As usual, you can either use the built-in updater from the Utilities menu, or you can download and install directly from the website: http://www.getpaint.net/ . There’s no need to worry about removing the old version; that is all handled automatically.

This update fixes several issues related to copy-paste, improves performance and quality for a few adjustments, and fixes a data loss bug.

• When pasting an image, Paint.NET will be smarter about ensuring it is placed within the area that has been scrolled/zoomed to.
• Improved the performance and quality of the Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustments.
• Some minor improvements to memory usage, which should help out a few scenarios on 32-bit systems.
• Fixed: If a JPEG was loaded that had an embedded ICC profile, and was then saved as an 8-bit or 24-bit PNG, then the resulting file would be corrupt (32-bit PNG worked fine though).
• Fixed: 16-bit TGAs no longer load with the red and blue channels swapped.
• Fixed: Copy-paste from a Remote Desktop session will no longer be ‘shifted’ by 3 pixels.
• Fixed: Copy-paste from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome should preserve alpha/transparency.
• Fixed: Copying from Paint.NET and pasting into Windows Live Writer should now work.
• Fixed: Taking a full-screen screenshot with Print Screen on a multimonitor system, where those monitors don’t form a simple rectangle, will now fill the ‘gap area’ with transparent instead of black. (Example: two monitors of the same size, one of which is rotated by 90 degrees)
• Fixed: If Paint.NET is opened without specifying an image to open, and then the default image is modified and saved, then Paint.NET will no longer close it upon opening another one. This was causing data loss if that default image had layers, and was then saved in a format that did not support layers (anything other than .PDN).
• Fixed: Some systems were showing ‘red X’ thumbnails for .PDN files in Windows Explorer, instead of the real thumbnail.
• Fixed: The EXIF “Creation Software” saved along with images is no longer localized. This prevents certain languages from seeing “Paint.NET ????? v3.5.6” in the image properties (metadata).

Hopefully these fixes should make the wait for 4.0 easier to bare

Also, as a bonus feature which is a corollary to how I’m now handling copy-paste from Internet Explorer: if you “copy” an image from Windows Explorer, you can paste it straight into Paint.NET. For example, right click on some stray image you’ve left on your desktop (c’mon we all have a cluttered desktop). Next, paste into Paint.NET. Pretty cool, maybe even useful.

This release fixes several issues related to copy-paste, improves performance and quality for a few adjustments, and fixes a data loss bug. You can download this using the built-in updater (make sure "Also check for betas" is enabled), or just download it directly from the website: http://www.getpaint.net/ (by the way, please do not directly link to the ZIP files)

I should be able to put out a final (non-beta) release within a week or two.

Here’s what’s changed since v3.5.5:

• Improved: When pasting an image, Paint.NET will be smarter about ensuring it is placed within the area that has been scrolled/zoomed to.
• Improved: Performance and quality of the Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustments.
• Improved: Some minor improvements to memory usage, which should help out a few scenarios on 32-bit systems.
• Fixed: Copy-paste from a Remote Desktop session will no longer be ‘shifted’ by 3 pixels.
• Fixed: Copy-paste from Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Chrome should preserve alpha/transparency.
• Fixed: Copying from Paint.NET and pasting into Windows Live Writer should now work.
• Fixed: Taking a full-screen screenshot with Print Screen on a multimonitor system, where those monitors don’t form a simple rectangle, will now fill the ‘gap area’ with transparent instead of black. (Example: two monitors of the same size, one of which is rotated by 90 degrees)
• Fixed: If Paint.NET is opened without specifying an image to open, and then the default image is modified and saved, then Paint.NET will no longer close that image upon opening another one. This was causing data loss if that default image had layers, and was then saved in a format that did not support layers (anything other than .PDN).
• Fixed: Some systems were showing ‘red X’ thumbnails for .PDN files in Windows Explorer, instead of the real thumbnail.
• Fixed: The EXIF "Creation Software" saved along with images is no longer localized. This prevents certain languages from seeing "Paint.NET ????? v3.5.6" in the image properties (metadata).

Contrary to what I said last week or so, I’ve decided to fix more than just 1 bug in the upcoming Paint.NET v3.5.6, and also to port a few other minor improvements from the v4.0 code base. Right now this is in private testing, and hopefully I’ll have another beta soon.

Here’s what I’m planning on:

• The dreaded “red X” thumbnail bug. As it turns out, if you install the DirectX SDK, it stomps on Paint.NET’s thumbnail handler (it’s a shell extension for Windows Explorer). This has been plaguing me for over a year, and I’ve finally fixed it. Thanks go out to luck, guessing, and Sysinternals’ Process Monitor.
• When saving an image (such as a JPEG), the EXIF metadata for “Creation Software” is no longer localized. This prevents some languages seeing “Paint.NET ?????? 3.5.5” in a saved image’s metadata.
• Some performance and quality improvements to the Curves and Hue/Saturation adjustments, courtesy of Ed Harvey.
• Copy and Paste! There are many scenarios that I’m fixing or improving…
  • It’ll be smarter about positioning the pasted image into the viewport (the portion of the image that is scrolled and zoomed to), instead of always jamming everything to the top-left of the image, which was forcing you to madly scroll around when pasting a bunch of stuff together.
  • When copy-pasting from Remote Desktop, the pasted image will no longer be shifted to the right by 3 pixels. This is a bug in WinForms that I’m working around, and was a bit crazy to fix.
  • Pasting from Internet Explorer or Firefox will preserve alpha. For IE9, it actually gives me a link to the file in its download cache, so I can just load that directly. For Firefox, it places a bitmap with the pixel format set to 32-bpp RGB (“no alpha”). However, it lies … so I detect when I should interpret it as 32-bit ARGB instead.
  • If you have a multi-monitor setup, and those monitors don’t form a simple rectangle, then the “gap area” will be pasted as transparent instead of black. As an example, I have two 24″ monitors. The left-hand one is 1920×1200, while the right-hand one is rotated so it is 1200×1920. If you take the bounding box, you have a rectangle where neither monitor has any representation, and this is the “gap area” (or maybe there’s a more precise term, but oh well).
• I’m also planning to fix the issue where a JPEG is loaded that has an embedded thumbnail, then the image is modified, and then the image is saved again … but with an out-of-date thumbnail. This happens because Paint.NET “blindly” carries along all the EXIF metadata in an image (normally a good policy).
• Some minor performance and memory usage improvements. It should improve reliability on 32-bit systems, especially when using the magic wand with complex selections.

Every so often an update is necessary to fix 1 bug. This is one of those. Before I describe it, you should head over to the forum and download the beta. I am not making it available via the built-in updater.

The bug in question was reported only recently over on the forum, although I’m pretty sure it’s been in the product since the v3.0 release in early 2007!

It’s classified as a data loss bug, although thankfully it’s a relatively minor one. When Paint.NET starts up, it creates an initial/default image (blank and 800×600) if it wasn’t told to open a specific file. Then, when you eventually/probably open another image it will close that initial/default image as long as it wasn’t modified. The idea is that if you didn’t modify that initial image then you probably don’t care about it, and closing it doesn’t result in any data loss (it’s pretty easy to recreate a blank 800×600 image).

Well, I messed up a little on the implementation of determining whether the image was one that could be automatically discarded. I was only checking the “dirty” bit, which powers the little yellow asterisk you see in the thumbnail list when an image has been modified but not saved. The problem comes with when you modify that initial image, then save it, and then open another image. Paint.NET will incorrectly close that initial image (because the “dirty” bit is set to false) even though you still have items in the history list.

This is especially problematic when you work with a bunch of layers, then save in a format that does not support them (e.g. anything but .PDN). You may want to go back and undo the flatten operation that was performed while saving that image, then make further changes, etc. Inadvertent data loss is the unfortunate result.

And before everyone asks: nothing else is being changed in this release! No new features or tweaks or anything. Those are all being saved for the v4.0 release.

Now, go have a happy Halloween. Please don’t drink too much. I’m personally going out in an astronaut costume, which is pretty awesome.