Paint.NET v3.5.11 is now available

The primary goal of this update is preparing for the v4.0 release: v3.5.10 will not be able to offer the v4.0 update, but v3.5.11 will. I’m not a fan of putting out an update for purely infrastructure purposes so I’ve also reverse-ported a handful of low-risk improvements from the v4.0 code base. This way we all win.

As usual, you can download it directly from the website or you can use the built-in updater via Utilities –> Check for Updates.

Here are the changes for this release:

  • Fixed: The Gaussian Blur effect was incorrectly calculating alpha values for non-opaque pixels. (http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/18483-gaussian-blur-mistreats-alpha/)
  • Improved performance of the Sharpen effect by about 25%
  • Improved performance of the Median effect by about 30%
  • Improved performance of the Fragment effect by about 40%
  • Improved performance of the Unfocus effect by about 100%
  • Reduced memory usage when many selection manipulation operations are in the history/undo stack (the undo data is now saved to disk)
  • The built-in updater now supports upgrading to paint.net 4.0 (once it’s available)

When I announced the beta for v3.5.11, I also talked a little about 4.0 and the progress that’s been made. If you haven’t read that, please catch up!

There have been rumors floating around that Paint.NET is “dead.” This is not true! Smile The 4.0 update has simply been a huge project, and I only have a limited amount of time at my disposal. (Apparently if you go 22 months without an update, that means “dead” in Internet years. Sorry!) Plus, sometimes you just want to go out and enjoy summer instead of writing code.

For comparison, v3.5.11 is about 203,000 lines of code, whereas v4.0 is at about 391,000. What’s new? Well, it has a brand new, asynchronous, fully multithreaded, hardware accelerated (via Direct2D) rendering engine that performs very happily with huge and large images, all while consuming less memory than v3.5. I’m not exaggerating the performance scaling either: whether you’ve got a 16-core Dual Xeon or a 400 megapixel image, paint.net 4.0 will be quite happy (other combinations are also very copacetic, of course).

The whole UI has been updated to use newer rendering toolkits such as Direct2D and DirectWrite, and the main window has a greatly simplified and consolidated layout. All of the drawing tools have been updated to use the new rendering system along with a new “fine-grained” history system (to clarify: the UI for history is the same, but the underlying code is radically different). It’s made possible a much richer “WYSIWYG” model for editing which is exemplified by the new Paint Bucket and Magic Wand tools. Selection rendering quality and performance are way up. The brush tools (Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, Recolor) now support soft brushes, and the new Shapes tool replaces the 4 separate shape tools that are in v3.5 while providing many more shapes to use. There are also a bunch of other small, miscellaneous improvements that span across the UI and tools, including things like “Copy Merge” and antialiased selection rendering.

Anyway, enjoy!

134 thoughts on “Paint.NET v3.5.11 is now available”

  1. Brad Pike says:

    Rick, I thought you’d died and gone to programmer heaven (or development hell, one of the two). I can’t wait to see what you’ve done in 4.0!

  4. Netto Hikari says:

    Wow! Paint.NET 4.0 is on the way? Cool! Thanks for you work! Gonna donate next month. 🙂

    I’m using Paint.NET since YEARS and I love it!

    • Rick Brewster says:

      No, the Text tool won’t be getting an upgrade like that for 4.0. There is a plugin that lets you do editable text though; you can find it on the forum (from within Paint.NET, go to Help menu -> Plugins).

      • Rossi says:

        please, please, would you send the link of the plugin (editable text)?
        The 4.0 will be available since this version or do we have to delete this one to get the new?…the plugins that i have now will be lost? or can i restore them?
        Amazing will be to get the v4.0 Congratulations!!! and hugs! 😀

  10. Jesper F says:

    Love this program. Thanks for the new version. Long waits don’t mean anything. The program still performs well and has good features.

  11. Tom Bonner says:

    Hey, I use Paint.net over even the likes of Photoshop for quick editing. I threw a small donation at you to encourage the great work your doing/done on the program. Keep it up 🙂

  12. Diane says:

    So great to know one of my favorites is just gonna get better!!!!!Thanks so so much for such a great program. I love it.

    • Rick Brewster says:

      Sorry, no plans for a Windows RT version. It does work fine on the desktop in Windows 8/8.1, as you’d expect. But, it won’t work on devices like the Surface RT.

  15. Michael Hytopoulos says:

    Bless you for all your efforts. Paint.NET is truly a spectacular program which allows me so much creative freedom and inspiration. LOVE YOU MAN!!!!

  16. Anonymous says:

    Nice. I also thought paint.NET development was dead.
    Keep up the good work 🙂

  17. David says:

    How good is that! I to thought development had stalled.. I use it everyday for work (mainly screens shots for tech support). Good to see that its still being developed. If Microsoft had any brains they would shower you with money and include it in Windows 8.1 as a paint replacement. 🙂

  18. Festbawi says:

    Thanks a lot man, I seriously though Paint.NET was dead, and what was weird was that I thought about that just 2 days ago, and here’s this update to prove me wrong. Thanks a lot man, looking forward to 4.0! 😀

  19. Тоха says:

    Чудово! Дякую за нову версію і чекаю з нетерпінням 4.0!

  20. Emiliano says:

    Hey you shold leave us the option of “export” an image to .PNG when we are working with multiple layers without have to combine them

  21. yahavbrYahav says:

    Thanks, but can you please update the About dialog? It’s full with dead or outdated links. For example Squish has moved and Crystal no longer exists, at least the link provided results in a 404 error.

  23. Max says:

    Thank you very much. You have created best graphic program that allows quickly edit pictures.

  26. jamesricklef says:

    I figured that 22 months without an update indicated that the existing software was so awesome that it didn’t need a bunch of updates! 😀

  27. lifely says:

    Never have a chance to say thanks for your contribution!
    It’s time to say so! I might have use you program for 5-6 yrs! Truly appreciate you hard works!!!

  28. Gianfranco (John for short) says:

    I use and have used many photo editing programs, but I recommend Paint.net to my customers for its simplicity and good results.
    Keep the quality of the program on future updates.

    Gianfranco

  29. Pingback: Software-Tipp: Paint.NET Version 3.5.11 erschienen
  30. Tal says:

    Still using and enjoying with Paint.net 😉 ! Totally agree, life is not only made with {} [] ++ ; This software is a great piece, I will continue to follow the news ans updates… even after 24 months. Thank you for your work!

  31. Pingback: Paint.NET v3.5.11 is now available (via: Paint.NET Blog) « The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff
  32. Chris says:

    I have all sorts of image processing software installed and still use Paint.net for nearly everything. Keep up the good work!

  33. Pingback: Paint.NET v3.5.11 ny version i väntan på v.4 - DatorBladet
  34. m says:

    > the undo data is now saved to disk
    Not a good news for a SSD user with a lot of RAM. I myself just made a simple folder symlink to RAMdisk, but think a switch in PDN itself would not be redundant.

  35. Kwerboom says:

    “Direct2D and DirectWrite”. Based on those two labels, I’m guessing Windows XP is completely out and that Paint.NET will run on nothing less than Vista SP2 (with Platform Uplift). Not that I care, I have Windows 7 and a DirectX 10.1 ATI HD 4870. I just figured I would take a shot in the dark based on what I had read.

  36. sbelus says:

    I can’t wait for 4.0 🙂 I didn’t know about upcoming version until this update shows up.

  37. B says:

    NO idea what i’m talking about and probably not the place for this but adding shortcuts to the layers window for levels and curves would be awesmazing!!

  38. Ariel says:

    Amazing! Thank you man. Paint.NET it’s the unique program that I use for editing (for images in my website) and I’m very satisfied. Greetings from Argentina, and sorry about my wrong writing, if I did.

    • Scott says:

      Megalo = evil software thieves. Never install Paint.NET plugins downloaded from anywhere but the Paint.NET forum.

  43. Ron says:

    As much as I might want to use the new update, I can’t because it requires WinXP Service pack 3 which wrecks my old comp everytime I put it on. Is there any way around this issue, because I love Paint.,Net, but My comp hates SP 3

  44. Adam says:

    Will we see any improvements in image scaling in 4.0? One of the big problems I’ve had with paint.net in the past has been the poor image quality from image scaling when compared to, say, a bicubic resize in photoshop. Doing a crop and resize is something I do regularly, so the weakness on the resize part has been unfortunate.

  45. Jason says:

    FYI – I’m running 3.5.10 and I’ve got ‘Also check for pre-release (beta) versions’ checked. A check for updates shows ‘No updates currently available’. So for now I am downloading this manually.

    I am behind a proxy which is configured correctly in Windows (WinINET / IE), though I thought that Paint.NET successfully updated through the proxy in the past…

  47. Ishi says:

    Would it be possible to have a sharpen and blur brush on the toolset just like on Photoshop on future versions?

  49. Ross Stewart says:

    Thank You a million times over.
    It is through your dedication and obvious hard work that I am able to work on all of my graphics needs for my website.
    How quickly we forget nor appreciate the efforts made behind the scene for a product we take for granted as just being there.
    Donation has been forwarded and will donate again upon 4 (hopefully my website will have paid off by then and I can donate more).
    Please to anyone who uses Paint.Net and has not done so yet, DONATE NOW… even a little helps the development go a long way.
    Regards
    Ross

  50. Amaroq Dricaldari says:

    Will this break any plugins I installed? Examples:
    – VTF (Valve Texture Format) Plugin
    – JPEG 2000 Plugin
    – Optimized JPEG Plugin
    – APNG and AGIF Plugins

  53. vaga liki says:

    I love PDN. It is my go to editing software, however there are 2 things that I find really lacking.
    1: please add a magnetic lasso type tool. This will definitely be more helpful in selecting large things like cars or people or logos. Currently I do this with the magic wand but that leaves a lot of pixilation and often results in selecting too much or too little. Sometimes, it also leaves gaps and doesn’t include some pixels within the object being selected
    2: Layers with text should not be rasterized. This would allow me to edit it or change the size without having to scrap the old layer

    Thanks and looking forward to Pain.NET 4.0!

    • Amaroq Dricaldari says:

      Indeed, Vector Graphics are the future. Normally I’d use Adobe Illustrator for that, but 1) it is difficult to use and 2) it costs money, which I don’t have at the moment.

      The SVG plugin for Paint.NET works okay, but it doesn’t actually let me do any editing.

  55. Chad Wilson says:

    22 months without an update on the Internet usually means the project had been abandoned.

  56. vasboz says:

    I use this program daily and I must say if there was only one app I was allowed to install on a clean image of windows 7, it would be paint.net! Been using it from back in the XP days. Amazing doesn’t even come close to how brilliant this software is!

  60. Matt says:

    Awesome job with getting the new release together, it is truly a great and simple program at the same time! Amazing willpower to keep this up and running, and we all really do appreciate all your effort. Keep up the great work!

    I do have to ask for one tiny thing: allow for the program to NOT start with an initial blank canvas by default. Nearly every time I run the program I have something on my clipboard I want to paste, but since Paint.NET starts automatically with a default large, blank canvas open, I first have to close that canvas before opening a New one, and accepting the default size of the item on clipboard so the canvas is the size of the clipboard image. I’d love to eliminate this step of first closing the large default blank canvas. Thanks!

    • Icarus Wing says:

      You can simply start Paint.NET and use ‘Paste in to New Image’ (Ctrl+Alt+V). The default canvas is resized to match the clipboard image dimensions.

  62. PS says:

    Hey man just wanted to say THANK YOU for such an amazing software. PDN keeps getting better and better. You’re awesome.

  64. Andrew says:

    This is great! I had no idea paint.net was still being worked on. Is there any chance of a polygonal lasso tool in 4.0?

  65. OddLlama says:

    Thank you thank you thank you 😀 It’s amazing that one person can make such an amazing program as Paint.NET, and even more amazing that you can give it to us for free! :I’ll probably donate as soon as possible. Thank you for all the work you have done for us; I’m a programmer so I know how hard this stuff is 🙂

    I have a single request for some later version: quicksave. Nothing fancy, just a button that will save into a default folder with default settings. I would be immensely grateful if you implement that.

  67. Hector Ricardo Tenaglia says:

    Es realmente fabuloso trabajar con PAINT.NET, por las soluciones y efectos que provee….

  69. Tidosho says:

    What a shame GIMP is a million times better than Paint.net, and gaining more popularity every week. Since you closed the source of PDN, that was the nail in your coffin, because PDN only works on Windows, GIMP works on all OS, and is still open source! If you’d not been so selfish like the little American fatty crybaby you are, the community could’ve ported it, PDN could’ve been where GIMP is now.

      • paultobrien says:

        Kitamura-san, I assume that this comment, which is clearly beneath a man such as yourself, is a simple mistake. It doesn’t seem fit that a man who has the talent to repair serviceable machines – helping others and saving what is still good from rotting in a landfill – should say what you said. Perhaps you have ascribed too much weight to the decision of a man to create useful free-as-in-beer software on his own terms. It is certainly not worth the expended emotional energy you’ve chosen to apply to the situation.

      • AnonA says:

        I think it’s Qo’nos/Kronos …the Klingon empire homeworld.
        Always looking for an excuse for all-out war.

    • paultobrien says:

      Kitamura-san, it seems tragic that one as talented as you at repairing what is broken and saving perfectly serviceable equipment from rotting in landfills should feel it necessary to express yourself in such a way. The choice of a man to make useful but limited “free-as-in-beer” software doesn’t seem fit to move a man like yourself to such speech and emotional outbursts.

    • chaz says:

      Hey, if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all! I don’t know if you realise the tremendous amount of work it is to write 391 000 lines of code, but it is a LOT of work and the developer is doing it all for free. It doesn’t do to hurl insults around.

      Personally, I really like PAINT.NET, even though I don’t use it that much because I don’t do very much imaging.

  70. paultobrien says:

    I just want to say thank you very much for one simple feature: the option to “Install when I exit” update method. Saves quite a bit of time and removes the stress of trying to remember to update later when all I need to do is a quick edit.

  71. AnonA says:

    My wishes for P.Net 4 is that it better remembers the window position when started with a filename, and allows for setting the default filetype for file saving. >;}

  72. Bolee says:

    Great! The changes look amazing. Improving on blur effect will be particularly useful. Blur can spoil the whole design. The new changes may make it easier to refine the image. Reduced memory usage is nice as well. It should lead to faster processing as it spares memory which can then be used for other tasks.

  73. Brian says:

    I’ve used this for so many years, since DNR first mentioned it! Despite trying several other tools. Thank you very much for coming back to provide an update. Layers, Adjustments, Basic effects, Drawing Tools, advanced Color window, and History are what I use most for development and documentation.
    The feature I’ve missed most is editable text, and now I see in the comments that there is a plugin for that. 🙂

  75. tuxplorer says:

    Can you support jumplists for Paint.NET please? 🙂 When I open files in PDN, there is no Recent jumplist for it. 😦 P.S. I am sorry I called you evil once.

      • tuxplorer says:

        It never works for me. I have jumplists enabled definitely because other programs show it. I tried opening images in multiple ways to make them appear in the jumplist, via Explorer open with, double click, PDN’s File -> Open but no luck. No jumplist for PDN on the taskbar although PDN’s “Recent” menu shows all the files I opened in the past. The AppID for PDN it shows is {6d809377-6af0-444b-8957-a3773f02200e}\Paint.NET\PaintDotNet.exe.

  78. Daniel W Ostler says:

    Hey!! I thought it was pretty good in the first place. My GoTo 90% of the time in image work. looking forward to 4.0.
    Thanks

  79. danny gnsks says:

    I don’t do much image manipulation in my line of work, but when I do, paint.net has always been there for me. Thanks so much for your efforts.

  80. James says:

    Eagerly looking forward to 4.0, and since some .NET apps work fine in Windows RT I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to use PDN4 as well on my Gen. 1 Surface RT for some quick on-the-go work.

  81. Darktoad says:

    Great news that you are still working on this program … I had kind of wondered.

  82. Aarilight says:

    How hard would it be to implement a “preview” window that simply shows a preview of the image you’re working on? For instance, if I’m doing pixel art and I want to see what it looks like at 100% while drawing at 1600%. This way, I don’t have to zoom all the way out to see what it currently looks like, and back again. But there would be other uses for it! For touch-up work in general, really, this would be useful.
    It would make my life if you could add it. =)

  84. Mauro Cicognini says:

    Gosh, has it been 22 months since the last update? To be honest, I never need to use any other image editing tool but PDN… and I never noticed it didn’t have updates, because it just Always Works.
    Perhaps you’re doing too good a job, man 🙂

  86. Ryno says:

    Looking forward to the 4.0 update, I have 2 requests for it.
    1. A Polygonal Lasso Tool like Gimp.
    2. Those fancy horizontal/vertical you can drag from the edges in Photoshop to be more accurate.

    Thanks for this awesome phto editor!

  88. Les Thomas says:

    Yes on all the compliments! Thank you for this great tool. Look forward to 4.0. However, unable to get the upgrade 3.5.11 to install. Continues to error and breaks 3.5.10. Easy to recover if things are backed up fortunately. But if 3.5.11 is the road to 4.0, wondering how to get there. I guess I’ll cross that road when I get to it.

  89. ken w bradford says:

    22 months, no update, who cares, I use it a LOT and am glad U enjoyed the summer….

  90. santaclaus21 says:

    Great job. But I’m still wondering if you like to make some “web optimization” before save file (gif, png), eg. number of colors, palette. Someting like “Web export” in Photoshop. Additional there should be also posibility to remove EXIF (reducting file size). Thanks!

  91. Reza says:

    I wish it was an open source software so I could give you a hand, BTW Keep up the good work and good luck!

  94. krakenn37 says:

    Hi from France. Thanks a lot for your software that I tell my student to use for their photo work.
    Will it be possible to edit text AFTER in the 4.0 version ?

    • Stewart Bourke says:

      I would second this – it would be very useful to be able to edit the text object once added…

      Stewart Bourke

      • Rick Brewster says:

        There is also a plugin on the forum that provides this functionality. It’s not perfect (it’s an effect, not a tool) but it kinda gets the job done ya know.

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