Version history Paint.NET

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Changes from v3.35 -> v3.36

• Improved: Effect rendering should be a little faster now
• Changed: Implemented some changes to the "Add Noise" effect that were suggested by a forum member
• Changed: The canvas background color is now always #c0c0c0
• Changed: The auto-updater should now correctly detect .NET 3.5 and newer, which will help to save bandwidth when Paint.NET v4.0 is released (it will require .NET 3.5)
• Fixed: Paint.NET now works on a system that has the .NET 3.5 SP1 "Client Profile" installed
• Fixed: When zoomed in and the cursor is to the top-left of the image (negative coordinates), the ruler is now highlighted in the correct area. Fixed: The effect rendering system no longer sets the "Tag" property on the configuration dialog
• Fixed: Some incorrectly authored plugins would cause a crash when loading their support details (author, copyright, etc.)
• Fixed: There was a bug in the color wheel for IndirectUI that caused it to show the wrong values at initialization
• Fixed: There was a performance problem for effects that used the IndirectUI color wheel control
• Fixed: In some rare cases, Paint.NET would crash while shutting down
• Fixed: When using the "Fixed Ratio" feature of the Rectangle Selection tool, it would crash if 0 was specified for both the width and height

Changes from v3.31 -> v3.35

• Posterize adjustment.
• Intersect selection mode.
• Dramatically improved performance for selection editing modes (add, subtract, intersect).
• Bug fixes.

Changes from v3.31 -> v3.35 Beta

• This releases introduces a new Posterize adjustment, a new Intersect selection mode, and dramatically improved performance for selection editing.
• New: Posterize adjustment, by Ed Harvey.
• New: Intersect selection mode.
• Improved: Dramatically improved selection editing performance for the Add and Subtract modes (and also for Intersect). The performance used to be dependent on image size, and thus was often unusable on images larger than 1024x768 pixels. It is now dependent only on selection complexity (number of polygon edges) -- the improvement is generally between 3x and 1000x.
• Changed: Hotkeys for selection modes are now Left click for Replace, Control+Left click for Add (union), Alt+Left click for Subtract (difference), Ctrl+Left click for Intersect, and Ctrl+Right click for Invert (xor).
• Fixed: Sometimes pasting would result in a crash when certain types of malfored data were on the clipboard.
• Fixed: It was possible to get around some of the protections imposed by the IndirectUI system. This was causing instability with some plugins.
• Fixed: There were some issues with the implementation of "linked" sliders in IndirectUI.

Changes from v3.30 -> v3.31

• New: Enabled integration with Window Clippings, which is a high quality screen capture utility by Kenny Kerr
• Fixed: Fixed a crash with the Open/Save dialogs if the Documents or Pictures directories were either inaccessible or if the user did not have certain file system permissions
• Changed / Fixed: The hotkey for Adjustments -> Levels is now Ctrl+Shift+L instead of Ctrl+Alt+L. This was preventing certain characters, such as the Polish '?', from being typed

Changes from v3.22 -> v3.30

• New: Italian translation
• New: Ability to save PNG?s at 8- and 24-bit color depths
• New: Ability to save BMP?s at 8-bit color depth
• New: "Auto-detect" bit-depth option for PNG, BMP, and TGA file types. It will analyze the image and determine the lowest bit-depth that can still save the image without quality loss
• New: "Fragment" blur effect, by Ed Harvey
• New: The "Polar Inversion" distortion effect has been enhanced to allow changing the rendering offset, and the behavior for "edge" pixels (clamp, reflect, or wrap)
• New: For developers, added a Color Wheel control to IndirectUI for use in effect plugins
• New: For developers, added ability to customize certain properties of the effect configuration dialog via IndirectUI
• New: For developers, IndirectUI can now be used to write configuration UI for file types
• New: For developers, IndirectUI has a new radio button control type for enumerations, and some new property constraint rules
• Changed: Most effects and adjustments, including plugins that use IndirectUI, have been visually refreshed. The new look is cleaner and more compact. These changes are shown in more detail at http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/03/10/cleaning-up-the-ui-for-pain
• Fixed: Various UI issues with the Levels adjustment
• Fixed: When pasting text into the Text tool with Ctrl+V, it would hide the nub for moving the text
• Fixed: If the startup tool was set to the Zoom or Pan (Hand) tool, then the toolbar would render incorrectly
• Fixed: Thumbnails for PDN images now include transparency, which improves their appearance in Windows Vista

Changes from v3.30 Beta 2 -> v3.30.3019 RC1

• Fixed: Various UI issues with the Levels adjustment
• Fixed: When pasting text into the Text tool with Ctrl+V, it would hide the nub for moving the text
• Fixed: If the startup tool was set to the Zoom or Pan (Hand) tool, then the toolbar would render incorrectly
• Changed: Enabled some compiler settings which improve security via support for DEP (/nxcompat), and Windows Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization feature (ASLR) (/dynamicbase)

Changes from v3.20 -> v3.22

• New: “Reduce Noise” effect
• Changed: Ctrl+W will now close Paint.NET if zero images are open
• Fixed: In Windows XP, when launching web content, sometimes Internet Explorer was used instead of the user’s chosen default browser
• Fixed: The Unfocus effect was not handling alpha values properly
• Fixed: The Brightness / Contrast adjustment was only displaying its text in English
• Fixed: The /auto parameter for the installer now correctly allows for an automated installation. This was inadvertently broken in 3.20

Changes from v3.22 Beta -> v3.22.2925 Beta 2

• Fixed: Some uncommon installer bugs
• Fixed: Very poor performance during installation or updating, sometimes causing the removal of the previous version to take 20 minutes

Changes from v3.20 -> v3.22 Beta

• New: “Reduce Noise” effect
• Changed: Ctrl+W will now close Paint.NET if zero images are open
• Fixed: In Windows XP, when launching web content, sometimes Internet Explorer was used instead of the user’s chosen default browser
• Fixed: Unfocus was not handling alpha values properly
• Fixed: Brightness / Contrast adjustment was only displaying its text in English
• Fixed: The /auto parameter for the installer now correctly allows for an automated installation. This was inadvertantly broken in 3.20

Changes from v3.10 -> v3.20

• This release adds numerous enhancements and tweaks to the built-in effects, a re-organized Effects menu, a new and much easier system for effect plugin development, better error handling for plugins, and the ability to draw Fixed Ratio and Fixed Size selections with the Rectangle Select tool. It also includes the customary list of tweaks and fixes.
• Rectangle Select tool can now draw selections based on a Fixed Size or Fixed Ratio setting.
• The selection combination mode is now accessible from the toolbar (Replace, Add, Subtract, Invert ("xor")).
• The "flood mode" for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tool are now accessible from the toolbar (Continuous, or Global).
• Reorganized the Effects menu so that all effects are classified under submenus named Artistic, Blurs, Distort, Noise, Photo, Render, and Stylize.
• Improved rendering quality for the Motion Blur effect.
• Enhanced the Radial Blur effect so that the center of blurring can be chosen, as well as the quality.
• Enhanced the Zoom Blur effect so that the center of zooming can be chosen.
• Enhanced the Bulge distortion effect so that the center of "bulging" can be chosen.
• Enhanced the Frosted Glass distortion effect in several ways: 1) performance has been improved from between 1,000% to 10,000% depending on image size and property settings, 2) the scatter radius can now be set up to 200 pixels, 3) a "minimum" scatter radius can be chosen, 4) a smoothness setting is now available.
• Enhanced the Tile Reflection distortion effect by adding a Quality property.
• Enhanced the Twist distortion effect by 1) allowing counter-clockwise twisting, 2) allowing the size of the twisted area to be configured, 3) allowing the location/center of twisting to be chosen.
• Enhanced the Add Noise effect by adding a "coverage" property.
• New Mandelbrot Fractal and Julia Fractal render effects.
• New IndirectUI system for plugin authors so that they can develop much more sophisticated effect configuration dialogs with a fraction of the amount of work that used to be required.
• If an effect plugin crashes, it is much more likely that Paint.NET will be able to recover from the error.
• The option to restart Paint.NET will then be provided as a recommended course of action.
• If an effect plugin fails to load, or is blocked from loading, then a "View Plugin Load Errors..." item will be added to the File menu which can be clicked on to show the error and/or diagnostic information.
• Improved the cursors for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools.
• Ctrl+Alt+0 now works for View->Actual Size (aka, "Zoom to 100%"), which is a shortcut key that other software uses (e.g., Photoshop).
• Updates are now installed faster by only creating one System Restore point instead of two (it used to implicitly create one for uninstall, then one for the reinstall).
• Lots of little bug fixes.

Changes from v3.20 Beta 2 -> v3.20 RC 1

• Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages
• Fixed: If a floating tool window (Colors, History, Layers, Tools) was not docked/snapped, and the screen resolution was lowered or a Remote Desktop session was initiated, then the window would stay off screen and be "lost". It is now moved to keep it on
• Fixed: An issue for plugin developers where Effect`1.Render(3) was incorrectly throwing an exception when indirectly called through Effect.Render(6). This was preventing an updated version of the "Film Noir" plugin from working, even though its code was
• Integrated updated translations for Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Chinese (Simplified). An updated German translation will be present in the final release

Changes from v3.20 Beta 1 -> v3.20 Beta 2

• Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages
• Fixed: Drawing a “Fixed Size” selection was resulting in a rectangle that was 1 pixel too wide, and 1 pixel too tall
• Fixed: A small layout glitch in the toolbar that was hiding the “Fixed Size” units selector
• Fixed: A layout glitch in the Red Eye Removal dialog that caused it to show a scroll bar when it wasn’t necessary
• Fixed: Header’s etched line control rendering in XP with the Luna visual style
• Fixed: A few rare crash bugs
• Fixed: Some corner-case glitches and crashes in the new IndirectUI and property system

Changes from v3.10 -> v3.20 Beta 1

• Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages
• Improved: Updating performance should now be faster. It used to be the case that two system restore points were created during update (one for uninstall, and one for re-install), but now only one is created to cover the entire transaction
• Changed: Ctrl+Alt+0 now works for "View actual size". This is not listed in the View menu as a shortcut, but should help those used to keyboard commands from Photoshop, etc
• Changed: Some plugins that were causing stability problems are now blocked from loading. They will show up in the File->View Plugin Load Errors dialog
• Changed: Old effect plugin DLL's that have since been integrated into Paint.NET (Glow, Portrait, etc.) are now blocked from loading
• Fixed: For revamped effect configuration dialogs, the first textbox is now auto-selected instead of the OK button. This makes keyboard usage more convenient
• Fixed: Close/Cancel button flickering while downloading an update
• Fixed: The floating tool windows (Tools, History, Layers, Color) will double-check that they are on-screen when they are toggled on/off
• Fixed: If two images had the text tool active and both had active text being edited, then Backspace would not always be routed to the correct image
• Fixed: Open/Save dialogs in Windows Vista with high-DPI would sometimes have garbled thumbnail rendering (fixed by adding "high DPI aware" flag to EXE manifest instead of using SetProcessDPIAware function)
• Fixed: Some minor high-DPI glitches in new UI features
• Fixed: For newly revamped effect configuration dialogs, the focus rectangle ("dotted rectangle") for sliders is drawn only when necessary
• Fixed: Several rare crashes

Changes from v3.08 -> v3.10

• New: Soften Portrait effect
• New: Ink Sketch effect
• New: DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format support
• New: "Paint.NET Search", available from the Help menu (shortcut key is Ctrl+E), allows you to search for Paint.NET help, forum posts, tutorials, plugins, and other related material: http://searchpaint.net
• Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the Layers window
• Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the close / 'X' button on image thumbnails
• Improved: Small (about 5-10%) performance improvements for some effects such as Oil Painting, Frosted Glass, and Gaussian Blur
• Improved: Increased max brush size to 500, as per forum members request
• Improved: Expanded list of available font sizes up through 288
• Changed: The keyboard shortcut key for the Color Picker is now 'k'. This makes it so that the toolbar option, "After click: Switch to previous tool", is not useless for those using the keyboard shortcuts
• Fixed: In some cases, undoing an action that removed a layer would result in the un-removed layer not showing up until you resized the Layers window ("ghost layers")
• Fixed: Pressing F1 from the main window no longer launches the online help in two browser tabs
• Fixed: Adding a new layer now adds it above the currently active layer, instead of at the very top of the layer list
• Fixed: Merge Down now activates the merged layer instead of the one above it
• Fixed: In Vista, clicking on a URL link from the installer will no longer launch the web browser with inherited, elevated privileges

Changes from v3.10 Beta -> v3.10 Beta 2

• Changed: Increased max brush size to 500, as per forum members request
• Fixed: Some layout issues with the Save Configuration dialog and the DDS configuration control
• Fixed: In some cases, undoing an action that removed a layer would result in the un-removed layer not showing up until you resized the Layers window (”ghost layers”)
• Fixed: Pressing F1 from the main window would launch the online help in two browser tabs
• Fixed: Adding a new layer now adds it above the currently active layer instead of at the very top of the layer list
• Fixed: Merge Down now activates the merged layer instead of the one above it
• Fixed: Put the ‘x’ close button back in the Layer Properties window (managed to fix the bug w/o necessitating removal of the ‘x’)
• Fixed: In Vista, clicking on a URL link from the installer will no longer launch the web browser with inherited, elevated privileges

Changes from v3.08 -> v3.10 Beta

• Note: For the beta, the new features are only presented in English. The final release will have complete translations for the other supported languages
• New: Soften Portrait effect, by David Issel
• New: Ink Sketch effect, by David Issel
• New: DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format support, by Dean Ashton. Improved from the original source code by optimizing the DXT compression library ("Squish") to take advantage of multiple cores or processors
• Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the Layers window
• Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the close / 'X' button on image thumbnails
• Changed: The keyboard shortcut key for the Color Picker is now 'k'. This makes it so that the toolbar option, "After click: Switch to previous tool", is not useless for those using the keyboard shortcuts
• Fixed: Pressing Ctrl+[ no longer cancels out of drawing a line/curve, but instead decreases the brush size by 5 as expected
• Fixed: Ctrl+clicking on the brush size +/- buttons now changes the brush size in increments of 5
• Fixed: Save Configuration dialog would "creep downward" from its last position every time it was opened again
• Fixed: TGA codec now saves the # of alpha bits to the image descriptor byte. This was causing some other applications to load TGA files saved with Paint.NET as solid black images
• Fixed: Clicking the 'X' to close the Layer Properties dialog was not reverting changes made to the layer while the dialog was open
• Fixed: Installation will not proceed unless Paint.NET is closed, and will also not allow Paint.NET to be opened until installation is completed. This helps to ensure a fully coherent and complete installation or update
• Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the Save As dialog by typing a filename that was too long
• Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the updater if you let the UAC prompt time-out

Changes from v3.07 -> v3.08

• Fixed: Pasting an image from Office 2003 applications now works (e.g. Excel 2003 graphs)
• Fixed: Some dialogs were not indicating which command button was the default. These buttons now have a highlight to indicate which one will be activated if the user presses Enter or Space
• Fixed: Some minor keyboard navigation issues with task dialogs
• Fixed: Performance issue with the File->Acquire submenu taking a long time to appear
• Fixed: Window activation issue when the Print wizard was finished / closed
• Fixed: Crash when there was 1 image open and the user pressed Ctrl+Q and then Ctrl+W
• Fixed: Minor performance issue if the user had 1 modified image open and then canceled the "Save changes?" dialog
• Fixed: Misbehaving filetype factory implementations (plugins) will no longer cause a crash

Changes from v3.07 Beta -> v3.07

• New: Line/Curve tool has been enhanced to allow drawing arrowheads, and to draw with various dashed- and dotted- styles.
• New: Image tab thumbnails now have an indicator if the respective image has unsaved changes (an orange asterisk is shown).
• Improved: The Save Configuration dialog (choose JPEG quality, etc.) now allows you to maximize it. It also remembers its relative location and size.
• Changed: The help file / documentation is now hosted online. This has reduced the download size by more than 3 MB, and will also allow us to provide translations without ballooning the size of the download (each language would have added between 2 and 4MB).
• Changed: The "image list button" (downward triangle) is also shown when only 1 image is open (it used to only display if 2 or more images were open). This is being done for the sake of consistency.
• Fixed: Some operations would reset the selected layer to the first/lowest layer. This selection is now preserved.
• Fixed: The Image->Rotate commands no longer hangs if a selection was active.
• Fixed: Several problems have been fixed with our implementation surrounding the new Vista Open/Save dialogs. This includes: opening an image from an http:// source, opening images from a digital camera that is not mapped to a file system path (such as a drive letter), the Save dialog not always prompting you about overwriting an existing file, and many corner cases that previously caused crashes.

Changes from v3.05 -> v3.07 Beta

• Note: For the beta, the new features are only in English. The translations will be complete for the final release.
• New: Line/Curve tool has been enhanced to allow drawing arrowheads, and to draw with various dashed- and dotted- styles.
• New: Image tab thumbnails now have an indicator if the respective image has unsaved changes (an orange asterisk is shown).
• Improved: The Save Configuration dialog (choose JPEG quality, etc.) now allows you to maximize it. It also remembers its relative location and size.
• Changed: The help file / documentation is now hosted online. This has reduced the download size by more than 3 MB, and will also allow us to provide translations without ballooning the size of the download (each language would have added between 2 and 4MB).
• Changed: The "image list button" (downward triangle) is also shown when only 1 image is open (it used to only display if 2 or more images were open). This is being done for the sake of consistency.
• Fixed: Some operations would reset the selected layer to the first/lowest layer. This selection is now preserved.
• Fixed: Several problems have been fixed within our implementation surrounding the new Vista Open/Save dialogs. This includes: opening an image from an http:// source, opening images from a digital camera that is not mapped to a file system path (such as a drive letter), the Save dialog not always prompting you about overwriting an existing file, and many corner cases that previously caused crashes.

Changes from v3.01 -> v3.05

• New: Pencil Sketch effect
• New: In Windows Vista, the new-style Save/Open dialogs are used. Among other things, this enables Search functionality
• Changed: The View->Units, Image->Flip, Image->Rotate, and Layers->Flip submenus have been "flattened" (their commands were moved out into the View, Image, Image, and Layers menus respectively)
• Improved: Download size reduced by about 300 KB by using PNGOUT
• Improved: Some uses of confusing "MessageBox" style dialogs have been changed to a much friendlier "TaskDialog" style interface
• Improved: When changing the language, Paint.NET can now restart itself automatically
• Improved: Better performance for Move Selected Pixels tool for quad-core systems
• Removed: The "Clear History" button has been removed because it was not very useful
• Fixed: Sometimes the Colors window would get "lost" between sessions of Paint.NET
• Fixed: Stack-overflow crash when using certain effects, such as Gaussian Blur, on very large images with certain settings (such as a 200 pixel radius)
• Fixed: When cancelling the multi-image Unsaved Changes dialog, the input focus was sometimes confused
• Changed: Renamed PdnLib.dll to PaintDotNet.Core.dll
• Fixed: Very rare race condition in background thumbnail renderer

Changes from v3.0 -> v3.01

• Fixed: Crash when trying to save a palette with a blank name
• Fixed: Changing an image's DPI resolution did not set its "dirty" flag (you would not be asked to save changes)
• Fixed: Error messages at startup were covered by the splash screen
• Fixed: Crash when a modal dialog was open (such as an effect) when the user tried to logoff/restart/shutdown Windows, and they chose to save their images
• Mitigated some CPU usage issues when the app was minimized and a complex selection was active

Changes from v3.0 RC 1 -> v3.0

• Simple and intuitive tab-based multi-document user interface
• Now available in 8 languages: English, Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Spanish
• Interactive Gradient Tool that makes it very easy to draw and then fine-tune placement and coloring of a gradient
• User-definable color palette (as opposed to just the color wheel)
• New effects: Clouds, Median, Unfocus, Outline, and an improved Sharpen
• More intuitive and more powerful toolbar
• Generally improved and cleaner user interface
• History files are now compressed to save disk space, reduce disk activity, and improve performance
• "Merge Down" layer command

Changes from v3.0 Beta 3 -> v3.0 RC 1

• New: New default color palette (you may have to use "Reset to default palette" to see it)
• Finished: Help file is now up-to-date for 3.0
• Finished: UI translations for Chinese (Simplified), French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portugese, and Spanish. Note: Help file is still English-only
• Fixed: Status bar was not displaying help text for tools on first click
• Fixed: "Rotate Image" was hanging
• Fixed: Crash in installer when /createMsi was used
• Fixed: "ScratchSurface already borrowed..." crash fixed in several places
• Fixed: Spacebar was not activating command link buttons
• Fixed: Zoom dropdown was not always working when set to "100%" in some specific cases

Changes from v3.0 Beta 2 -> v3.0 Beta 3

• More complete translations, especially for German
• Fixed: All known high-DPI scaling and layout issues. The UI should work great at 96, 120, 144, and 196 DPI screen resolution settings
• Fixed: Some toolbar layout issues
• Fixed: Thumbnail renderer had a race condition in its renderer thread which prevented proper shutdown in a few rare cases
• Fixed: Crash when shutting down the system
• Fixed: View->Grid did not work right
• Fixed: History and rendering problems when typing text with the Text tool and then using Image->Flip
• Fixed: Some selection text reporting a "0 x 0" selection when it shouldn't have been
• Miscellaneous tweaks and fixes

Changes from v3.0 Beta 1 -> v3.0 Beta 2

• Fixed: Tablet PC startup crash
• Fixed: Application not starting again after it was closed quickly due to an abandoned mutex and process
• Fixed: Some plugins were crashing in non-English because of a bug in the resource manager
• Fixed: Pressing ESC was not deselecting
• Fixed: A few small UI inconsistencies
• Fixed: Toolbars in Choose Defaults dialog were overflowing in some languages
• Fixed: Several rare crash bugs
• Fixed: Portuguese is now properly called "Portuguese (Brazil)"

Changes from v3.0 Alpha 2 -> v3.0 Alpha 3

• New effect: Outline
• New effect: Blurs->Unfocus
• New effect: Blurs->Median
• Improved: Sharpen effect uses a totally new algorithm, which looks better and performs faster
• Improved: Rendering performance of certain gradient types was slightly improved
• Improved: Most file types now use less memory when saving
• Improved: Gradient tool's transparency mode is more intuitive
• Improved: Gaussian Blur's maximum radius is now 200 (instead of 100)
• Improved: Some icons were improved / changed
• Changed: Gradient tool now uses opposite mouse button for moving both nubs instead of Ctrl. This is for constency with the selection tools
• Changed: In Vista, the floating tool windows no longer have glass frames and heavy drop shadows
• Changed: Layers->Import from File no longer spams the user incessantly asking them to expand the canvas size
• Changed: Delete button was removed from Colors window
• Changed: Ctrl+F4 now closes a tab in addition to Ctrl+W
• Fixed: 18+ crash bugs reported by users

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