Download Paint.NET 4.0.4 build 5447

Version 4.0.4 of Paint.NET has been released. As the name suggests, this program needs the .Net framework to do its job. It started as a study assignment for Washington State University, to replace the Paint included with Windows, but now contains a lot of functionality that we also see in more extensive, commercial packages. Version 4.0 works a lot faster, especially on multicore processors, but has at least Windows 7 as a system requirement. Version 4.0.4 includes various performance improvements and bug fixes.

Paint.NET 4.0.4 is now available

As I discussed in an earlier blog post, this update greatly improves performance in some key areas like the Magic Wand and Move Selected Pixels tools. It also fixes some important bugs, and even gives back a feature that got lost in the move from 3.5 to 4.0. Good stuff all around!

As usual, you can download it directly from the website, or you can use the built-in updater via Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.

Here’s the changelog:

• New: Added a ‘Fill’ property to the Paintbrush tool (regression from 3.5).
• Faster: Move Selected Pixels has been significantly optimized.
• Faster: Magic Wand Tool has been significantly optimized.
• Faster: Working with aliased selections (“aliased selection quality” in the toolbar) has been significantly optimized.
• Faster: Edit->Copy and Edit->Copy Merged are now up to 2x faster.
• Faster: Drawing when a selection is active; clipping performance is now improved.
• Fixed: The Text tool no longer produces terrible looking text when using Smooth rendering mode without antialiasing.
• Fixed: The Gear shape had a few glitches.
• Fixed: Using a Fill pattern with the Paint Bucket would sometimes produces misaligned or “corrupt looking” results.
• Fixed: The alignment of the menu buttons in the top-right was off by 2 pixels, causing them to look weird at high-DPI.
• Fixed: The zoom buttons in the status bar would not recognize clicks unless the main window was already in focus.
• Fixed: Some incorrect errors about requiring Windows 7 SP1 when launching the installer from something like an old version of WinZip.
• Fixed: Edit->Clear Selection and Edit->Cut were filling with transparent black (#00000000) instead of transparent white (#00FFFFFF). This caused some discrepancies compared to older versions of Paint.NET (regression from 3.5).
• Fixed: Pressing Ctrl+A when a drawing tool was active would sometimes incorrectly show a tinted selection.
• Fixed: Text in the title bar was not visible when using a 3rd party Aero theme with black titlebars.