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 are also some extra property rules you can use, such as the ability to link values based on a checkbox (useful for linking R,G,B sliders for instance).
- The usual round of bug fixes, including some memory corruption bugs I found after noticing that some effects were trying to access coordinates that couldn’t possibly exist. “NaN” is not a valid coordinate 🙂
After v3.30, I am planning two small updates after that: v3.32, and v3.34. These should include the usual round of bug fixes (there is always something to fix, even if it’s minor!), but also Ed Harvey’s “Surface Blur” and “Dents” effects. I will probably release v3.32 from 6 to 8 weeks after v3.30, and then v3.34 at 6 to 8 weeks after that. Hopefully this will give me a good chunk of time to devote to working on v4.0!
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Nice. Can’t wait to play with 3.30 Alpha)(s) / Beta(s) and 3.30 Final 🙂
Awesome, I really like the file type stuff.
Suggestions: Instead of saying 32, 24, and 8 bit, I think it would be more intuitive to say RGBA, RGB, and Palette, possibly in parenthesis. Also, is it possible to add grayscale and grayscale+alpha support?
Will PNG-8 support alpha channel to be saved like Adobe Fireworks does? ( http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2007/09/18/png8-the-clear-winner/ ). Alas, open source PNGnq is faulty in some occasions (2 blue pixels, one opaque and one semi-transparent are treated with the same index color and at the end, one of the 2 blue pixels is hum weird in IE6), it would be great if Paint.NET would save (and open) PNG-8 with tRNS chunk as well as it opens them 🙂
Felipe — No, it will not support the alpha channal ala Fireworks.
Is the new png codec based on I like Pi’s one? or just the idea?…
Anyway *eager* *eager* *eager* *eager* *eager* 😀
No, Rick uses GDI+ and aims to provide more options, while I use OptiPNG and aim to provide smaller file sizes.
Oh… Ok… Great things anyway 😀
Nice. I’m looking forward to this update. I tend to use the PNG filetype the most (I’m not actually sure why…) and more options is always better (most of the time)!
I was wondering when the next update was.
Looks good. Interesting choice of effects to add. Keep up the awesome work! 😀
And what about GIF bit support?
Drill, what about it? GIF still supports 8-bit and only 8-bit. Nothing has changed that.
Oh how good 🙂
Better format diversity 😉 ( I mean saving PNG’s in different ways )
It’s just what I wanted 🙂 Especially with BMP.
It’d be great if Paint.NET did support alpha transparency for PNG8. Transparent PNG8s are a great way to work around a deadlock in IE6: http://blogs.cozi.com/tech/2008/03/transparent-png.html