Paint.NET Turns 3.0

By David Johnston
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

The Paint.NET team, which offers a free replacement for Microsoft’s lacking MS Paint program that rivals much more advanced (and expensive!) programs, released a major update today. Many features were added or improved including a better interface, more language support, more effects, and better performance and disk usage. My favorite addition in version 3.0 is the use of tabs to keep track of different photos that you’re editing. The tab feature is a huge step forward, particularly for those of us who frequently have multiple photos open at a time. The tabs themselves show thumbnail images of the photos they represent as well, so it’s very easy to keep track of which picture is which. There is also a very easy-to-use gradient tool that was lacking in previous versions. The only bad thing I have to say about Paint.NET is that it’s Windows-only as it requires the .NET framework and now no longer supports Windows 2000. But for the price, I’m certainly not going to complain.

Check out Paint.NET 3.0 here.