Software Update: Paint.NET 4.0 Build 5152 Beta 1

After several alpha releases, the first beta of Paint.NET version 4.0 has now been released. As the name suggests, this program needs the .Net framework to do its job. It started out as a study assignment for Washington State University, to replace the Paint supplied with Windows, but now contains a lot of functionality that we also see in more extensive commercial packages. Version 4.0 works a lot faster, especially on multicore processors, but has at least Windows 7 as a system requirement. The changelog for this version looks like this:

Here are the changes since the last alpha:

• 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 (eg Move, Gradient, Magic Wand, Paint Bucket, Text).
• Added a choice between Light and Blue color schemes to Settings. The default on Windows 8/8.1 is Light, and the default on Windows 7 is Blue.
• Fixed some artifacts in the Magic Wand when making a “Global” selection
• Fixed a crash in the Magic Wand tool that was causing people a lot of grief (“this.baseGeometry == null”)
• Fixed a crash in various tools (crash in ClickDragBehavior.cs line 270)
• Fixed brush strokes being completely erratic over Remote Desktop
• Fixed some very broken UI rendering over Remote Desktop with Windows 8
• The icons in the top-right of the main window are now scaled correctly for high-DPI
• Fixed a crash if you clicked to undo multiple actions after committing a shape
• Fixed some performance issues whereby non-active images were still rendering stuff in the background
• Fixed many tools emitting a history item even if the image was unaffected (eg drawing a brush stroke outside of the canvas)
• Fixed a leftover progress bar in the status bar after loading an image
• Fixed Ctrl+Arrow keys not moving the selection by 10 pixels (it only moved by 1 px) if you didn’t first release the Ctrl key after you pasted with Ctrl+V
• Removed the dangling “Tool:” tooltip on the Tool selection button in the toolbar
• Fixed a crash when the language was changed if the new language’s localized “paint.net User Files” folder already existed
• Fixed the dash style button in the toolbar being too skinny at 96 DPI (it worked fine at >96 DPI)
• Fixed the main window’s application icon being off by 2 pixels
• Fixed Ctrl+D reverting selection movement if it was pressed too quickly after using the arrow keys
• Fixed some missed thumbnail updates, especially for the Layers window
• Fixed the Width/Height text boxes in the toolbar for Fixed Selection not having an outline around them
• Fixed a visual styles related crash on some buttons in some cases
• Fixed the main installer not running after the .NET 4.5.1 installer if it required a reboot
• Fixed the installer seeming to disappear if there wasn’t enough disk space to install .NET 4.5.1
• Shapes no longer finish/commit if you press the delete key
• Non-active images no longer update their thumbnails when you make changes in another image which affect them (eg if you leave an uncommited shape on image 1, then switch to image 2 and change the color)
• Fixed a crash in the Text tool if you try to use a “bad” font (one which shows up in the font list as a yellow exclamation mark)