Download Paint.NET 3.5 build 3450 alpha

A new alpha version of Paint.NET version 3.5 was released on Friday. Paint.NET is a photo editing program that is developed in C# and therefore requires the .NET Framework. In terms of functionality, the program is somewhere between the Paint supplied as standard with Windows and professional commercial programs such as Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop. In version 3.5, significant improvements have been made to both performance and functionality. This has meant that at least version 3.5 SP1 of the .NET Framework is now required. In this second alpha, among other things, the font and text rendering part has been completely rewritten. The complete release notes for this version can be found below:

List of changes:

• Completely rewritten font and text rendering system for the Text tool that no longer uses GDI+ for anything in favor of GDI (font discovery, or text rendering).

This has the consequence of improved stability (no more crashes with bad fonts), improved startup performance (about 10% on average, although the more fonts you have the better improvement you will see), and no more ‘missing’ fonts (all fonts should now appear in the font list)

• New feature: Paint.NET will now update its font list when you install/delete fonts. Previous versions required a restart of the application.
• New feature: Utilities -> Folders -> System Fonts. Now if someone asks, “how do I install a font?” just point them to that.
• Temporary missing feature: There is no choice between ‘Smooth’ and ‘Sharp’ for the Text tool.

Known issue:

• Antialiasing is not enabled at small font sizes. This is just the way that GDI does things, and should be fixed when FreeType support is added (GDI will be used for ‘sharp’, and Freetype for ‘smooth’). (And in fact, this is the same as how v3.36 operates for ‘Sharp’ text rendering — small font sizes results in aliased text.)