Paint.NET, as its name bears is a free digital painting software for Windows. It is built based on the existing Microsoft Paint by some college students in US. The development project itself is advised and assisted by Microsoft as a mean to be an extended version of Microsoft Paint. Again, as it name bears, the software is built on Microsoft .NET Framework, thus requires the .NET installed to use it. Windows Vista should come with .NET and Windows XP user may download it from Microsoft website.
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As an ‘extended version’ of Microsoft Paint, Paint.NET is a more polished software with a set of tools not available for the former, such as layering capability. The interface is clean and looks pleasing, especially those inactive floating windows that changes transparency/opacity on mouse hover. This is good to make sure the hidden part of the working document remains half-visible when covered by those floating windows, eliminating the need to constantly move/close those windows just to see how things are going beneath them.
Yes, this software DO have layering capabilities, but it only supported on the *.pdn file format since it can’t handle any Photoshop *.psd files or at least the VESA standard *.svg files that is used by Inkscape, the free-opensource illustration software. Anyway, it still handles the legacy Windows Bitmap (*.bmp) files well just like the original Microsoft Paint. The Tools, on the other hand only offers very slight or almost no enhancement over the original ones. For example, the Line and Curve tool is now shares the same button but the Curve can only be edited once as in the original Paint, except in this software it allows you to move the control point as much as you want, as long as the curve is still selected/active. Once you deselect it, there is no turning back. This is funny as it shows that the developer could make it similar to the Path/Pen tool but surprisingly or mysteriously, they didn’t and they choose to go the lame and annoying old-school way. Even the vertical scrollbar also works funny. You may scroll smoothly using the mouse scroll button but when you drag the scroll control button, the document remain static until you release the mouse button to see how much you have scrolled. This is the most unacceptable aspect of this software considering that we are no longer in the days of Windows 9x.
Truly, this software is more towards the fun compared to other free tools like Artweaver. Not really recommend but it’s worth a try.
Get Paint.NET here:
http://www.getpaint.net/download.html
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