PaintFE 1.2.13 [Update]

PaintFE is a fast, lightweight Windows raster image editor offering layers, blend modes, GPU-accelerated filters, gradients, mesh warp, and versatile brushes. It features advanced selection tools, clone stamp, content-aware fill, liquify, perspective crop, and shape primitives. Users can apply adjustments, effects, and filters including Gaussian Blur, HSL, Median, and Emboss with GPU acceleration. PaintFE supports animated GIF/APNG, text tools, color pickers, and a built-in Rhai scripting engine, all in a single portable executable—no installation required.

Tools

• Paint -- Brush, Pencil, Eraser, Line, Fill, Gradient. Brush tip library with variable spacing, soft/hard edges, Dodge/Burn/Sponge modes.
• Select -- Rect, Ellipse, Lasso, Magic Wand, Move Pixels, Move Selection. Add/Subtract/Intersect modes. Color Range selection via Edit > Select Color Range.
• Warp and Retouch -- Clone Stamp, Content-Aware Fill, Color Remover, Liquify (WGSL compute shader, CPU fallback), Mesh Warp (Catmull-Rom bicubic spline, GPU displacement pipeline, 2x2 to 6x6 grid), Perspective Crop.
• Utility -- Color Picker, Text (system fonts), Zoom, Pan, 17 shape primitives.

Filters and Adjustments

• Adjustments -- Auto Levels, Desaturate, Invert, Sepia, Brightness/Contrast, Curves, Exposure, HSL, Levels, Color Temperature.
• Filters -- Gaussian Blur, Box Blur, Motion Blur, Sharpen, Reduce Noise, Median, Pixelate, Unsharp Mask, Emboss, Edge Detect.
• Effects -- Vignette, Glow, Halftone, Oil Painting, Crystallize, Ink, Perspective, Distort (Bulge/Twist/Wave/Ripple), Noise, Scanlines, Glitch, Drop Shadow, Outline, Contour.
• Gaussian Blur, HSL, and Median (at smaller radii) have GPU compute paths. CPU/GPU selection is automatic.

PaintFE 1.2.6 changelog:

Highlights

• New non-destructive layer masks are now fully integrated into the layer workflow.
• Editing reliability improved across tools with safer auto-commit behavior on layer switches.
• UI and theming got a broad polish pass, especially for light themes and control customization.

What's new

• Layer Masks
• Add layer mask (reveal all)
• Add layer mask from selection
• Toggle mask editing and paint directly on masks
• Enable or disable masks
• Invert, apply, or delete masks
• Undo and redo support for mask painting and mask operations

Tools and Editing

• Tool previews now commit automatically when changing layers
• Shapes edits now record correctly in history
• Shapes now include side stretch handles
• Align tool can target selection bounds
• Triangle shape alignment and centering improved

Text and Fonts

• Fedora and Linux text input path improvements
• Font dropdown behavior restored to pre-egui-update expectations
• Hovering text-layer settings gear now shows a pointing cursor

UI and Theme

• Better icon contrast and behavior on lighter themes
• New interface customization controls for tool shelf, icon buttons, steppers, and text input backgrounds
• Effects and Atmosphere interface settings section removed for a cleaner settings surface

Fixes and Maintenance

• Degree symbol rendering fixed in relevant effect dialogs
• Hover-and-delete in Layers panel now deletes the hovered active layer as expected
• Non-fatal X11/xkb Compose parse noise reduced in AppImage launcher setup
• Updated triangle shape goldens and lint-cleaned release branch

PaintFE 1.2.7 changes:

• Quick update focused on Magic Wand accuracy, selection semantics, and targeting precision.

Download: PaintFE 1.2.13 | 30.3 MB (Open Source)
View: PaintFE Website | Screenshot | Github

Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware