Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows 2000, XP, Vista, or Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It started development at Washington State University as an undergraduate senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for setup and shell-integration related functionality.

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Download: Paint .Net 2.6 Beta 1 3.04MB | (Freeware, requires .NET framework)

Paint.NET 2.6 Beta 1 Changelog

• Fixed a crash under Windows 2000
• New "Curves" adjustment for editing the color curves of an image
• UI elements that are drawn on the image canvas are now visible if they go outside the canvas boundaries. This includes the nubs/handles for the Move tools, Line/Curve tool, and the selection outline
• Optimized Move Selected Pixels tool: its history data is saved in a background thread, it only has to save half as much as it used to, and it is now much more responsive as a result
• Optimized performance and memory usage of Paintbrush, Eraser, and Pencil tools
• Optimized performance of Paint Bucket and Magic Wand tools
• Optimized startup performance
• Mouse wheel zooming now centers on where the mouse is located
• Mouse wheel zooming is now more granular/smooth
• Line/Curve Tool 'nubs' can now be hidden by tapping the Ctrl key
• Pressing Enter or Esc now finishes a selection with the Move tools
• Fixed a Paintbrush Tool crash
• Fixed a Rotate/Zoom bug
• Fixed many bugs related to scrolling and zooming
• Fixed some layout bugs related to the Layers form