Paint.NET is a free image and photo editing software designed for computers running Windows. It offers a clean and intuitive interface that allows users to quickly learn and begin editing images with ease. Originally developed as a college project, it has grown into a well-maintained and respected application supported by a strong online community.

Paint.NET supports layers, enabling users to manage complex compositions with precision. Standard editing functions like cropping, resizing, and rotating are available, alongside more advanced capabilities such as curve adjustments, blending modes, and a variety of artistic effects. These tools help users enhance photos or create digital artwork efficiently.

Paint.NET supports a wide range of image formats, including JPEG, PNG, BMP, and even Photoshop PSD files with plugins. Its plugin system allows users to expand functionality by adding new effects, adjustments, and file types, making it adaptable to different creative workflows.

The community behind Paint.NET actively develops tutorials, plugins, and extensions, contributing to the software’s continued improvement. With regular updates and a lightweight installation, it provides a responsive editing experience without demanding hardware requirements. Paint.NET is a solid choice for those looking for a dependable and straightforward image editor.

Key Features: 

• User-Friendly Interface: Simple, clean, and intuitive layout for ease of use.
• Layer Support: Allows advanced image composition through layers, similar to Photoshop.
• Powerful Tools: Includes selection, move, zoom, gradient, clone stamp, and text tools.
• Special Effects: Offers effects like blurring, sharpening, red-eye removal, distortion, and embossing.
• Unlimited History: Unlimited undo with a visual history window for error recovery.
• Plugins Support: Extend functionality with community-created plugins for filters, effects, and tools.
• Active Community: Access tutorials, plugin downloads, and support via a large user forum.
• Fast Performance: Optimized for speed and performance even on modest hardware.
• Regular Updates: Frequently updated with bug fixes, new features, and improvements.

• 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 software rendering is used (e.g. when hardware accelerated rendering 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.
• Fixed an issue that was causing beta updates to be offered even if “Also check for pre-release (beta) versions of paint.net” was disabled in Settings