The new version fixes several performance issues that include a memory leak which adds to the program’s stability.

• All font face variants (e.g., Arial vs. Arial Narrow) are now available with the Text tool in Win7/Vista with DirectWrite.
• Bitmap font types (e.g. Courier, Terminal, Fixedsys) are now available with the Text tool in Win7/Vista.
• Fixed some bad text kerning with the Text tool at small font sizes when antialiasing was turned off.
• For the Image->Resize function, the quality, correctness, and performance of Bilinear and Bicubic sampling modes have been improved. Super Sampling also has some performance improvement.
• Improved the rendering quality for the Hue/Saturation adjustment. Also made a new icon for it.
• Fixed many subtle rendering issues with the Move Selected Pixels tool. These were apparent when flipping or rotating a selected area.
• Fixed: The Line/Curve tool was applying pixel snapping to the curve nodes, which caused lines to “bend” when using the Shift key to constrain the angle.
• Fixed some extraneous CPU usage related to unnecessary or redundant thumbnail updates.
• Fixed a few dialogs that looked wrong with Aero glass with Remote Desktop or Virtual PC.
• Fixed a nasty memory leak with Flatten followed by Undo.
• Fixed some issues related to effects that took awhile to cancel. As it turns out, drag-and-drop was enabled at this time, which easily lead to crashes or hangs.
• Some Win7 systems could not detect that .NET 3.5 SP1 was installed, even though it was. A fallback detection function has been added.
• For plugin authors, the Effect class now has a pollable IsCancelRequested property. This can be used to improve responsiveness for expensive OnSetRenderInfo() implementations which are otherwise non-interruptible.
• For plugin authors, the Surface.FitSurface() method is now optimized to use multiple threads, which improves performance.

The Paint.net 3.5.2 update can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The software itself should pick up the update through its automatic update option as well if the feature is activated.

Is it comparable to Gimp or Adobe Photoshop? I honestly cannot say so and do not care the least. It allows me to do the image editing things that I need to do which are basic image manipulations, e.g. resizing, copying, pasting, and basic editing.

Paint.net 3.5 final was released today. Users who are interested in the changes in this release can take a look at the post over at the official blog to find out more about them. Those that do not care about that can download the latest version of the image editor from the developer’s website where it is available for all supported operating systems (Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7) and languages. Paint.net, as the name suggests, requires the Microsoft .net Framework 3.5 SP1.

The Paint.Net developers have now announced the first beta of the upcoming Paint.Net 3.5. Users who are using a previous version of Paint.Net like the last official release Paint.Net 3.36 can update to the new beta from within the program. All that is needed is to click on the Check for Updates button under (Help). Paint.Net will by default only search for official release versions (which the beta is obviously not). A click on the options button in the window makes it possible to turn that feature off so that all versions of Paint.Net are considered for upgrades.

The changelog lists a few important changes and addition. Paint.Net 3.5 requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 which should be beneficial to the program’s overall performance. This could become obvious when opening images on single cpu systems. Computer memory usage has been optimized when multiple images are loaded into the image editor. Startup performance and effect dialog responsiveness has been optimzed as well.

The full changelog:

* Now uses and requires .NET 3.5 SP1, which has many built-in performance improvements.
* New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
* New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
* Effect dialog responsiveness has been greatly improved.
* Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
* Selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of “dancing ants”, an antialiased and stippled “XOR” outline is drawn.
* Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
* Memory usage has been greatly reduced when more than one image is open.
* The font system for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, and problems with missing fonts and crashes should be a thing of the past.
* On Windows XP and Vista, the Text tool has improved text rendering quality (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
* On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives even better performance and quality.
* The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
* The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
* When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
* Installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET Framework and Windows Installer.
* Updates can now be downloaded in the background, and installed automatically once you exit the application.
* General rendering quality has been improved when zoomed in.
* Added a “Utilities” menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved here.
* Added a “Manage Fonts” command to the Utilities menu.
* Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
* Improved the Unfocus effect.
* The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
* A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
* Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
* Fixed a crash with the “Units” selector in the toolbar.
* When zoomed in, it is now much easier to resize a very small selection.
* Now includes a Russian translation.

Paint.Net 3.5 can be downloaded from the official Get Paint website.