Above GIMP? That is a joke. This is only a small share of functionality of TheGIMP. I created a SCI-FI Texture pack with height and normal maps and painted all of it in GIMP. I never could do all that in Paint.NET.

What could be the advantage of this? Maybe they aim toward natural paining? But then Corel's painter or DogwaffleProjects tools are still better with more natural medias.

At the end Paint.NET is just a better PaintBrush and never becomes a Photoshop, GIMP, Painter or PaintShop. At least not in the next time.

But it is a nice tool for beginnner, clear interface and nice GUI.