Paint.NET

This is an ALPHA release of Paint.NET. If you are at all worried about crashes or data loss, then please do not install it.

Builds of Paint.NET v3.5 Alpha will not be made available from the website. Nor can you install it from the built-in updater in v3.36. You must download from this page. Note that the final release will actually have a smaller download size. This is because I am including the "PDB" files which greatly improve the fidelity of the crash logs (with the PDB files, it gives me line numbers from my source code!).

After installing this, within a day you should get an update prompt for a "Test Update". Please do install it! It has no changes, it is just there to help test the new features of the built-in updater.

This version will expire in 30 days. There should be an update before then, but I am not making guarantees.

Known issue with Windows 7: You may get a "Program Compatibility Assistance" dialog after installation asking you if it installed correctly. It did install correctly, so please click the appropriate button. Don't worry, this will be fixed

DO NOT link to these files from any web page or forum. Instead, link to this page. Thank you.
Download link: http://www.getpaint.net/files/zip/previ ... nstall.zip (about 4.5 MB)

Changes since version 3.36:

* Now requires (and uses!) .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.
* Significant improvements to the installer. Prerequisites are now handled in a much more user-friendly fashion (it's no longer "go to the Microsoft website and decipher geek talk and download stuff")
* The auto-updater can now download in the background, and then install the update after you've exited Paint.NET. Compare this to v3.36 and earlier that jump in your face and require the download and installation to happen right now, and block you from using the program until it's done!
* New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
* The responsiveness of effect dialogs has been greatly improved.
* When zoomed-in, the rendering quality has been substantially improved. http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/12/07/pai ... zoomed-in/
* When zoomed in, it is now much easier to correctly resize or move a selection.
* Improved performance when opening multiple images, especially for systems with only 1 processor. http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/09/11/pai ... humbnails/
* Memory usage has been greatly reduces when more than one image is open.
* The selection outline is no longer animated, which substantially reduces CPU usage. It also uses XOR blending.
* The middle mouse button can now be used to close an image tab
* Improved the Unfocus effect
* Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values
* Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar area
* Added a "Utilities" menu, and moved the following menu items there: Check for Updates, Language chooser, and View Plugin Load Errors. For the alpha release, there are also menu items for "Force Crash" and "Perform Full GC" (you'll know what that means if you're a developer -- Otherwise it isn't interesting).
* Installer now has a "Start Paint.NET" checkbox at the end. (On Vista and Win7 with UAC enabled, it will correctly start Paint.NET at non-elevated privilege.)
* Renamed "Grid" to "Pixel Grid", to more accurately describe its functionality.
* The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps
* Effect plugins now have access to a "Services" property which allows them to properly access certain internal Paint.NET functionality.
* Fixed some very small memory leaks when opening many images
* Russian translation. http://blog.getpaint.net/2009/02/26/rus ... -paintnet/
* A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPU's purchased this decade satisfy this)

DO NOT post crashes / incompatibilities with my plugin set in Paint.NET v3.5 Alpha. ALL of these issues are known, and by posting about them you are simply wasting your time and mine.

Is this standalone? If its not would it be hard to make it a standalone during the alpha stages?

So.. we just email the crash reports to the email given?
Do we need to include system specs of any sort and/or what we were doing when it crashed?'
Should we attach as a file or copy and paste into email?

I think I figured out what happened.
I installed it(new version) in my program files x86 and my paint.net is installed in regular program filles. This happened before with a plugin pack that auto installed itself.

Im going to custom install and see if it still happens

Edit:
Fixed!

Not sure if it's intended or not, but whatever line style and end of line style you have selected with the line tool also applies for the freehand shape tool aswell.

Not intended Good catch -- bug filed.

I don't know what you mean. Standalone with respect to what?

I'm glad to see that you jumped on .Net 3.5 SP1 - now at least I can make use of the stuff I've downloaded. Please stick with that and do not turn back to .Net 2.

But, by the way, I wonder: Have you made any progress with the "glassification"? (http://blog.getpaint.net/2008/09/08/exp ... aeroglass/)



It would fit nice into a Windows 7 environment, I guess, and also be helpful in promoting the application.

Performance is REALLY impressive over latest stable (which was really slow to start up ~25 seconds on my Centrino Core Duo /3GB RAM). It's now super fast!!!

No crashes or nasties as yet. I noticed the check for updates continually reports a test update being available, and even if you update, it's still offered.

I think what he means is as a second installation on the same computer. Or like if it was running from a USB stick.

If I were to try this out, I would first make a copy of my paint.net folder to some other location on my hard drive. And then (hopefully) be able to run the stable version from there, if the alpha fails, or one of my favorite plug-ins is not working in the alpha.
Has anybody any experience doing this with the new alpha?

Should bugs be posted in new threads?

Using Ctrl + Scroll to zoom gives weird results, especially with the pixel grid.
White image + Pixel grid + Zoom at ~210% =

I'm not liking the diagonal border lines of selections, they don't really represent the borders of the selection like they did in previous versions.

Borders don't conform to the selection:


Before v3.5, borders conformed to the selection:


I know you said you were going to change some of the icons, but as a reminder, don't forget to change these to reflect the changes of the selection tools.



The same behavior is in previous versions. I, for one, think the grid shouldn't show up until about 1200%, but I never use the grid, so I'm not really affected.

Potential glitch with selections:

http://tinyurl.com/yayabug