Paint.NET

Release Candidate 1 was recently released, and the final might show in February. I like this package much more than GIMP, and I've watched it mature and improve by leaps and bounds for over a year. It has been featured in my Starving Developer's Quickstart Guide for sometime, and I recently elevated it on the list above The GIMP because of all of the improvements and for what is to come (based off the old Roadmap link).

It still lacks a few things, and some essential and/or handy features are in this new update. Anyway, I thought I'd do a little bit of spreading the word. It's free and requires .NET Framework 2.0 or 3.0 and Windows XP (SP2 or later), Vista, or Server 2003 (SP1 or later). It also supports and/or takes advantage of 64-bit and dual core processors if you have them.

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.

It's called an opinion, and I think it is superior to that mess. It features most of the common tools you'd need for more common things, however I will admit it doesn't have the everything and the kitchen sink feature list of GIMP or something like Photoshop. Still it's free, feature-rich, getting better, and much easier to work with than the messy GIMP. To each his own.

Also, it's aimed at anyone interested in photo editing or drawing, etc. It's not a natural painting specific application like Dogwaffle (which is also a great program I recommend esp. for that natural aspect).

hi,

Try to flip a Selection (vert/horz.) and you stand already on the border of this tool.
(I know there is a plugin for that!)

I use paint.net as fast imageviewer and for quick changes.

Gimp is mighty and I use it in most cases.
But the best for Textureworks is DeepPaint2D (free but a little outdated).
I wish that gimp had such brushes like DP2D.


,gri

Selection flipping has been in the program for many months. It works as expected and requires no extra plugin. The border expanded.

hi orange,

Quote:

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Selection flipping has been in the program for many months. It works as expected and requires no extra plugin...

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Wow! So please tell me how.

,gri

See image:

No..no..no!

this flips the entire image!

I make a selection with the rectangle/lasso tool and want to flip this selection. This is what I mean.

So tell me again.

,gri

I haven't looked at Paint.NET yet, but I would guess you could flip your selection by the following steps (if it is not automated yet):

- Create your selection
- Create a new layer
- Fill the layer with "paint"
- De-select and flip the layer (so the paint is facing the opposite way)
- Select the flipped paint
- Delete the layer

It sounds complex, but only takes a few moments.

I'm not sure what is meant by "flipping" the selection, but I did the following:

1. Make my selection
2. Copy the selection
3. Create a new layer
4. Paste my copied selection into the new layer
5. Layers >> Flip >> Horizontal/Vertical

Selection has now been "flipped". Took all of 3 seconds. And that's the first time I've ever opened the software.