
Paint.Net 4.0 is now available - dtech
http://blog.getpaint.net/2014/06/24/paint-net-4-0-is-now-available/
======
codeulike
I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or
resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and
people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and
wondering why all the word files got so big.

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

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

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

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

~~~
baha_man
Or Chocolatey:
[http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/](http://chocolatey.org/packages/paint.net/)

~~~
mariusmg
Exactly.

cinst paint.net

This is how you should install software on any OS. If you're still hunting for
downloading links you're doing it wrong.

~~~
cpfohl
Oh yes. Users who don't know how to crop a photo w/out Photoshop are _totally_
using a Package Manager and the command line to install stuff. </sarcasm>

Chocolatey is great, but unfortunately package managers don't work for every
piece of software on every OS. Period.

~~~
dhamidi
How are app stores (something which users are used to already) different from
package managers with a user-friendly GUI?

~~~
Igglyboo
The only thing I can think of is that they don't really install OS level
stuff, think software libraries or runtimes etc.

Other than that they're literally identical to something like synaptic.

~~~
jsight
On Android they sometimes do install OS level stuff (libraries, etc). I think
he has a good point.

The biggest difference I see is that package managers on most Linux
distributions are designed to be extensible to support other sources.
Application stores generally are not.

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

~~~
shurcooL
Pixelmator is my go-to OS X alternative.

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

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

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
What got me to buy Pixelmator was the amount of instructional material they
provide on their website, that is well laid out and easy to follow.

------
soneca
Once I read somewhere that Paint.NET developer is the only in the interwebs
than can make a living out only of donations for his software. I don't know if
this is true, but it is totally deserved.

I use Paint.NET for a lot of things, most of them professionally. If I someday
get lucky in this startup lottery thing, I intend to donate some thousands of
dollars.

EDIT for add: I see a lot of comments talking about using Paint.NET for
croping and resizing. I do so _much_ more than this. I actually create all
kinds of communication materials with it. Flyers, images for a landing page,
business cards, etc. The layers feature is what make it of great value for me.
Also the feature to open different images at the same time is great to create
an image that includes a logo, a stock photo, a standard background.

Two things that are missing: be able to save it using CMYK color scheme
(better for professional printing) and saving as PDF (easier to send it to
graphic stores).

~~~
scriptproof
Maybe he makes money also with the 50 pages displaying ads you have to visit
before to be able to download the file. But this does not detract from the
qualities of the software, that I use daily.

~~~
adventured
What am I missing? I had three clicks, zero ads.

I clicked here:
[http://www.getpaint.net/download.html](http://www.getpaint.net/download.html)

Then I clicked here:
[http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html](http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html)

Then here for the file:
[http://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.install.zip](http://www.dotpdn.com/files/paint.net.4.0.install.zip)

I use adblock, but when I fired up another browser, I still had three clicks,
and the only ads were one typical square block ad, that didn't get in the way
at all.

~~~
arb99
these are the ads:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9dzn78tfh2srnb/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/q9dzn78tfh2srnb/Screenshot%202014-06-25%2014.48.47.png)

It isn't really a bad thing. He's giving the software away for free. I'm never
a fan of the ones that pretend to be the download link (the ad on the left
linked to [http://www.mac-
zip.com/lp/freezip_osx/df?mnag=155060&mnct=45...](http://www.mac-
zip.com/lp/freezip_osx/df?mnag=155060&mnct=4528&mncr=0&gclid=COSOiI6Ilb8CFUcV7AodOT0Acw)
god knows what kind of stuff you'd get if you downloaded/ran that...)

~~~
adventured
Interestingly, others seem to be seeing two ads. With Chrome I only get one ad
square, the one on the left part of the page. The ad on the right never shows
up.

------
okonomiyaki3000
In case you don't enjoy clicking through half a dozen pages to get to the
download, the actual link is on this page
[http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html](http://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html)

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
bibinou
it's JIT compiling of the third-party plugins, which are dropped by the user
in a folder and not AOT compiled.

    
    
      > Startup performance when many plugins are installed is improved, thanks to the Multicore JIT feature 
    

Paint.NET assemblies are NGEN-compiled.

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
hereonbusiness
I'm not in any way affiliated with GIMP or even a graphics professional but as
a programmer I think part of it is ideological (GIMP is not a copy of
photoshop, why would we spend a lot of resources to change something that
works for us and copy adobe for example just to appeal to users who don't want
to learn to use a new UI or workflow) and part of may be just because they are
more or less happy with it, they have a steady user base (at least it seems
that way guessing by the mentioning of GIMP on forums as you say), also it's
not like they (programmers/community) are going to get rich off of it so there
might be no profit motive in revamping the whole thing.

I think the project just needs some fresh blood, either a fork that strives
for a (better) more familiar UX for people that are switching from commercial
products or an easy way to decouple the UI from the core and build custom
front ends. There's no point in re-developing all the functionality that's
already in GIMP, it's a functional product with years of development behind
it.

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

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

See also [2]:

 _" Excluding the installer, text, and graphics, Paint.NET was released under
a modified version of the MIT License.[6] It was initially released as
completely open source, but due to breaches of license, all resource files
(such as interface text and icons) were released under a Creative Commons
license forbidding modification, and the installer was made closed-source.[7]

Version 3.36 was initially released as partial open source, but the sources
were later removed by Brewster, citing problems with plagiarism. In version
3.5, the license was altered to reflect this, and users are now prohibited
from modifying the software. As free licenses cannot be revoked, developers
can still legally develop forks based on version 3.36 and earlier. Brewster
later stated that he hopes to release portions of the source code back into
the public."_

[1]: [http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-
beware-...](http://blog.getpaint.net/2007/12/04/freeware-authors-beware-
of-%E2%80%9Cbackspaceware%E2%80%9D/)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET#Overview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET#Overview)

~~~
knocte
All opensource software is subject to scammers like this, so I think the
Paint.NET author overreacted.

~~~
majornoob
If the author see no obvious benefits with keeping it open source but sees
downsides I don't see why it would be an over reaction. I did exactly the sane
thing as he a few years ago. I've since opened sourced it again since people
were wanting to contribute.

------
dep_b
Since my house got raided the only computers left were Macs. I really don't
miss that much of Windows except Visual Studio and Paint.NET. Paint.NET is and
feels really robust and everything it does just works like you expect it. I
tried all alternatives for Macintosh and they all don't have the same features
and have UI issues.

------
richardw
Worth a donation. This is such an awesome app.

~~~
Grue3
How about donating to some opensource project like Gimp or Krita, so that
everyone benefits, not just Windows users?

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

~~~
Grue3
Or the parent doesn't know open-source alternatives exist. It doesn't hurt to
remind about them, seeing as their development would benefit more people in
the long run.

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

I only miss a dark theme.

------
peaton
I'm unfamiliar with Paint.NET. I'm sure this question gets asked a lot, but
could someone summarize the main differences between Paint.NET and GIMP?

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

------
ComputerGuru
For the people asking for a Mac or Linux equivalent, Paint.NET is actually a
.NET Framework application (hence the .NET) and has been ported to run on
Mono: [https://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/](https://code.google.com/p/paint-
mono/) (a little out of date, but still.)

------
freewareuser21
hi, paint.net user here, using paint.net since netframework 3.0 and stopped
upgrading from above v3.5 i think it may not madder for the programmer of
paint.net, but... i stopped ugrading cause for me it seemed that all the newer
versions are mainly fixing bugs which were not in v3.5, and it continues...
yes, in all the years using paint.net errors/bugs only happend through plugins
_smile_.

there are two points which i would like to be "nachgereicht" but thats
something for the paint.net-forums...

what you can do with pixels when there are vector-based drawing programs...

maybe make others smile (?) heres an example truly inspired by frankie zappas:
"bobby brown" direct link to image:
[http://i.imgur.com/0CIgBXV.png](http://i.imgur.com/0CIgBXV.png)

------
Fando
Yes, anti-aliased selections! I love Paint.NET. It suits all my image editing
needs completely. I've been using it for over 2 years. It's my go-to image
editing program and I recommend it to anyone who wants a professional,
feature-full, and free tool.

~~~
devindotcom
Ah, excellent! I used to always use the feather selection tool but this should
be more helpful.

------
Nate630
It is impressive that Paint.NET keeps on releasing updated software _for
free._

~~~
Grue3
Just like every other freeware ever? How is this impressive? Emacs has been
releasing updates for almost 30 years!

~~~
phloxicon
Just because others do it, it doesn't mean it's not impressive.

------
yawz
Is there an app that comes close to Paint.NET on the Mac?

~~~
pkaler
Pixelmator is brilliant.
[http://www.pixelmator.com](http://www.pixelmator.com)

------
Serow225
It would be great if Paint.NET could ship with Windows!

~~~
CodeCube
No kidding, if there's any Microsoft acquisition that makes sense, it's this!
:P

~~~
nashashmi
Rick Brewster is a Microsoft employee and he still collects a paycheck.

But I am pretty sure that people at Microsoft have long forgotten him.

------
ryp35
Beware that it silently installs .NET 4.52!

------
zeinology
without further ado

~~~
andrelaszlo
[http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ado-
versu...](http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ado-versus-
adieu?page=all)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

