also does the trick.
Improved: The rate of auto-scrolling, which triggers when the mouse is at the canvas edge and a button is being held down, has been improved and is based on time instead of frames
Improved: Fixed Size selection drawing now defaults to 400x300 pixels instead of 4x3 inches
Improved: Tooltips for Custom Shapes now include their file system location
Improved: Edit->Invert Selection should perform much faster when used with unmodified selections from the Magic Wand tool
Improved: When running within VMWare, "Hardware accelerated rendering" is disabled by default (Microsoft's WARP is faster than VMWare's D3D emulation)
Fixed: Erratic brush/pencil drawing when running within VMWare (this is caused by a bug in Win32's GetMouseMovePointEx API, and is not actually limited to VMWare)
Fixed: Color Picker tool could crash if used at the bottom of the image, as reported at http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/109248-paintnet-crashes-when-color-picker-off-screen-update/
Fixed: There was a glitch in the Gradient tool's rendering when dx was equal to dy, as reported at http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/107380-gradient-bugs-in-direction-and-length/
Fixed: The Layers window would sometimes auto-scroll the active layer to the bottom when performing certain operations, as reported at http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/32527-layers-auto-scrolling-when-adding-or-duplicating/
Fixed some mouse cursor glitches when using panning using the spacebar
Fixed many glitches and a few crashes in the image size dialogs (File->New, Image->Resize, Image->Canvas Size)
Fixed a problem with inconsinstently skipped input when using the arrow keys to move tool handles, as reported at http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/108932-selected-area-moving-with-direction-keys-bug/
Fixed: Custom Shapes did not always have the correct bounding box, and would have weird behavior as a result
Fixed: Line/Curve handles were unusable for up to 500ms after adjusting properties in the toolbar
Fixed some crashes and soft hangs in the Save Configuration dialog
Fixed a blemish at the top of the main window when Windows is set to 200% DPI
Fixed: There were some precision bugs with IndirectUI sliders that would cause them to get "stuck" at certain values (mostly affects effect plugins)
Improved: IndirectUI's Angle Chooser control now supports the DecimalPlaces property (for plugins)
Improved: IndirectUI's Slider controls now support all-negative ranges (e.g. [-200, -20])

New in paint.net 4.9.5848.30436 (Jan 5, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.8.5843.13188 (Jan 4, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.7 (Jan 4, 2016)

New in paint.net 4.6.5693.28 (Aug 3, 2015)

New in paint.net 4.5.5454.39504 (Dec 8, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.4.5447.5675 (Dec 2, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.4.5442.40898 Beta (Nov 26, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.3.5316.40022 (Jul 23, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.2.5309.33059 (Jul 16, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.1.5306.43142 (Jul 13, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.1.5305.37852 Beta (Jul 12, 2014)

Move Selected Pixels tool performance has been significantly optimized.
Move Selected Pixels tool was always leaving transparent black behind instead of the secondary color with alpha removed.
Brush tools with odd-sized brushes and no antialiasing were drawing at 1 size smaller.
Fixed some apparent ‘lag’ in the brush tools due to an off-by-1 glitch in the stroke path calculation code.
The brush tool preview circle no longer scales by the system DPI setting, which made it too big.
Removed the momentary hourglass/wait cursor after drawing (e.g. pencil and brush tools).
Optimized performance of the Shapes tool, especially for the Ellipse shape.
Paint Bucket tool will now correctly treat the selection as a boundary contour.
Zoom tool no longer crashes sometimes when pressing the right mouse button while already holding the left mouse button.
The status bar now reports the correct selection location when it’s outside the image boundaries (e.g. negative values).
Auto-scrolling on the edge of the window now works correctly and doesn’t require you to "jiggle the mouse" for each scroll update.
Touch screens no longer scroll when swiping up/down with one finger.
Improved the pixel grid’s contrast so it’s not overwhelmingly bright.
The transparency "checkerboard" is now aligned to the top-left of the image, instead of the top-left of the canvas.
The cursor position reported in the status bar was off-by-1 when the value was supposed to be negative.
Some controls (e.g. units selection in the Image->Resize dialog) were not drawing focus rectangles when using the keyboard.
Fixed a crash (OutOfMemoryException) when using a selection tool when hardware acceleration is disabled.
Fixed a crash (TimeBeforeLastUpdateException) in the installer. This usually happens when running in a virtual machine, and only affects animations.
Fixed a crash (BadImageFormatException) at startup. This indicates an installation error, and will be automatically repaired.
Fixed various crashes caused by having the wrong (old) version of PaintDotNet.SystemLayer.Native.dll. This indicates an installation error, and will be automatically repaired.
Improved performance when hardware acceleration is disabled.
All 7th generation Intel GPUs now default to hardware rendering. All older Intel GPUs default to software rendering.
Fixed graphical artifacts (blackness, flickering, mouse trails) on certain GPUs (e.g. NVIDIA Optimus).
"NVIDIA ION" graphics cards now default to software rendering due to crashes.

New in paint.net 4.0.5288.36565 (Jun 25, 2014)

System Requirements:
Windows 7 SP1 or newer is now required.
.NET Framework 4.5 is now required, and will be installed if needed.
A dual-core (or more!) processor is highly recommended.
Hardware acceleration (GPU) via Direct2D is now supported (Please disable this in the Settings dialog if you experience visual artifacts).
Performance:
A brand new, asynchronous, fully multithreaded rendering engine allows performance to scale very well with respect to the number of CPU cores whether you have 2, 4, 6, or even 16 of them.
The responsiveness of the user interface has been greatly improved, especially when working with large images.
Memory usage is lower.
Improved battery life impact due to fixing the way the floating windows manage their transparency.
Startup performance when many plugins are installed is improved, thanks to the Multicore JIT feature introduced in .NET 4.5.
Selections:
Selections are now antialiased, which greatly improves the quality around the edges of selected content. You can turn this on and off at any time from the toolbar.
Everything related to selections now has much higher performance and greatly reduced CPU usage, especially if hardware acceleration (GPU) is enabled.
The selection outline is now rendered using the “dancing ants” animation, which greatly improves the contrast between it and the image itself.
General:
The functionality previously provided by the Utilities, Window, and Help menus has been simplified, consolidated, and moved to the top-right corner of the main window.
The image thumbnail list has been moved up 1 row so that it no longer intrudes into the current Tool’s toolbar space. This means it will no longer “jump around” when you switch between tools. This also means that it is aligned to the top of the monitor when the main window is maximized, making it easier to click on images (Fitt’s law).
The image thumbnail list can now be reordered with drag-and-drop.
A brand new Settings dialog makes it much easier to configure all the tool and toolbar defaults, among other things.
The zoom slider and units selector have been moved from the toolbar to the bottom right corner of the window (into the status bar).
Each image now shows up as its own taskbar item. This can be disabled in the Settings dialog with “Show image previews in the Windows taskbar.”
Layers can now be reordered with drag-and-drop.
Ctrl+Click on the Move Layer Up/Down buttons will now move a layer to the top/bottom, respectively.
Improved quality of Image->Resize.
Edit –> Copy Merged will copy all layers to the clipboard without having to use Image->Flatten first.
Copying to the clipboard now includes the “PNG” format, which allows transparency to survive from many popular applications (e.g. Office)
You can now use the middle mouse button to scroll/pan the image at any time (same functionality as holding down the spacebar along with clicking and dragging the mouse).
Shift+Backspace will now fill the selection with the secondary color (Backspace, the shortcut key for Edit -> Fill Selection, still fills with primary color as usual).
paint.net now shows up in Windows’ “Default Programs” control panel so you can configure its file type associations without reinstalling.
EXIF rotation metadata is now applied when opening images (e.g. JPG taken with a rotated camera).
Eleven (11) new languages, bringing the total to 21: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, and Spanish.
Crash logs are now stored in %LOCALAPPDATA%\paint.net\CrashLogs (e.g. C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\paint.net\CrashLogs) instead of on the desktop.
Effects:
New effect: Photo -> Vignette.
Improved the quality of the Photo -> Red Eye Removal effect.
Improved UI for Layers -> Rotate/Zoom.
Effect plugins now show up with a jigsaw puzzle icon next to them in the menus. You can hover over the effect to see information about it, including the author and location of its DLL.
Errors while loading effect plugins are now displayed in the Settings dialog.
Tools:
Most Tools now support “fine-grained history.” You may adjust the properties of what you’ve drawn (e.g. colors, toolbar settings) before committing to the layer (use the “Finish” button or press Enter), and each change is tracked in the history.
Tools may now draw directly with a blending mode, configurable from the toolbar. All of the layer blending modes are supported, as well as “Overwrite.”
Drawing tools (Pencil, Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor) now have much smoother mouse input handling via GetMouseMovePointsEx.
Brush tools (Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor) now have soft brushes support via a “Hardness” setting in the toolbar.
The Move tools (Move Selected Pixels, Move Selection) have a much better UI for scaling, moving, and (especially) rotation.
The Move tools now support moving the rotation anchor, which changes the center of rotation.
The new Shapes tool replaces the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, and Freeform shape tools. 27 shapes are currently available. You may move, resize, and rotate a shape, as well as reconfigure any other properties from the toolbar (color, outline size, etc.) before committing it to the layer.
Color Picker has a configurable sampling radius, and can sample from either the current layer or the whole image.
Gradient tool now supports a new Spiral gradient type and allows configuration of the repeat mode (none, repeat, wrapped).
Gradient tool has improved rendering quality via dithering and antialiasing. You can control both of these with the standard antialiasing toggle in the toolbar.
Magic Wand and Paint Bucket now allow live adjustment of Tolerance and the Origin (click location) after clicking (press Enter to commit/finish).
Magic Wand and Paint Bucket can now sample from either the current layer or the whole image.
Paint Bucket tool now supports anti-aliasing.
Recolor tool can now use the color of the pixel where you click as the color to be replaced. Or, as usual, it can use the secondary color.
Text tool now supports multiple rendering modes: Smooth, Sharp (Modern), and Sharp (Classic). These correspond to DirectWrite rendering modes of Outline, ClearType Natural Symmetric, and GDI Classic, respectively.
Text tool now supports colored fonts on Windows 8.1.

New in paint.net 4.0.5284.41812 RC (Jun 21, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.0.5278.37579 Beta 5 (Jun 15, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.0.5268.42065 Beta 4 (Jun 6, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.0.5226.41987 Beta 3 (Apr 24, 2014)

New in paint.net 4.0.5168.8144 Beta 2 (Feb 24, 2014)

Added new languages: Dutch, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal)
Fixed many typos and clumsy translations in various languages
Fixed the main window growing taller and flashing black after being minimized and then restored
Fixed the tools committing their changes to the image when trying to exit the application (waste of CPU/disk)
Fixed the current layer not being preserved when using one of the Image -> Rotate commands
Fixed keyboard shortcuts not working in some cases if the mouse was positioned over the toolbar
Fixed some inappropriate text wrapping in drop down boxes in German (the text is now clipped with "..." instead)
Fixed the Recolor tool's shortcut mistakenly being 'e' instead of 'r'
Pressing 'A' now cycles through the shapes when the Shapes tool is active (Shift+A cycles backward)
Fixed mouse input centering for the brush tools when antialiasing was disabled
Re-enabled Ctrl+D as a "commit" button
Moved the "Finish" button (green checkmark) to the end of the toolbar and included the "Finish" text so that it is easier to aim at
Fixed some font previews rendering as gray instead of black
Fixed a crash that was most easily reproducible by copying an image from IE11 and then clicking on File->New Image
Image close buttons are now appropriately styled on Windows 7
Fixed a dangling progress bar after running some effects
Fixed some drifting color value problems in the Colors window when changing Hue, Saturation, and/or Value
Fixed a crash caused by 3rd-party visual themes that try to use fonts that don't exist
Fixed a crash when toggling a layer's visibility while using the Move Selected Pixels tool and then undoing
Fixed a crash when opening an image due to not being able to create the thumbnail for the File -> Open Recent list
Fixed a crash on startup due to the user's My Documents folder not existing
Changed the canvas background color to gray when using the Blue theme
Fixed an error whereby committing an action, changing the active layer, undoing, and then redoing would cause the action to be redone on the new layer instead of the one it was originally drawn on
Fixed shortcut keys not working for toggling line styles and caps for the Shapes tool
Fixed some styling issues in the Settings dialog in the Tools section
Fixed some delayed crashes with some effect plugins which would happen when trying to do an action afterward
Fixed a crash caused by pressing Escape while drawing a shape
Fixed many plugin compatibility and crash issues

New in paint.net 4.0.5152.40811 Beta 1 (Feb 10, 2014)

Added a "Finish" (aka commit) button in the toolbar. It looks like a green check mark. This makes it much easier to discover how you finish a shape and then draw another one, for instance. Most of the non-brush tools support this (e.g. Move, Gradient, Magic Wand, Paint Bucket, Text).
Added a choice between Light and Blue color schemes to Settings. The default on Windows 8/8.1 is Light, and the default on Windows 7 is Blue.
Fixed some artifacts in the Magic Wand when making a "Global" selection
Fixed a crash in the Magic Wand tool that was causing people a lot of grief ("this.baseGeometry == null")
Fixed a crash in various tools (crash in ClickDragBehavior.cs line 270)
Fixed brush strokes being completely erratic over Remote Desktop
Fixed some very broken UI rendering over Remote Desktop with Windows 8
The icons in the top-right of the main window are now scaled correctly for high-DPI
Fixed a crash if you clicked to undo multiple actions after committing a shape
Fixed some performance issues whereby non-active images were still rendering stuff in the background
Fixed many tools emitting a history item even if the image was unaffected (e.g. drawing a brush stroke outside of the canvas)
Fixed a leftover progress bar in the status bar after loading an image
Fixed Ctrl+Arrow keys not moving the selection by 10 pixels (it only moved by 1 px) if you didn't first release the Ctrl key after you pasted with Ctrl+V
Removed the dangling "Tool:" tooltip on the Tool selection button in the toolbar
Fixed a crash when the language was changed if the new language's localized "paint.net User Files" folder already existed
Fixed the dash style button in the toolbar being too skinny at 96 DPI (it worked fine at >96 DPI)
Fixed the main window's application icon being off by 2 pixels
Fixed Ctrl+D reverting selection movement if it was pressed too quickly after using the arrow keys
Fixed some missed thumbnail updates, especially for the Layers window
Fixed the Width/Height text boxes in the toolbar for Fixed Selection not having an outline around them
Fixed a visual styles related crash on some buttons in some cases
Fixed the main installer not running after the .NET 4.5.1 installer if it required a reboot
Fixed the installer seeming to disappear if there wasn't enough disk space to install .NET 4.5.1
Shapes no longer finish/commit if you press the delete key
Non-active images no longer update their thumbnails when you make changes in another image which affect them (e.g. if you leave an uncommited shape on image 1, then switch to image 2 and change the color)
Fixed a crash in the Text tool if you try to use a "bad" font (one which shows up in the font list as a yellow exclamation mark)

New in paint.net 4.0.5143.33275 Alpha 5 (Jan 31, 2014)

Cropping after several simple selection manipulations (e.g. move, scale) would often result in an extra row or column of blank pixels in the cropped image
Move Layer Up/Down would often result in the wrong scroll location in the Layers window
Panning the canvas via holding the spacebar and click-and-drag of the left mouse button was still panning even after the mouse button was released, but before the spacebar was
Clone Stamp tool now uses the Primary color’s alpha value (or Secondary if you use the right mouse button)
Fixed a crash that would happen if you clicked on the image list dropdown button (to the right of the image thumbnail list) too quickly after opening a large image
The Move tools would revert changes made with the keyboard if the Enter or Esc keys were pressed too quickly afterwards
Using the "Check Now" (for Updates) button in the Settings dialog did not close the application if you had any images open which had unsaved changes
Fixed some issues with the Colors window whereby left clicking would reset the Primary/Secondary choice to Primary
The floating window positions (Tools, History, Layers, Colors) were not being persisted across sessions
Plugins can now retrieve the correct value for CurrentCulture and CurrentUICulture from any thread
Fixed some rather pernicious crash bugs in several tools related to a "Committing changes" dialog popping up during click-and-drag operations
Clicking and dragging on handles in the Gradient tool was lagging behind by 1 frame of mouse movement
Fixed a focus bug on startup whereby you couldn’t use keyboard commands until you clicked on the canvas
Fixed a crash on Win7 when switching from Aero to Classic theme
Settings dialog now works correctly in High Contrast mode
Fixed the pixel grid being off by 1 screen pixel (it didn’t line up with the ruler)
Fixed a CPU usage issue with the Move and Shape tools. They were running the animations and UI code even if the UI wasn’t visible yet (e.g. no selection / no shape).
The "OK" button wasn’t working in the New Image, Resize, and Canvas Size dialogs when the rest of the application’s CPU usage was very high (e.g. slow CPU, slow GPU, disabled hardware acceleration)
Reduced CPU usage of animated UI elements, especially when not the active application or when the user has disconnected (locked workstation, Remote Desktop)

New in paint.net 4.0.5105.6977 Alpha 4 (Dec 23, 2013)

New in paint.net 4.0.5086.6645 Alpha 3 (Dec 4, 2013)

Text tool:
Colored fonts are now supported in Windows 8.1 (e.g. Segoe UI Emoji).
You can now choose between Smooth, Sharp (Modern), and Sharp (Classic) rendering. These correspond to the DirectWrite’s rendering modes of Outline, Natural Symmetric, and GDI Classic.
OpenType/Adobe fonts are now included in the list of fonts.
Fixed some layout glitches that caused text to be incorrectly clipped and/or the cursor to appear in the wrong location.
Selections:
Drawing a rectangle selection with a fixed ratio followed by a Crop operation was often resulting in an extra row or column of partially transparent pixels.
When using aliased selection clipping while zoomed in, the selection was often rendered in the wrong location and/or at the wrong angle.
When drawing a rectangle selection, the status bar would always say it had zero area.
Selection adjustments would sometimes result in half-pixel alignment of the selection outline.
Deselecting via pressing Enter or Escape was not working consistently.
Fixed some rendering artifacts when scaling the selection to a small size.
Fixed some rendering glitches after pasting when a selection was already active.
You can now use the middle mouse button for panning at any time.
Panning via spacebar while a selection tool was active didn’t always show the correct mouse cursor.
UI text now honors the user’s control panel settings for ClearType and antialiasing of text.
Edit->Copy now includes the PNG format when initializing the clipboard data, which allows applications like Office to paste with full transparency information.
The Diagnostics page in the Settings dialog now includes a “Copy to Clipboard” button and a “Open crash log folder” link.
The Eraser tool now uses the alpha value of the current color.
Double-clicking the “roll ball” in Rotate/Zoom was not resetting all the values to their defaults.
Fixed some visual artifacts when using the Line or Curve shape along with certain arrow end caps.
Ctrl+[ was not reducing the brush size by 5.
Fixed a crash in the Move and Shape tools when adjusting the rotation anchor while using the Classic theme on Windows 7.
Some of the new toolbar items didn’t have tooltips.
When hovering the mouse over a taskbar image, the main window was always showing a blank image for the corresponding tab.
Fixed a bug in the Colors window where it would incorrectly switch to the Primary color when you clicked on the Hue slider.
Removed the legacy Ctrl+Alt+0 keyboard shortcut for View->Zoom to Actual Size, which was preventing some characters from working in the Text tool.

New in paint.net 4.0.5064.834 Alpha 2 (Nov 12, 2013)

New in paint.net 4.0.5034.2167 Alpha (Oct 14, 2013)

System requirements:
Windows 7 SP1 or newer is now required.
Windows XP and Windows Vista are no longer supported (paint.net will not install).
NET Framework 4.5 is now required, and will be installed if needed.
A dual-core (or more!) CPU is highly recommended. (I no longer test on single core systems, btw.)
A brand new, asynchronous, fully multithreaded rendering engine:
Performance scales very well with respect to the number of CPU cores, whether you have 2, 4, 6, or even 16 of them.
Performance scales much better with large, or even huge, images. Rendering will slow down and you will see tiles “trickling” in as they are completed, but the UI will still be responsive to your changes and clicks.
The canvas now uses hardware acceleration via Direct2D, which also improves performance.
Memory usage is lower.
Selections have been improved in many ways:
Antialiased selections. You may turn this on/off at any time from the toolbar.
Selection outlines are now rendered with the “dancing ants” animation.
Performance of selection rendering and manipulation (Move Selection tool) have been fantastically improved.
General UI:
The functionality previously provided by the Utilities, Window, and Help menus has been simplified, consolidated, and moved to the top-right corner of the main window.
A brand new Settings dialog makes it much easier to configure all the tool and toolbar defaults, among other things.
The zoom slider and units selector have been moved from the toolbar to the bottom right corner of the window (into the status bar).
The image thumbnail list is now left-aligned and does not move around when you switch between certain tools.
The image thumbnail list can now be reordered with drag-and-drop.
Updated theming to a white, blue, flat motif.
Tools:
Tools may now draw directly with a blending mode, configurable from the toolbar. All of the layer blending modes are supported, as well as “Overwrite.”
Drawing tools (Pencil, Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor) now have much smoother mouse input handling via GetMouseMovePointsEx.
Brush tools (Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor) now have soft brushes support via a “Hardness” setting in the toolbar.
The Move tools (Move Selected Pixels, Move Selection) have a much better UI for scaling, moving, and (especially) rotation.
Color Picker has a configurable sampling radius, and can sample from either the current layer or the whole image.
Gradient tool now supports a new “Spiral” gradient type, and allows configuration of the repeat mode (none, repeat, wrapped).
Magic Wand and Paint Bucket now allow live adjustment of Tolerance and the Origin (click location) after clicking (press Enter to commit/finish).
Magic Wand and Paint Bucket can now sample from either the current layer or the whole image.
The Paint Bucket now supports anti-aliasing.
The Recolor tool can now use the color of the pixel where you click as the color to be replaced. Or, as usual, it can use the secondary color.
The new Shapes tool replaces the Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, and Freeform shape tools. 29 shapes are currently available. You may move, resize, and rotate a shape, as well as reconfigure any other properties from the toolbar (color, outline size, etc.) before committing it to the layer.
Miscellaneous:
Layers can now be reordered with drag-and-drop
Edit –> Copy Merged
Shift+Backspace will now fill the selection with the secondary color (Backspace fills with primary color, as usual)
Ctrl+Click on the Move Layer Up/Down buttons will now move a layer to the top/bottom
New exception/error dialog
Improved battery life impact due to fixing the way the floating windows manage their transparency
paint.net now shows up in the “Default Programs” control panel so you can configure its file type associations
Improved performance of saving .PDN images
Image->Resize has improved super sampling quality

New in paint.net 3.511.4977.23443 (Aug 19, 2013)

New in paint.net 3.511.4975.22963 Beta (Aug 16, 2013)

New in paint.net 3.510.4297.28964 (Oct 10, 2011)

New in paint.net 3.59.4291.17466 (Oct 2, 2011)

New in paint.net 3.59.4278.36311 Beta (Sep 19, 2011)

New in paint.net 3.58.4081.24580 (Mar 6, 2011)

New in paint.net 3.57.4068.30273 (Feb 23, 2011)

New in paint.net 3.56.3955.29199 Beta (Nov 1, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.55.3767.28608 (Apr 26, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.54.3708.31975 (Apr 12, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.53.3690.27077 (Feb 8, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.53.3685.32701 Beta (Feb 3, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.52.3655.36290 (Jan 4, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.52.3653.32292 Beta (Jan 4, 2010)

New in paint.net 3.5 Build 3.51.3610.35022 (Nov 20, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.5 Build 3.50.3596.41598 (Nov 7, 2009)

As usual, there are two ways to get the new version:
Preferred: Use the built-in updater from within Paint.NET. If you are using version v3.36, simply go to the Help menu and click on “Check for Updates.” For v3.5 alpha/beta, go to the Utilities menu instead of the Help menu. Or, just wait for the update prompt to come up automatically within the next week or so.
Download directly from the website: http://www.getpaint.net/ . There is no need to uninstall the old version; that will be taken care of automatically.
Changes since version 3.36:
New: Refreshed user interface with new icons and visual styling. On Windows 7 and Vista, it is enhanced for Aero and "glass".
New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
New: Russian translation.
Performance and memory usage have been extensively optimized throughout the entire program.
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 is now required, which has many built-in performance improvements.
Disk space usage has been reduced by about 12MB by using NTFS compression on installation files related to staging (.MSI) and diagnostics (.PDB).
Compression for .PDN images has been improved.
Effect dialog responsiveness has been improved.
Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
Memory usage has been reduced when more than one image is open.
Rendering quality has been greatly improved when zoomed in.
The selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of "dancing ants", a context-sensitive "XOR" stipple pattern is drawn. This has allowed for improved performance and lowered CPU consumption (and longer battery life).
The font manager for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, which fixes many problems seen with crashes and missing fonts.
On Windows XP, the Text tool has improved reliability and font selection (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives better performance and greatly improved quality. On Windows Vista, you may install DirectX 11 to enable this feature; otherwise GDI will be used.
The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
It is now drastically easier to move a very small selection.
All installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET and Windows Installer.
Updates are now downloaded in the background, and installed after you exit the application. In previous versions, this was a foreground task and you could not use Paint.NET while the update was downloaded.
Added a "Utilities" menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved there.
Added a "Manage Fonts" command to the Utilities menu. This will launch the built-in Windows font control panel.
Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
Improved the Unfocus effect.
The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar.
Fixed a crash due to an overflow that prevented very large images from working (64-bit only).
Fixed many other miscellaneous glitches and crashes.
The Korean translation has been removed. Sadly, we were unable to find the resources to complete this.

New in paint.net 3.50 Build 3591 Beta 4 (Nov 1, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50 Build 3572 Beta 3 (Oct 13, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50 Build 3561 Beta 2 (Oct 2, 2009)

The menu bar was rendering incorrectly for certain themes (Windows 7 / Vista).
Some items were not showing up in the 'Recent Items' jump list (Windows 7).
Clicking on the canvas straight from the menu would cause the paintbrush to draw a long streak.
Copy+Paste would sometimes miss a pixel edge on the right/bottom sides, when using Fixed Ratio / Fixed Size modes.
Fixed a crash when moving pixels off-canvas, switching tools, then trying to move the pixels back onto the canvas.
Fixed some messed up rendering for IndirectUI effect dialogs (Windows XP).
Performance is improved when switching between images that have lots of layers.
Aero 'snap' wasn't working when dragging part of the glassy area of the toolbar (Windows 7).
Added a new menu item, Window -> Glass Dialog Buttons. You can use this to disable the "glass footers" for dialogs (Windows 7 / Vista).
Glass Dialog Buttons are now disabled when font smoothing is disabled.
If an e-mail program isn't installed, the error message for Help->Send Feedback is more informative.
"Centimeters" was being truncated in the toolbar.
The shape tools were not using pixel snapping.
Layer names with ampersands were not showing up correctly.
Updated the internal list of incompatible and unstable plugins, which are then blocked from loading.
Fixed a crash with the Rectangle Select tool if "Fixed Size" mode was used and negative numbers were entered.
Fixed an access violation due to a race condition in finalizing effect rendering versus un-write protecting the layer's pixels.
Fixed an access violation in the renderer for the background transparency "checkers".
Fixed a crash when you would resize a selection to 0-width and/or 0-height, then expand it.
Fixed a crash due to an overflow that prevented very large images from working (64-bit only).
Fixed a crash with scanning/printing.
Fixed the status bar's progress bar showing up and doing nothing for codecs that don't report saving progress, such as JPEG.
Fixed a major issue with the readability of the "update is available" dialog in any non-English language.
Fixed a crash with the Zoom tool.
Fixed some really weird scroll-flickering with the Text tool.

New in paint.net 3.50.3550.40197 Beta 1 (Sep 21, 2009)

Now uses and requires .NET 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
Effect dialog responsiveness has been greatly improved.
Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
Selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of "dancing ants", an antialiased and stippled "XOR" outline is drawn.
Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
Memory usage has been greatly reduced when more than one image is open.
The font system for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, and problems with missing fonts and crashes should be a thing of the past.
On Windows XP and Vista, the Text tool has improved text rendering quality (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives even better performance and quality.
The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
Installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET Framework and Windows Installer.
Updates can now be downloaded in the background, and installed automatically once you exit the application.
General rendering quality has been improved when zoomed in.
Added a "Utilities" menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved here.
Added a "Manage Fonts" command to the Utilities menu.
Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
Improved the Unfocus effect.
The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar.
When zoomed in, it is now much easier to resize a very small selection.
Now includes a Russian translation.

New in paint.net 3.50.3533.1193 Alpha (Sep 3, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3531.33016 Alpha (Sep 2, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3529.34255 Alpha (Aug 31, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3522.33900 Alpha (Aug 24, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3509.39233 Alpha (Aug 24, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3429.26250 Alpha (May 24, 2009)

New in paint.net 3.50.3424.34110 Alpha (May 18, 2009)

Now requires (and uses!) .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.
Significant improvements to the installer. Prerequisites are now handled in a much more user-friendly fashion (it's no longer "go to the Microsoft website and decipher geek talk and download stuff")
The auto-updater can now download in the background, and then install the update after you've exited Paint.NET. Compare this to v3.36 and earlier that jump in your face and require the download and installation to happen right now, and block you from using the program until it's done!
New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
The responsiveness of effect dialogs has been greatly improved.
When zoomed-in, the rendering quality has been substantially improved. http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/12/07/pai ... zoomed-in/
When zoomed in, it is now much easier to correctly resize or move a selection.
Improved performance when opening multiple images, especially for systems with only 1 processor. http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/09/11/pai ... humbnails/
Memory usage has been greatly reduces when more than one image is open.
The selection outline is no longer animated, which substantially reduces CPU usage. It also uses XOR blending.
The middle mouse button can now be used to close an image tab
Improved the Unfocus effect
Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values
Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar area
Added a "Utilities" menu, and moved the following menu items there: Check for Updates, Language chooser, and View Plugin Load Errors. For the alpha release, there are also menu items for "Force Crash" and "Perform Full GC" (you'll know what that means if you're a developer -- Otherwise it isn't interesting).
Installer now has a "Start Paint.NET" checkbox at the end. (On Vista and Win7 with UAC enabled, it will correctly start Paint.NET at non-elevated privilege.)
Renamed "Grid" to "Pixel Grid", to more accurately describe its functionality.
The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps
Effect plugins now have access to a "Services" property which allows them to properly access certain internal Paint.NET functionality.
Fixed some very small memory leaks when opening many images
Russian translation. http://blog.getpaint.net/2009/02/26/rus ... -paintnet/
A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPU's purchased this decade satisfy this)

New in paint.net 3.36 Build 3.36.3158.38068 (Dec 29, 2008)

New in paint.net 3.35 (Jul 7, 2008)

New: Posterize adjustment
New: Intersect selection editing mode
Improved: Dramatically improved selection editing performance for the Add and Subtract modes (and also for Intersect). The performance used to be dependent on image size, and thus was often unusable on images larger than 1024x768 pixels
New: When holding Ctrl or Alt for a selection tool, the cursor now has a plus or minus indicator
Changed: The canvas background is now a solid color instead of a gradient. The gradient was causing certain tone misjudgments related to bright versus dark colors
Changed: Shortcut key for Sepia is now Ctrl Shift E. The shortcut for Posterize is now Ctrl Shift P
Changed: Hotkeys for selection modes are now Left click for Replace, Control Left click for Add (union), Alt Left click for Subtract (difference), Ctrl Left click for Intersect, and Ctrl Right click for Invert (xor)
Changed: When using a selection mode other than "replace", it will now draw the selection outline so that you can see both the original and resulting selection areas. Before, it would only draw the resulting selection area outline, which made modes such a
Fixed: The Resize dialog had some rounding errors with the "Maintain aspect ratio" feature, which caused a few discrepancies and even a spurious "out of memory" error
Fixed: Some quirks with the Color Wheel control for IndirectUI-based effect plugins
Fixed: Several miscellaneous and rare crashes
Fixed: The installer would display a bizarre error if a "blank" install folder was attempted
Fixed: The installer now only accepts absolute path locations, instead of relative ones. This fixes an ambiguity between where Paint.NET believes it is installing itself to, and the directory that Windows Installer actually uses
Fixed: Sometimes pasting would result in a crash when certain types of malfored data were on the clipboard
Fixed: It was possible to get around some of the protections imposed by the IndirectUI system. This was causing instability with some effect plugins such as "Fern Fractal"

New in paint.net 3.31 (May 5, 2008)

New in paint.net 3.30 Final (Apr 11, 2008)

New in paint.net 3.30.2980 Beta 1 (Feb 29, 2008)

New in paint.net 3.20 (Dec 13, 2007)

New in paint.net 3.20.2879 Beta 1 / 3.10 (Nov 20, 2007)

New in paint.net 3.20.2865 Alpha / 3.10 (Nov 6, 2007)

Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages.
New: Ability to do 'Fixed Size' and 'Fixed Ratio' selection drawing with the Rectangle Select tool
New: Added selection 'combine mode' (replace, add, subtract, xor) to the toolbar. This makes this feature much more discoverable.
New: Added magic wand / paint bucket 'flood mode' (contiguous, global) to the toolbar. This makes this feature much more discoverable.
New: Mandelbrot and Julia fractal render effects.
New: Implemented new property and UI systems that makes it much easier to develop effect plugins. Authors may now specify properties with default, min, and max values and the UI for this will be dynamically generated. (instead of the author having to spend hours writing WinForms code)
New: Better error handling for plugin effects. They will no longer crash Paint.NET, and will provide easier access to the diagnostic and support information.
New: If a plugin fails to load, then a "View Plugin Load Errors" item will be added to the File menu.
New: Added 'Coverage' property to the Add Noise effect.
New: Added 'Center' (offset) property to Radial Blur, Zoom Blur, Bulge, and Twist effects. This allows you to set the center of rendering, complete with an image underlay preview.
New: Added ability to do counter-clockwise rotation in the Twist effect. Also added ability to change the size of the twisted area in the Twist effect.
Changed: In Frosted Glass effect, the performance was highly optimized. Increased max radius to 200 (instead of 10), and added 'minimum scatter radius' and 'smoothness' properties.
Changed: Enhanced all built-in effects and adjustments (except for Layers, Curves, and Rotate/Zoom) to use the new effect UI system.
Changed: Reorganized Effects menu into categories: Artistic, Blurs, Distort, Noise, Photo, Render, Stylize.
Changed: Command link buttons now look better in Windows Vista.
Changed: Moved 'Median' from the Blurs menu to the Noise menu.
Changed: Rendering for the 'angle chooser' control is nicer now.
Fixed: Header label flickering in some parts of the UI.
Fixed: Some window activation issues with the Save Configuration Dialog if you switched to another program and back while it was open.
Fixed: Some buttons and checkboxes were not honoring the theme animations in Windows Vista.
New: Added text to installer to remind people that Paint.NET is free of charge, and if they paid for it (other than to donate), then they should ask for a refund (e.g. eBay swindlers).