Paint.NET, the free Windows photo editing tool, has just received a major update with new editing features and performance improvements. The new Paint.NET version 5.1 offers better color support, new blur effects, and an overall smoother app experience.
Any good image editing tool needs color management support. When you’re working with an image, you want to make sure it looks the same in the app as it did in the camera or as the original creator intended. The color space of the source and the editing app need to match to properly represent the colors and dynamic range. Previously, Paint.NET had little to no color management. The new update adds full support, allowing you to choose from four popular color profiles: ProPhoto RGB, sRGB, Display P3, and Adobe RGB. You can also import custom profiles. You can see it in action on the screenshots below.
From there, you can either add that profile to the image’s metadata or apply it to the image. The editor can also use your display’s color profile, including HDR and Wide Color Gamut support, but you’ll need to manually calibrate the feature.
There are also two new blur effects: Sketch Blur and Square Blur. Sketch Blur makes images look like impressionist paintings. Square Blur creates a bokeh effect with square points of light. The entire effects and adjustments library, including two new blur effects, is now optimized to run on the GPU. You can also use the new Canvas tab in the Settings menu to customize the appearance of the canvas.
The updated Paint.NET introduces numerous performance improvements, even in the portable version of the app. Since the entire effects library is now GPU-enabled, CPU memory usage is reduced, making everything smoother and faster. Input latency is also now lower, making the new version faster and more responsive.
You can download the Paint.NET 5.1 beta from GitHub, but if you want a stable experience, you should stick with the current version 5.0.13 until the new update is fully available.
Source: Paint.NET
