The almost Final release of Paint.NET 4.0 is close at hand.The penultimate build is here: the release candidate! The only changes that should occur between this build and the final release are the those related to the translations. In other words, the code is complete unless there's a Priority Defcon 0 Nuclear Holocaust type bug that's found (which I don't expect). I believe the final release will be sometime next week.-Rick Brewster
. You can download it at http://www.getpaint....812.install.zip
Some of the new Features are:
Some Plugins may not work, most of the main ones have been updated. All of mine work. This build IMHO is on par with Photoshop.
. You can download it at http://www.getpaint....812.install.zip
Some of the new Features are:
- Improved performance
- General
- Performance scales much better for multi-core systems (multi-threaded rendering engine)
- Performance scales much better with larger images
- Hardware acceleration implemented
- Lower memory usage
- Lower battery usage
- Specific feature performance:
- Greatly improved selection rendering and manipulation
- Saving of .pdn files
- Shapes and Line/Curve tools
- Reduced CPU usage of animated UI elements, especially when not the active application or when the user has disconnected (locked workstation, Remote Desktop)
- General
- General features
- Selection now has anti-aliasing (toggleable in toolbar)
- Tools may now draw directly with a blending mode (configurable in toolbar)
- New "fine-grained" history system implemented for all tools (Can undo/redo every change, not just those that commit pixels to the layer)
- Smoother mouse input for drawing tools (Pencil, Eraser, Recolor, etc.)
- Soft brush support/ "Hardness" setting for brush tools (Paintbrush, Eraser, etc.)
- Color picker has configurable sampling radius (6 preset sizes)
- Color picker, Magic Wand, Paint Bucket can sample from current layer or whole image
- Magic Wand and Paint Bucket have live adjustment of Tolerance and Origin (press enter to finish)
- Paint bucket supports anti-aliasing
- Recolor tool can use the color of the pixel you click on as the color to be replaced (or it can use the secondary color, as how it works now) (toggleable)
- Eraser tool uses alpha value of current color
- Clone stamp uses alpha value of Primary color (secondary if you use the right mouse button)
- Gradient tool
- New "Spiral" gradient type
- Allows configuration of repeat mode (none, repeat, wrapped)
- New "Shapes" tool
- replaces Line/Curve, Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, and Freeform shape tools
- 30 shapes currently available
- Bezier curve added
- Can rotate, move, re-size, and change other properties(color, outline color, etc) of shapes before committing it to the layer
- Can change rotation point
- Text tool
- Colored fonts now supported in Windows 8.1 (e.g. Segoe UI Emoji)
- Smooth, Sharp (Modern), Sharp (Classic) rendering options
- OpenType/Adobe fonts now included in font list
- Move tool
- No longer resets "angle" displayed in status bar when mouse button is released
- Angle now absolute, as opposed to relative to the beginning of the drag operation\
- Can use arrow keys while mouse button is down (allows for precision control over rotations, moves, and scales)
- Rotation (Move, Shapes) allows you to use the right mouse button to rotate, no matter where the mouse cursor is
- "Edit-> Copy Merged" added (copies the pixels from all layers, not just the current layer)
- Edit->Copy includes PNG format (Allows applications like Office to paste with full transparency information)
- Image->Resize has improved supersampling quality
- When opening an image (e.g. JPEG), the EXIF orientation/rotation metadata is now applied
- Added a "Finish" (aka commit) button in the toolbar. It looks like a green check mark. This makes it much easier to discover how you finish a shape and then draw another one, for instance. Most of the non-brush tools support this (e.g. Move, Gradient, Magic Wand, Paint Bucket, Text)
- UI
- More languages (woo!)
- Selections now outlined with "dancing ants"
- Move tools have better UI for scaling, moving, and especially rotation
- Indirect UI sliders now support "decorations" (ex: show gradient on lightness slider bar)
- General UI
- Utilities, Window, and Help menus simplified, moved to top-right corner
- New settings dialog
- Zoom slider moved to bottom right corner of status bar
- Updated theming to a white, blue, flat motif
- Choice between Light and Blue color schemes
- Image thumbnail list
- Now left-aligned
- Doesn't move when you switch between certain tools
- Main window, settings dialog now works in High Contrast mode on Windows 8/8.1
- Each open image has a thumbnail preview (can be disabled in settings)
- Controls
- Drag-and-drop implemented for:
- Image thumbnail list
- Layers
- Shift+Backspace fills selection with secondary color (Backspace fills with primary color)
- Ctrl+Click on the Move Layer Up/Down buttons will now move a layer to the top/bottom
- Can use the middle mouse button for panning at any time
- Settings dialog can be accessed with Alt+X
- Removed legacy Ctrl+Alt+0 keyboard shortcut for View->Zoom to Actual Size, as it was preventing some characters from working in the Text tool
- Drag-and-drop implemented for:
- System Requirements:
- Windows 7 SP1 or newer is now required.
- .NET framework 4.5 required (installs if needed)
- Multi-core CPU highly recommended
- Various bug fixes
- Misc.
- New exception/error dialog
- Now shows up in "Default Programs" control panel so you can configure its file type associations (woo!)
- UI text honors user's control panel settings for ClearType and anti-aliasing of text
- Settings->Diagnostics includes "Copy to clipboard" button and "Open crash log folder" link
- Improved remote desktop workflow (better drawing, some other stuff too)
- Non-active images no longer update their thumbnails when you make changes in another image which affect them (e.g. if you leave an uncommited shape on image 1, then switch to image 2 and change the color)

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