paint.net 4.0 alpha (build 5064) is now available

The second alpha build for paint.net 4.0 is now available! To download it, please head over to the forum: http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/27399-paintnet-40-alpha-build-5064/

Please note that this is an alpha! It is mostly complete but there are bugs, both known and unknown. DO NOT install this if you depend on Paint.NET for your livelihood, for instance, as it might crash at seemingly random times or even corrupt your data (that’s actually very unlikely but, still, use caution). After alpha comes beta, and then final (general availability) or "RTW" (release to web) (also sometimes called RTM).

NOTE: The alpha is not available via the updater in v3.5.11, even if you have “Also check for pre-release (beta) versions” enabled. The beta for 4.0, however, will be made available through that update channel (from v3.5.11, I mean). I’m deliberately doing this in order to keep the audience size smaller for now so that my inbox doesn’t get flooded (I’m also not advertising it on the paint.net website just yet). Newer 4.0 alpha builds will, of course, be automatically offered to you once you have any 4.0 alpha installed.

Here is a list of the changes between the previous alpha build (5034) and this one (5064):

  • "Auto-hide taskbar" was not working while paint.net was maximized and the foreground application
  • Arrow keys were not working with the Move tools until after you had used the mouse
  • Drawing on an invisible layer was visible while drawing
  • The bracket keys [ and ] were not working to adjust the brush size
  • Save Configuration was not remembering what settings were used for saving
  • The Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tool’s handling of transparent pixels was broken
  • Clicking on taskbar image thumbnails did not work to activate the application if you clicked on the image that was already active within paint.net
  • Some translations were crashing (e.g. Russian)

Enjoy!

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11 thoughts on “paint.net 4.0 alpha (build 5064) is now available”

  2. Rob says:

    I’ve used Paint.NET forever; thanks so much Rick! Can’t wait for all the version 4 goodness.

    • Rick Brewster says:

      No, definitely not, there is no code which does that. If anything, that was Windows. There were some updates that went out recently. You may have Windows Update configured to automatically restart for those.

  4. Nono says:

    Can’t wait for the RTW version. Paint.NET is the best ! Thank you for all your work.

  6. Dean J. says:

    With the alpha (both first release and this later one), I’m seeing the same kind of slightly-blurry-font issue as with VS 2010 Beta/RC before the WPF team made a fix just before the RTM release (remember that?). In PDN, the blurriness is everywhere (menu, button text, status bar text) *except* the tool window title.

    Did the font rendering change?

    Is this expected in the alpha? Thanks.

  7. Konstantin says:

    Does Microsoft provide Rick with 12 month paid vacation? If they are smart, they would. Paint.net will likely make Windows “the only OS with proper free professional graphics editor”. In theory, Windows is not free, but in real life it just comes with new laptops.Of course, there is GIMP, but they recently messed up user interface which was already not very conventional.
    Therefore, Paint.NET could affect popularity of Windows significantly. Microsoft should really consider giving Rick much more than he asks for.

  8. Alexandros says:

    hi,
    first of all huge congratulation for your work!
    Very Good Job! Paint.net is one of my MUST-HAVE tools!!

    I’ve downloaded the 4.0 alpha version.
    I’ve started to use it and I’d like to report some bugs, but I’ve seen that the forum post is closed and I cannot post anything!

    The new version looks great! Rich of new features!

    However, I’d like to make a request: I’d appreciate so mush the implementation of control lines in the canvas (like photoshop) to get precise objects placement. It could be very useful. Is this feature on the TO-DO list?

    bye
    Alex

  9. Kerry says:

    Wonderful program — I’ve used it for many years. One slight issue with the alpha version: the tools/history/layers/settings/help icons in the upper right hand corner are tiny on a high-resolution laptop (3200×1800) running Win8.1. Because my physical screen is only 13.3 inches, the icons are almost unreadable.

    Either 1) Windows 8.1 doesn’t scale up these icons (it scales up everything else in the program — the other icons, the menus, the zoom at the bottom, etc), or these icons were much smaller to begin with.

    I can send a screenshot if you wish.

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