This build isn’t too exciting, fresh off the heels of yesterday’s 4.3 alpha build 7878, but it’s important: it fixes a crash when running an effect with a selection active! (unless the selection was just simple rectangles)

To get this update, make sure you have "Also check for pre-release (beta) versions" enabled in Settings, and then click on the Check Now button. (Unfortunately alpha/beta releases are not currently available for the Microsoft Store version of the app).

For direct download links, please visit the forum.

Changes since 4.3 alpha build 7878:

• Fixed a crash when running an effect while a non-pixelated selection (not just simple rectangles) was active

The complete list of changes so far for 4.3, as compared to 4.2.16:

• New: The app has been migrated to .NET 5, and performance has been greatly improved as a result.
• New: ARM64 is now natively supported
• Installation is much faster now due to no longer needing the "Optimizing performance for your system" stage (NGEN has been replaced with ReadyToRun via crossgen).
• Portable ZIPs are now officially available, utilizing self-contained deployment, and do not require the installation of .NET 5. You must manually update to newer versions of the app, however.
• Improved performance of most effects and other compute-intensive tasks by about 20% on average, due to .NET 5’s improved code generation
• Improved: Many areas of the app have been optimized to use SIMD (SSE2/3/4.1, AVX2) on x86/x64
  • Drawing on an image with a large number of layers is faster
  • Drawing with the Gradient Tool’s alpha mode is faster
  • Drawing with the Recolor tool is faster
  • Drawing with the Erase or Clone Stamp tool is faster when using a color whose alpha value is less than 255
  • Drawing with the Overwrite blend mode is faster
  • Drawing with the Shapes tool is faster, due to improved compositing performance
  • Drawing with a brush tool without antialiasing is faster
  • Tile compression has lower overhead due to being optimized for SSE2 and AVX2
  • Working with complex selections is faster
  • Many other optimizations all throughout the application and rendering engine
• Improved: Selection antialiasing quality is now better by way of using a 4×4 super sampling filter instead of 3×3. The code has also been optimized to use SSSE3 on x86/x64.
• Improved: Performance should be significantly better on systems without HyperThreading (by reserving 1 core for the UI), and also a bit better on systems with it (by utilizing more of the logical cores)
• Improved: Effect and File Type plugins can now be organized into folders — the plugin loader will recursively search for DLLs up to 1 folder deep
• Fixed a bug in Polar Inversion that was causing hangs
• Improved performance of Polar Inversion by 3x, due to the aforementioned bug fix (and a little bit is due to .NET 5)
• Fixed: There were some issues with zooming in/out using the keyboard, where the anchoring (centering) point was not calculated correctly, causing the canvas to drift in the wrong direction.
• Fixed a bug when saving with "Auto Detect" bit-depth that was causing fidelity loss on some images that already had 256 colors or less. This was reported here: https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/118401-images-already-with-256-or-fewer-colors-being-dithered-when-saved-with-palette/
• Changed: A processor that supports SSSE3 (yes 3 S’s) is now required for x86/x64 systems (previously only SSE2 was required). All CPUs released since about 2006 (e.g. Core 2 Duo) support this.
• Known Issue: Due to crashing, GPU accelerated effects (Gaussian Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur) on ARM64 will actually use the CPU for rendering.
• Updated the built-in AvifFileType plugin to v1.1.13.0 (courtesy of @null54). See the project’s GitHub Releases page for more information.