Paint.NET 5.0.4 Beta

Paint.NET is an image and photo manipulation application. Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance. In order to handle multiple images easily, Paint.NET uses a tabbed document interface. The tabs display a live thumbnail of the image instead of a text description. This makes navigation very simple and fast.

Usually only found on expensive or complicated professional software, layers form the basis for a rich image composition experience. You may think of them as a stack of transparency slides that, when viewed together at the same time, form one image.

Many special effects are included for enhancing and perfecting your images. Everything from blurring, sharpening, red-eye removal, distortion, noise, and embossing are included. Also included is our unique 3D Rotate/Zoom effect that makes it very easy to add perspective and tilting.

Adjustments are also included which help you tweak an image's brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, curves, and levels. You can also convert an image to black and white, or sepia-toned.

Paint.NET 5.0.4 Build 8529 Beta changelog:

Improved: Image->Resize has been updated

• The default resampling mode is now Bicubic, which has been updated to use the Catmull-Rom ("Catrom") cubic filter. This matches the Bicubic mode of the Move Selected Pixels tool (which uses Direct2D's "HighQualityCubic" mode).
• Added a new resampling mode, "Bicubic (Smooth)", which has no sharpening. It may produces blurrier results, but is important for some scenarios if you need to completely avoid ringing artifacts that other modes (Bicubic, Lanczos, and Adaptive) can introduce due to their added sharpness.
• "Adaptive (Best Quality)" has been renamed to "Adaptive (Sharp)" and is no longer the default resampling mode. It is still a very good choice when resizing photos, but whether you use Adaptive, Bicubic, or Lanczos is up to your own personal preference.
• A new option has been added, "Use gamma correction", which is enabled by default.
• The text box for typing in a percentage now accepts two digits past the decimal point, e.g. 35.79%

Improved: Move Selected Pixels (free transform) has been updated

• New: Added a "Multisample Bilinear" sampling mode. This has a sharper look than Anisotropic and avoids the "ringing" artifacts that can be apparent when using Bicubic with high-contrast images (like screenshots). However, it doesn't usually work as well when reducing a selected area to a much smaller size.
• New: Added a "Gamma mode" button in the toolbar to toggle gamma correction on and off. The default is on, which improves the quality of rendering by preserving luminance (brightness).
• Fixed a bug when using Bicubic sampling that would result in added sharpening when resizing the selected area to 1/8th its original size or smaller

Improved:

The rendering quality of the canvas area has been greatly improved

• Gamma correction is now used for mipmap generation and compositing, ensuring consistent luminance (brightness) and higher quality antialiasing.
• Multisampling is now used for antialiasing, which eliminates pixelation distortions when zooming in, and greatly reduces aliasing artifacts when zooming out.
• Improved: Thumbnails within the app now use gamma correction, which ensures consistent luminance (brightness)

New: GPU effects and plugins now support gamma correction, with linear gamma being the default rendering mode for new plugins.

• This can be changed by overriding OnInitializeRenderInfo() and setting the renderInfo.GpuEffectColorContext property to GpuEffectColorContext.WorkingSpace (the default is WorkingSpaceLinear)
• GPU effect plugins have better access to color management information via the IGpuEffectImage interface and its ColorContext property. All input images (e.g. Environment.SourceImage) are now provided via this interface.

In addition to the built-in effects that already render with gamma correction, the following built-in effects now also render with linear gamma and/or gamma correction:

• Adjustments -> Exposure
• Blurs -> Fragment
• Blurs -> Motion Blur
• Blurs -> Radial Blur
• Blurs -> Zoom Blur
• Distort -> Bulge
• Distort -> Crystalize
• Distort -> Dents
• Distort -> Frosted Glass
• Distort -> Pixelate
• Distort -> Polar Inversion
• Distort -> Tile Reflection
• Distort -> Twist
• Layers -> Rotate/Zoom
• Object -> Drop Shadow
• Photo -> Straighten
• Render -> Julia Fractal
• Render -> Mandelbrot Fractal

Other fixes / changes:

• Fixed: Ctrl+G has been reinstated as the shortcut key for Image -> Rotate 90° Counter-Clockwise
• Fixed a rendering glitch in Effects -> Distort -> Dents that would sometimes result in rows or columns of incorrectly colored pixels
• Fixed: Some systems were having problems with Paint.NET not appearing in the "Open With" list in Windows File Explorer. This should now be fixed.
• Fixed: When installing an update, the desktop shortcut is no longer recreated. This means you can delete it without it reappearing after every update. This was a bug accidentally reintroduced back in Paint.NET v4.3.
• Improved: Increased the maximum zoom range from 1.5625% (1/64) -> 6,400% to 1% -> 10,000%
• Improved the reliability of the wrapper classes for Windows COM libraries (Direct2D, etc.)
• Improved the /ignoreCorruptPDNChunks to allow an additional type of corrupt PDN image to be partially recovered (thanks @null54!)
• Updated the bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to v1.11.8.0, which adds gamma correction for mipmap generation (thanks @null54!)
• Updated the bundled WebPFileType to version v1.3.17.0, which reduces some confusion when using lossless compression (thanks @null54!)

Download: Paint.NET 64-bit | Portable 64-bit ~90.0 MB (Freeware)
Links: Paint.NET Website | Release Announcement

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