Paint.NET
Encyclopedia
Paint.NET is a proprietary freeware raster graphics editor
program for Microsoft Windows
, developed on the .NET Framework
. Originally created by Rick Brewster as a Washington State University
student project, Paint.NET has evolved from a simple replacement for the Microsoft Paint program, which is included with Windows, into a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins.
representation of the application's internal object
format, which preserves layering and other information. Excluding the installer, text, and graphics, Paint.NET was released under a modified version of the MIT License
. 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.
Version 3.36 was initially released as partial open source as described above, 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. Unlike most proprietary software licenses, however, the new license allows users to decompile and reverse engineer the software, provided that no modifications are made.
Brewster later stated that he hopes to release portions of the source code back into the public.
. Version 1.0 consisted of 36,000 lines of code and was written in fifteen weeks. In contrast, version 3.35 has approximately 162,000 lines of code. The Paint.NET project continued over the summer and into the fall 2004 semester for both the version 1.1 and 2.0 releases.
Development continues with one developer who now works at Microsoft and worked on previous versions of Paint.NET while he was a student at WSU. As of May 2006 the program had been downloaded at least 2 million times, at a rate of about 180,000 per month.
programming language, though they are most commonly written in C#. These are created by volunteer coders on the program's discussion board, the Paint.NET Forum. Though most are simply published via the discussion board, some have been included with a later release of the program. For instance, a DirectDraw Surface
file type plugin, (originally by Dean Ashton) and an Ink Sketch and Soften Portrait effect (originally by David Issel) were added to Paint.NET in version 3.10.
Hundreds of plugins have been produced; such as Shape3D, which renders a 2D drawing into a 3D shape. Some plugins expand on the functionality that comes with Paint.NET, such as Curves+ and Sharpen+, which extend the included tools Curves and Sharpen, respectively.
Examples of file type plugins include an Animated Cursor and Icon plugin and an Adobe Photoshop file format plugin. Several of these plugins are based on existing open source software, such as a RAW
plugin that uses dcraw
and a PNG optimization plugin that uses OptiPNG.Paint.NET v3.5.10 - Download, released on October 9th, 2011
This update fixes some broken shortcut keys for the View -> Actual Size command.
Fixed: Ctrl+Shift+A now works again as a shortcut for View -> Actual Size (broken in 3.5.9)
Fixed: Ctrl+0 still works for View -> Actual Size even if 10 or more images are open (broken in 3.5.9, it would switch to the 10th image.
officially started a porting project called paint-mono. This project had partially ported Paint.NET 3.0 to Mono
, an open-source implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure
on which the .NET Framework
is based. This allowed Paint.NET to be run on Mono-supported platforms, such as Linux
. As of December 2010, this port is no longer maintained and hasn't been updated since March 2009.
There is also a project called Pinta
which is described as a clone of Paint.NET for Mono and GTK.
Raster graphics editor
A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to paint and edit pictures interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many popular “bitmap” or “raster” formats such as JPEG, PNG, GIF and TIFF....
program for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, developed on the .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
. Originally created by Rick Brewster as a Washington State University
Washington State University
Washington State University is a public research university based in Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1890, WSU is the state's original and largest land-grant university...
student project, Paint.NET has evolved from a simple replacement for the Microsoft Paint program, which is included with Windows, into a powerful editor with support for layers, blending, transparency, and plugins.
Overview
Paint.NET is primarily programmed in the C# programming language. Its native image format, .PDN, is a compressedData compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
representation of the application's internal object
Object (computer science)
In computer science, an object is any entity that can be manipulated by the commands of a programming language, such as a value, variable, function, or data structure...
format, which preserves layering and other information. Excluding the installer, text, and graphics, Paint.NET was released under a modified version of the MIT License
MIT License
The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms...
. 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
Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...
forbidding modification, and the installer was made closed-source.
Version 3.36 was initially released as partial open source as described above, 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. Unlike most proprietary software licenses, however, the new license allows users to decompile and reverse engineer the software, provided that no modifications are made.
Brewster later stated that he hopes to release portions of the source code back into the public.
History
Paint.NET originated as a computer science senior design project during spring 2004 at Washington State UniversityWashington State University
Washington State University is a public research university based in Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse region of the Pacific Northwest. Founded in 1890, WSU is the state's original and largest land-grant university...
. Version 1.0 consisted of 36,000 lines of code and was written in fifteen weeks. In contrast, version 3.35 has approximately 162,000 lines of code. The Paint.NET project continued over the summer and into the fall 2004 semester for both the version 1.1 and 2.0 releases.
Development continues with one developer who now works at Microsoft and worked on previous versions of Paint.NET while he was a student at WSU. As of May 2006 the program had been downloaded at least 2 million times, at a rate of about 180,000 per month.
Notable releases
| Version | Release date | Significant changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | May 6, 2004 | Initial release |
| 1.1 | October 1, 2004 | Support for effect plugins |
| 2.0 | December 17, 2004 | Many new effects, adjustments, and tools |
| 2.5 | November 26, 2005 | Internationalization support; update manager; support for file type plugins |
| 2.6 | February 24, 2006 | Use of .NET Framework 2.0, full 64-bit support |
| 2.72 | August 31, 2006 | Last version to support Windows 2000 Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the... |
| 3.0 | January 26, 2007 | This major release introduces a new multi-document interface (MDI), availability in 8 languages, a highly-requested interactive gradient tool, four new effects, a user-definable color palette, lower disk space usage for scratch files, and a generally cleaner and improved user interface |
| 3.01 | February 26th, 2007 | This is a small update that fixes a few bugs that have been found since 3.0 was released |
| 3.05 | March 29, 2007 | This is a minor update that adds a new effect, improves certain parts of the user interface, and fixes a few minor bugs |
| 3.07 | May 8, 2007 | This update enhances the Line/Curve tool, significantly reduces the download size, and fixes some bugs related to opening and saving files in Windows Vista |
| 3.08 | June 1, 2007 | This is mostly a service release that fixes some bugs, while also improving keyboard / accessibility cues for some dialogs |
| 3.10 | August 23, 2007 | This release adds two new effects originally written by David Issel ("BoltBait"), support for the DDS filetype originally written by Dean Ashton, as well as many small bug fixes and some visual fit and finish |
| 3.20 | December 12, 2007 | This release adds numerous enhancements and tweaks to the built-in effects, a re-organized Effects menu, a new and much easier system for effect plugin development, better error handling for plugins, and the ability to draw Fixed Ratio and Fixed Size selections with the Rectangle Select tool. It also includes the customary list of tweaks and fixes. |
| 3.22 | January 12, 2008 | This release fixes a few minor bugs and adds a new, much-needed Reduce Noise effect |
| 3.30 | April 10, 2008 | This release adds an Italian translation, a new "Fragment Blur" effect, and the ability to save PNG images at 8- and 24-bit color depths. For developers, the IndirectUI system has some new controls, some new constraint rules, and can now be used for file type plugins |
| 3.31 | May 1, 2008 | This is mostly a servicing release to fix a few important bugs |
| 3.35 | June 7, 2008 | This releases introduces a new Posterize adjustment, a new Intersect selection mode, dramatically improved performance for selection editing, and several small bug fixes |
| 3.36 | August 26, 2008 | This is mostly a servicing release to make some small improvements and to fix a few important bugs |
| 3.5 | November 6, 2009 | This release focused on improving performance reliability, reducing memory usage, upgrading to the latest .NET Framework version, and refreshing the user interface for Aero and glass (Windows 7 / Vista) |
| 3.5.1 | November 19, 2009 | This update adds a new feature for Windows 7 users, and fixes many small issues that have been found since 3.5's release |
| 3.5.2 | January 4th, 2010 | This update resolves some feature disparities in the Text tool between GDI (XP) and DirectWrite (Win7/Vista). It also improves overall performance, as well as the correctness and quality of the Move Selected Pixels tool, the Image->Resize function, and the Hue/Saturation adjustment |
| 3.5.3 | February 7th, 2010 | This update fixes a few small bugs |
| 3.5.4 | February 25th, 2010 | This update fixes a few small bugs, and improves performance of the Flatten command |
| 3.5.5 | April 26, 2010 | This update fixes a bug when saving 8-bit images, improves layer composition and Gaussian Blur performance, and is now updated to support the new .NET Framework 4.0 in some cases Dropped support of Windows XP without Service Pack 3, additional support for .NET 4.0 |
| 3.5.6 | November 18, 2010 | This update fixes several issues related to copy-paste, improves performance and quality for a few adjustments, and fixes a data loss bug |
| 3.5.7 | February 20, 2011 | Improves reliability of saving, further improves Copy/Paste functionality, and fixes some other miscellaneous bugs |
| 3.5.8 | March 5, 2011 | Fixes some issues with the fault-tolerant save feature introduced in 3.5.7 |
| 3.5.9 | October 1, 2011 | This update improves the "Auto-Detect" bit-depth feature, and fixes a few small issues. |
| 3.5.10 | October 9, 2011 | This update fixes some broken shortcut keys for the View -> Actual Size command |
Plugins
Paint.NET supports plugins, which add image adjustments, effects, and support for additional file types. They can be programmed using any .NET.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
programming language, though they are most commonly written in C#. These are created by volunteer coders on the program's discussion board, the Paint.NET Forum. Though most are simply published via the discussion board, some have been included with a later release of the program. For instance, a DirectDraw Surface
DirectDraw Surface
The DirectDraw Surface file format , from Microsoft, is a standard for storing data compressed with the lossy S3 Texture Compression algorithm, which can be decompressed in hardware by GPUs and consoles like the Playstation Portable, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360...
file type plugin, (originally by Dean Ashton) and an Ink Sketch and Soften Portrait effect (originally by David Issel) were added to Paint.NET in version 3.10.
Hundreds of plugins have been produced; such as Shape3D, which renders a 2D drawing into a 3D shape. Some plugins expand on the functionality that comes with Paint.NET, such as Curves+ and Sharpen+, which extend the included tools Curves and Sharpen, respectively.
Examples of file type plugins include an Animated Cursor and Icon plugin and an Adobe Photoshop file format plugin. Several of these plugins are based on existing open source software, such as a RAW
RAW image format
A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
plugin that uses dcraw
Dcraw
dcraw is an open-source computer program which is able to read numerous raw image formats, typically produced by high-end digital cameras. dcraw converts these images into the standard PPM and TIFF image formats...
and a PNG optimization plugin that uses OptiPNG.Paint.NET v3.5.10 - Download, released on October 9th, 2011
This update fixes some broken shortcut keys for the View -> Actual Size command.
Fixed: Ctrl+Shift+A now works again as a shortcut for View -> Actual Size (broken in 3.5.9)
Fixed: Ctrl+0 still works for View -> Actual Size even if 10 or more images are open (broken in 3.5.9, it would switch to the 10th image.
Support for non-Windows operating systems
Paint.NET was created for Windows, and has no native support for any other system. With its previous open-source nature, however, the possibility for alternate versions was available. In May 2007, Miguel de IcazaMiguel de Icaza
Miguel de Icaza is a Mexican free software programmer, best known for starting the GNOME and Mono projects.-Early years:Miguel de Icaza was born in Mexico City and studied at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México but never received a degree. He came from a family of scientists in which his...
officially started a porting project called paint-mono. This project had partially ported Paint.NET 3.0 to Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
, an open-source implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure
Common Language Infrastructure
The Common Language Infrastructure is an open specification developed by Microsoft and standardized by ISO and ECMA that describes the executable code and runtime environment that form the core of the Microsoft .NET Framework and the free and open source implementations Mono and Portable.NET...
on which the .NET Framework
.NET Framework
The .NET Framework is a software framework that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It includes a large library and supports several programming languages which allows language interoperability...
is based. This allowed Paint.NET to be run on Mono-supported platforms, such as Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. As of December 2010, this port is no longer maintained and hasn't been updated since March 2009.
There is also a project called Pinta
Pinta (software)
Pinta is a lightweight open-source, cross-platform bitmap image drawing and editing program inspired by Paint.NET, a similar image editing program which is limited to Microsoft Windows. Pinta aims to offer a free and open-source simpler alternative to GIMP on the GNOME desktop environment...
which is described as a clone of Paint.NET for Mono and GTK.
See also
- Comparison of raster graphics editorsComparison of raster graphics editors- List :- General information :Basic general information about the editors: creator/company, license etc.- Operating system support :The operating systems on which the editors can run natively , meaning which operating systems have which editors specifically coded for them - List :- General...
- ArtweaverArtweaverArtweaver is a freeware raster graphics editor for Windows developed by Boris Eyrich, mainly oriented to professional and amateur artists who are familiar with commercial programs like Adobe Photoshop and especially Corel Painter...
- GIMPGIMPGIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
- KritaKritaKrita is the digital painting and illustration software included based on the KDE Platform and Calligra Suite libraries. Designed as a digital painting and illustration suite, Krita is free software and distributed under GNU General Public License...
- Adobe PhotoshopAdobe PhotoshopAdobe Photoshop is a graphics editing program developed and published by Adobe Systems Incorporated.Adobe's 2003 "Creative Suite" rebranding led to Adobe Photoshop 8's renaming to Adobe Photoshop CS. Thus, Adobe Photoshop CS5 is the 12th major release of Adobe Photoshop...
- Pixel Image EditorPixel image editorPixel Image Editor is an Image editor written by the Slovak programmer Pavel Kanzelsberger. It is written with Free Pascal.-Features:...
- Pinta (software)Pinta (software)Pinta is a lightweight open-source, cross-platform bitmap image drawing and editing program inspired by Paint.NET, a similar image editing program which is limited to Microsoft Windows. Pinta aims to offer a free and open-source simpler alternative to GIMP on the GNOME desktop environment...