Paint.NET

Paint.NET v3.30 Beta 2 is now available

March 13, 2008 – 1:33 am
It's been 2 weeks and I've been busy incorporating the feedback I've received so far on the first beta. Phew! Anyway, please note that this is a beta that expires in 60 days on May 11th. You can get this update by downloading it from the website, http://www.getpaint.net/ (no need to uninstall your current version, it will figure it all out for you), or via the built-in updater. For the latter, go to Help -> Check for Updates... and make sure you are set up to receive betas by clicking on the Options button and ensuring that "Also check for beta releases" is checked. Then close the dialogs and click on Help -> Check for Updates... again. Changes since Beta 1: Changed: Most effects and adjustments, including plugins that use IndirectUI, have been visually refreshed. The new look is cleaner and more compact. These changes ...

Posted in Update News | 10 Comments »

Cleaning up the UI for Paint.NET v3.30

March 10, 2008 – 1:50 pm
While I was adding the color wheel control for IndirectUI, I decided that now was as good of a time as any to incorporate some other feedback from some of the more prominent plugin authors. Ed Harvey had suggested that the UI could be made more compact, as adding a bunch of properties often created a dialog that was large or spread out. BoltBait and pyrochild wanted the ability to change the text in the title of the dialog – perhaps to add a "version 2" tag or something similar. The rendering quality of the preview/thumbnail image in some of the dialogs was also a bit of a thorn in my side. So, I've managed to address all of these, and a few others. The end result is a visually refreshed UI that is cleaner and less "noisy". I think the difference is best seen by showing pyrochild's Film effect ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Nine Inch Nails and the New Online Business Model

March 7, 2008 – 9:55 pm
As many people may already know, I am a big fan of the band Nine Inch Nails, aka NIN, which is basically Trent Reznor and whomever he hires to work and perform with him at any given time. Earlier in the week, Trent posted that a new album was available, titled "Ghosts I-IV" (volumes one through four). Not even "coming soon," but available right now. Being a fan, I was naturally psyched about this and went to find out how I could get a copy right now. Eventually I succumbed and bought the $300 super ultra deluxe edition that comes with four LP's, two CD's, one DVD, one Blu-Ray, an art book, ready-to-frame-and-hang art, and Trent's signature. Plus it's a limited edition with only 2500 copies. Hey, I need to use those Paint.NET donations for something, right? The real story here is not that NIN has a new album, but rather ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Ask and you shall receive … Color Wheel for IndirectUI

March 6, 2008 – 12:24 am
As part of the version 3.30 release of Paint.NET, I have finally marked all of the code in PaintDotNet.exe as "internal" (instead of public). This code was supposed to be treated as internal implementation details of Paint.NET, but plugin authors were using the code anyway. So, at some point or another I was going to have to do this, and I chose version 3.30 as the ship vehicle. (See, in Visual Studio 2003, which was the original development environment for Paint.NET, you couldn't add an EXE as a reference. Then they added this capability in VS2005, but I didn't catch on until later. So I had always assumed that plugins couldn't access this stuff and so I didn't need to mark it all as internal. Oops!) Well, as it turns out, one of the most popular controls that was being used by plugins was the color wheel. You know, this thing: This is ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

The new Nine Inch Nails, "Ghosts" Volume 1 through 4

March 3, 2008 – 1:25 am
What a great way to start the week. http://ghosts.nin.com I clicked the "Buy" button about as soon as I saw it show up on digg. I'm almost done downloading the 600MB ZIP containing the album encoded in FLAC. The download links are one-time use only, so hopefully Firefox doesn't crash!

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

Paint.NET v3.30 Beta 1 is now available

February 28, 2008 – 9:59 pm
Alright, here we go: finally a new update to Paint.NET! Please note that this is a beta, and expires in 60 days on April 28th. You can get this update by downloading it from the website, http://www.getpaint.net/ (no need to uninstall your current version, it will figure it all out for you), or via the built-in updater. For the latter, go to Help -> Check for Updates... and make sure you are set up to receive betas by clicking on the Options button and ensuring that "Also check for beta relases" is checked. Then close the dialogs and click on Help -> Check for Updates... again. The most notable features in this release are the ability to save PNG's at 8- and 24-bit depth, and the integration of Ed Harvey's "Fragment" blur effect. There are also a bunch of other minor things, bug fixes, and a new Italian translation. ...

Posted in Update News | 4 Comments »

Paint.NET learns Italian!

February 25, 2008 – 6:06 pm
There's one more feature, so to speak, that's been able to sneak in to the v3.30 release. From the blog title it should be obvious: Paint.NET will soon be available in Italian! I get a lot of e-mails asking for this, and now thanks to the hard working folks in Microsoft Developer Division ("DevDiv"), it will now be available. (DevDiv also handles the other 7 non-English translations)

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

"Just Add More Cowbell"

February 24, 2008 – 5:11 pm
As an owner of a software project, one trap that's easy to fall into is that of adding more and more features. Quite often these features do in fact add value, but there's a certain point where adding features ends up being superfluous and actually has a negative impact. At that point, adding more features is akin to "more cowbell," as made famous by the Saturday Night Live skit with Christopher Walken and Will Ferrel. When it comes to deciding on the feature set for a new release, you should ask yourself: "Is this feature necessary? Or is it just more cowbell?" With Paint.NET, I believe that I have, for the most part, avoided the trap of "more cowbell." However, it's becoming more difficult. It is very easy for me to add new effects and adjustments and to then put out a new release which results in a spike ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Paint.NET v3.30 Preview

February 17, 2008 – 2:01 pm
It's time once again to start babbling about the next minor update to Paint.NET, which will be version 3.30. I'm planning to push it out the door in early April. Here's what's coming: Integration of Ed Harvey's Fragment, Vignette, and Posterize effects. An enhanced version of the Polar Inversion effect, also written by Ed Harvey and originally included in his "Polar Inversion +" plugin. PNG will now support saving in 8-bit and 24-bit. There is also an "auto-detect" option where Paint.NET will analyze the image and auto-select the lowest bit-depth that can save the image losslessly. BMP will now support saving in 8-bit. It will also have the "auto-detect" option, but there is still no 32-bit BMP support. GDI+ just refuses to cooperate in allowing me to do that. TGA will also support the "auto-detect" option, for its 24-bit and 32-bit support. For developers, IndirectUI is now available for writing UI for file type codecs. There ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments »

Another Dumb Way to Start a Business Proposal

February 14, 2008 – 12:40 am
They just keep coming in. Subject: re: advertising proposal Hi, I am a media buyer at Medios One LLC (www.mediosone.com).  I am interested in buying inventory on your site.  MediosOne is a global online advertising network.  We have offices in 5 countries and many more support offices around the world.  Our publisher network model gives us access to large amounts of high  quality inventory from all types of sites, which are targeted to users in many geographic locations. Some of the advertisers we work with include ICICI, Make My Trip, Max New York Life,  Zapak.com, Colgate, Hewlett Packard, Tata Sky, AOL, Citibank, and  India Times. We are  currently looking for publishers to add to our network. Currently, we are running a good  amount of campaigns targeted to the US, Asia, South America, UK as well ...

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »