The penultimate build is here: the release candidate! The only changes that should occur between this build and the final release are the those related to the translations. In other words, the code is complete unless there’s a Priority Defcon 0 Nuclear Holocaust type bug that’s found (which I don’t expect). I believe the final release will be sometime next week.
As usual, to install, you can either 1) use the built-in updater from a previous 4.0 build, or 2) use the built-in updater from v3.5.11 if you have “Also check for pre-release (beta) builds”, or 3) download from the forum at http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/28734-paintnet-40-release-candidate-build-5284/
Changes since the last beta build (5278):
- Pasting with the Text tool should no longer hide the move handle
- The rotation anchor (Move, Shapes) is now less intrusive
- Fixed focus rectangles in some controls that effects use (check boxes, radio buttons, sliders)
- Fixed a layout issue with the ruler in some very specific scenarios
- Hardware acceleration is now enabled by default for some Intel GPUs (e.g. Intel HD 4000 series)
Have fun with the final code over the weekend 🙂
paint.net blog 
Hello good evening!
I am user of Paint.Net and I love the program, I would like to inform you that only one thing is bothering me in the program, in which case is the delay to to open it a few times takes up to one minute, even Photoshop that is heavy this opening up more faster than the paint, so I’m trying to help inform the development of the program, I understand nothing of these things, but I think if you focusing on quickness to to open it would be much better for users.
THANK YOU!
NOTE: Although I will test today’s update: 06.20.2014.
Sorry for my English.
See you later.
Perhaps you have too many plugins installed. Startup times are nearly instant on every computer I’ve used except in a few special cases. I have put A LOT of time and effort into optimizing startup performance, so I’m pretty sure that isn’t the problem!
My PC is very streamlined, not plugins or anything I guess, until the corel Draw opens faster than Photopaint, but the last update was faster, a little better, really hope that never again become slow, I am extremely annoyed with slow programs.
By, google tradutor, TENSE
It works great i have throw a lot of effects at it and is very fast even on my system, just single core 2.2GHz and Geforce 6600GT. I guess that’s HW GPU working. Thanks…
A huge thank you for all your hard work on this! Downloading (and donating) after I post this!
Oh god yes thank you, the rotate tool was getting in the way of everything, it was to the point that smaller pictures (icon/favicon-sized) couldn’t even be moved at all without involuntarily rotating 90 degrees. I have photoshop, but I’ve found it’s only good for straight-up editing. For cropping, rotating and resizing, Paint.NET is best.
You can always use the right mouse button to rotate, btw. The thing that changed in this build is that the rotation *anchor* (the circle with the lines through it) is no longer at the top of the z-order, which means that the resizing handles will take priority if they’re in the same location.
Like Kleyton Coimbra, my Paint.NET takes ages to load. I do have a handful of plugins, but shouldn’t it be better to make the program load them only when they’re needed? Just my two cents.
Also, a problem that’s persisted since the early days of Paint.NET: the circle tool draws horrible circles with anti-alias off. Try drawing circles of sizes between 8×8 and 64×64, and try drawing them again with regular Paint. The ones in Paint are a lot smoother than those of Paint.NET.
The aliased circle rendering is indeed bad, and I’m planning to find a way to fix it after the 4.0 release. What’s surprising to me is that both GDI+ and Direct2D are REALLY REALLY BAD at drawing symmetric ellipses. It took some effort to get antialiased ellipse to render symmetrically with Direct2D; they don’t render that way unless you do some specific stuff! (try it out: antialiased ellipses are finally symmetrical in 4.0!!!!)
That sucks… Well, good luck, and good job on the RC!
Hi there! I would like to ask if you can add RGBA for extra info. in the color palette instead of only RGB.
Thanks for your time.
RGBA is already fully supported. In the default color palette, the bottom 2 rows are colors which are partially transparent.
What I meant was if instead of giving us just the “Hex” code of the color with RGB you can also add the Alpha, giving us the “Hex” code with the alpha numbers too, for example:
RGB Hex Code: #000000 – 100% Black
RGBA Hex Code: #FF000000 – 100% Black
I hadn’t noticed that before you mentioned it (I suppose because I had always controlled opacity through layer settings), but that would be nice…especially in a scenario where you wanted opacity via color picker.
Wow as an avid Paint.net user since 2009 i am very impressed with how great a free program can be. But with 4.0 some problems i have had are as follows:
Using touch screen laptop and whenever trying to pan up or down the screen will move in the correct direction and then reset to before.So really i can not pan with touchscreen.
Another problem i have been having with Paint.net is the hardness of a brush not filling the whole circle of my cursor.
Also whenever pasting something that is bigger than the canvas and then pressing Keep Canvas Size the pasted picture or whatever is cut and loses parts that don’t fit on the new canvas instead of just me being able to resizing the picture.
Thank you so much for reading these small issues, and if there is a setting i have wrong possibly i would love to know.
Brush hardness: Increase the hardness to 100%.
Pasting bug: Make sure you’re using the latest version. That’s been fixed.
I have read that panning the canvas beyond its limits to allow editing image in the corners without having to displace the tool windows would be available from the 4.0 release, but it is not possible yet.
Any comment from the author please ?
Anyway, great job on this great app, I just can’t leave without it.
It just didn’t make the cut for 4.0. It’s a very popular feature request though so please be patient. (I said it would be *possible* to implement this with the new stuff in 4.0, not that it would be specifically in the 4.0 release 🙂 )
…can’t live without… sorry!
I may have missed a declaration from you, but you officially dropped support for pen input?
Pen/tablet input hasn’t been around since v3.36 (2008). I was thinking about adding it in 4.0 but it didn’t make the cut (because there’s 1000 other things that had to be done). It may still come back in a 4.x update, and will be limited to Windows 8 or newer (it has native pen/tablet APIs).
The Text tool’s move handle issue is gone. Really appreciate it!
I would like to focus on the update of this program be to let it quicker to open, I have a optimal PC with GTX 650Ti card, etc., but the program takes too long time to open, sometimes photoshop is faster than him to open.
But otherwise the program is very good, congratulations for the great work.
You already posted about this and I replied. Startup performance has always been a large priority. For some reason it just runs slow on your computer, whereas it starts up nearly instantaneously everywhere else that I’ve seen.
I don’t know if this is expected behaviour, but the first start on my PC sometimes takes up to 10s, then any subsequent starts take around 2s. Both extremely acceptable to me; just FYI.
Scratch that – I was hitting an old shortcut to 3.5. 4 is very quick to start; sub-one second.
My only complaint is how the zoom in and out button was removed from the options in the top window, and how I now have to go to View to select zoom in and out there
Seems more like a downgrade rather then an upgrade in my personal opinion. But apart from that, the rest is great!
It wasn’t removed. It was moved to the bottom-right corner of the window.