NOTE: The deployment of this update has been paused due to an issue with pre-DirectX 10 GPUs (e.g. GeForce 6000 and 7000 series). A new update will be issued very soon! You can still download 4.1.2 from the website, but the built-in updater will not offer it to you.
This is a small update that improves startup performance, fixes some bugs, and addresses two security vulnerabilities. Administrators who manage deployments of Paint.NET are urged to begin updating immediately. Details of CVE-2018-18446 and CVE-2018-18447 are pending publication.
If you’re using the Windows Store release, you should get the update automatically within the next 24 hours. You can also force an update check by following these instructions.
For the Classic release, you can use the built-in updater by going to ⚙ Settings → Updates → Check Now. You can also download and install it directly from the website.
Changes:
- Improved startup performance if “a lot” of effect plugins are installed. More optimizations are coming in the next update.
- Fixed: Pixel grid no longer draws some dots darker than others at some zoom levels, as reported at https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/112794-pixel-grid-rendering-problems-when-zooming/
- Fixed: Radial Blur was not handling alpha correctly
- Fixed: IndirectUI ColorWheel swatch is now rendered correctly (without the fading alpha gradient)
- Fixed: The tooltip describing the shortcut key for tools now indicates how many times to press the key (e.g., press S four times for Magic Wand selection)
- Fixed: Pressing Escape to deselect now works with all tools (this bug was introduced in v4.0)
- Fixed: Images with variable alpha were not displaying correctly at some zoom levels. They were “too dark” in translucent regions. Reported here: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/112184-some-zoom-levels-display-alpha-as-extra-opaque/
- Fixed: For the Store release, launching with the paintdotnet: protocol no longer shows an error if no parameters are provided (thanks @Bruce Bowyer-Smyth!)
- Fixed a crash for some effects that were rendering too quickly
- Fixed a bug in the Image->Resize dialog where the asterisk and the note about which resampling mode was being used, e.g. “* Bicubic will be used,” weren’t going away or updating correctly
- New: Added a /set:SETTING=VALUE command-line parameter. This is specifically useful for disabling hardware acceleration if the app won’t start or you can’t reach the Settings dialog. This is also necessary for the Store release whose virtualized registry cannot be edited. To launch the Store version with hardware acceleration disabled, go to Start -> Run and type in “paintdotnet:/set:UI/EnableHardwareAcceleration=false” (without quotes) and press OK
- New: Added detection for when “Diebold Warsaw” is causing Paint.NET to crash. The error message will indicate this cause.
- Fixed: Addressed CVE-2018-18446. Credit goes to Bruce Bowyer-Smyth.
- Fixed: Addressed CVE-2018-18447. Credit goes to Soroush Dalili from NCC Group.
Enjoy! 🙂
paint.net blog 
Thanks!
Great!
Thanx a lot! :o)
About a month ago I wrote a letter with “Make Shortcut keys layout independent” subject. There was no answer and, as I can see, there’s no fix in this version. Will you fix it?
It’s inconvenient that hotkeys work only in English layout 😦
That’s actually a very complex change that doesn’t have a lot of support and I’m not planning on addressing it.
How these command-line paramter works with the normal version? Could you please post some examples? Thanks
It’d be like I show above for the Store release, except without the paintdotnet: prefix.
So you’d launch PaintDotNet.exe with the parameter /set:UI/EnableHardwareAcceleration=false
Keep in mind that this is being added mostly for troubleshooting purposes. It’s not very interesting other than that, and it’s not actually going to let you do anything more than regedit would.
Thanks, it worked. So technically, the ‘set’ switch can be used to edit any property under HKCU\Software\paint.net regkey (and the settings are identical with properties) Only these properties exist, or there are extra ones?
There aren’t really any extra settings, no. There’s a few I use for debugging or troubleshooting, but nothing really interesting.
Thanks! Just one more question, sorry… 🙂 What is this reg property for: ‘PDNUPDATING’?
You really don’t want to mess with that. I’m not sure if you can modify it with /set:, and if you can then I should prevent that in the next update.
Thanks for the release. You’re making one of the best freeware software in the world 😉
I have to ask, what is the “Diebold Warsaw” you mentioned at the end of the changelog?
It’s some kind of security software that some (many?) Brailian banking institutions require in Brazil in order to access their websites or something. As far as I could tell, It hooks deeply into the OS in order to verify that certain things aren’t being hacked or something. Unfortunately it has bugs and it breaks Paint.NET in ways that I can’t work around but that I can at least detect.
So it’s a rootkit, in other words.
Woah, nasty, i never knew something like this existed (but then again, i’m not from brazil…). And what does the notification say to the user? Regardless, thanks for the info!
It’ll be the standard crash log and it’ll have a 2nd line of text saying:
NOTE: This may be caused by ‘Diebold Warsaw’. If you disable or remove it then paint.net should work again.
There are similar messages for Mirilis Action!, Discord Overlay, EVGA Precision X, and MacType, iirc.
I never realized so many things could interfere with paint.net! Discord overlay too you say? Haven’t noticed any problems so far with having them both active at the same time.