This is a maintenance release that adds a Bulgarian translation and fixes some important bugs.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)

  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.8:

• New: Added Bulgarian (bg) translation
• Fixed: The Levels and Auto-Level adjustments were crashing with panoramic images due to a bug in Direct2D that caused it to attempt allocating a texture that was too large
• Fixed: Using a non-solid fill pattern with a non-opaque color was resulting in the wrong colors being drawn to the layer due to a mixup between straight and premultiplied alpha
• Fixed: Non-CMYK images with an embedded CMYK color profile were being rendered with completely wrong colors
• Fixed a few small memory leaks

This is a simple maintenance release that mostly fixes a few small bugs, and updates the bundled DDS FileType plugin.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)

  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.7:

• Fixed an issue where a JPEG with an XYZ color profile was taking a very long time to load
• Fixed the ability to use relative paths to open images via paintdotnet.exe when Paint.NET is already open
• New: Added +/- buttons in the toolbar for the Text tool’s font size
• Improved the robustness of file saving in pathological scenarios (e.g. power outage at the very end of saving)
• Added a /resetWindows command-line parameter to assist in troubleshooting scenarios
• Updated the bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to v1.12.13 (thanks @null54!)

This is a hotfix for brush rendering to not occasionally have segments that are drawn twice.

The 5.1.6 update was a hotfix for a memory leak, and also updated the bundled JPEG XL plugin to fix a crash on ARM64.

The 5.1.5 update added JPEG XL (*.jxl) support, improved quantization color quality, updated AVIF loading to better handle mapping HDR images to SDR, and fixed some bugs.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)

  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.6:

• Fixed a bug in the UI system that was causing the brush tools to occasionally process pointer input events twice.
• Updated the bundled JpegXLFileType plugin to v1.1.3 (thanks @null54!).

Changes since 5.1.5:

• Fixed a memory leak when flattening an image and then undoing that change.
• Updated the bundled JpegXLFileType plugin to v1.1.2 to fix a crash on ARM64 (thanks @null54!).

Changes since 5.1.4:

• New: JPEG XL (*.jxl) images are now supported by way of bundling @null54‘s JpegXLFileType plugin
• Fixed the Levels adjustment not honoring the active selection.
• Fixed some more mouse cursor issues when completing certain actions with certain tools.
• Fixed some keyboard shortcuts in the Adjustments menu not working reliably.
• Fixed most cases of tooltips blinking on/off when drawn near the bottom of the screen (thanks @toe_head2001!).
• Fixed some new high-DPI scaling issues in toolbar dropdowns.
• Improved quantization quality for Effects->Color-Quantize and when saving an image at 8-bit depth and below. This was done by merging octree node colors in linear gamma space.
• Fixed some incorrect background text color rendering in the status bar.
• Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to v3.12.1, which improves conversion from HDR images utilizing the Rec. 2020 PQ color space (thanks @null54).
• Updated the bundled WebpFileType plugin to v1.5.0 (thanks @null54!).

This is a hotfix for 5.1.5 that fixes a memory leak, and also updates the bundled JPEG XL plugin to fix a crash on ARM64.

The 5.1.5 update added JPEG XL (*.jxl) support, improved quantization color quality, updatesdAVIF loading to better handle mapping HDR images to SDR, and fixed some bugs.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)

  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.5:

• Fixed a memory leak when flattening an image and then undoing that change.
• Updated the bundled JpegXLFileType plugin to fix a crash on ARM64 (thanks @null54!).

Changes since 5.1.4:

• New: JPEG XL (*.jxl) images are now supported by way of bundling @null54‘s JpegXLFileType plugin
• Fixed the Levels adjustment not honoring the active selection.
• Fixed some more mouse cursor issues when completing certain actions with certain tools.
• Fixed some keyboard shortcuts in the Adjustments menu not working reliably.
• Fixed most cases of tooltips blinking on/off when drawn near the bottom of the screen (thanks @toe_head2001!).
• Fixed some new high-DPI scaling issues in toolbar dropdowns.
• Improved quantization quality for Effects->Color-Quantize and when saving an image at 8-bit depth and below. This was done by merging octree node colors in linear gamma space.
• Fixed some incorrect background text color rendering in the status bar.
• Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to v3.12.1, which improves conversion from HDR images utilizing the Rec. 2020 PQ color space (thanks @null54).
• Updated the bundled WebpFileType plugin to v1.5.0 (thanks @null54!).

This update adds JPEG XL (*.jxl) support, improves quantization color quality, updates AVIF loading to better handle mapping HDR images to SDR, and fixes some bugs.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)
  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.4:

• New: JPEG XL (*.jxl) images are now supported by way of bundling @null54‘s JpegXLFileType plugin
• Fixed the Levels adjustment not honoring the active selection.
• Fixed some more mouse cursor issues when completing certain actions with certain tools.
• Fixed some keyboard shortcuts in the Adjustments menu not working reliably.
• Fixed most cases of tooltips blinking on/off when drawn near the bottom of the screen (thanks @toe_head2001!).
• Fixed some new high-DPI scaling issues in toolbar dropdowns.
• Improved quantization quality for Effects->Color-Quantize and when saving an image at 8-bit depth and below. This was done by merging octree node colors in linear gamma space.
• Fixed some incorrect background text color rendering in the status bar.
• Updated the bundled AvifFileType plugin to v3.12.1, which improves conversion from HDR images utilizing the Rec. 2020 PQ color space (thanks @null54).
• Updated the bundled WebpFileType plugin to v1.5.0 (thanks @null54!).

This is a maintenance release with a big heaping of performance improvements, bug fixes, and other small changes.

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)
  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you’re not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it’s certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don’t have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.2:

• Fixed: Some PNG metadata from text chunks is now preserved (Author, Comment, Copyright, and Description).
• Fixed some issues with snapping tool windows when there are multiple monitors with different scaling levels. Sometimes the snapping boundaries would be calculated in the wrong coordinate space and cause snapping to happen at seemingly arbitrary (and weird) locations.
• Improved frame rate, frame pacing, and responsiveness of the canvas when using CPU- or GPU-intensive tools such as Move Selected Pixels.
• Fixed an off-by-1 error in the Median Blur effect that was producing incorrect results, especially with radius=1.
• Fixed a crash in the Levels adjustment’s UI due to some improper value clamping.
• Fixed the Red Eye Removal effect so it no longer crashes if the canvas zoom level does not show the whole image.
• Fixed the Red Eye Removal effect so that it properly clips to the active selection.
• Fixed: View -> Zoom to Selection no longer adjusts the zoom level slightly if used twice in a row.
• Improved: The Color properties for the Clouds effect now have Reset buttons, which will reset them to the current Primary and Secondary colors.
• Fixed: When opening an image with a CMYK color profile, it will be ignored and removed if the image is actually RGB.
• Fixed some issues with the mouse cursor briefly being a generic arrow instead of the tool’s requested cursor.
• Fixed: The installer will no longer silently die on Windows 10 pre-v21H2. It will now correctly show an error message stating that Windows 10 v21H2 is required, and the exit code will be ERROR_OLD_WIN_VERSION.
• Substantially improved UI responsiveness when modifying a complex selection with a combine mode other than Replace
• Fixed: Tooltips now respect dark mode (thanks @toe_head2001!)
• Fixed: The Text tool’s “Sharp (Modern)” rendering mode has been reverted to use Natural Symmetric rendering instead of Natural Symmetric Downsampled. (See discussion here. cc @Leahsarah)
• Reduced the performance cost of the circle “preview cursor” that all of the brush tools use.
• Fixed PdnZoomBlurEffect when the AlphaMode property was set to Straight.
• Fixed PdnZoomBlurEffect when the BorderMode was set to Soft.
• New: HlslUnaryFunctionEffect (for GPU effect plugin developers) now has FrexpMantissaPortion, FrexpExponentPortion, ModfIntegerPortion, and ModfFractionalPortion. These provide access to the Frexp and Modf HLSL instructions.
• New: Plugins may now implement custom DirectWrite IInlineObjects.
• New: IEffectConfigForm.Close() is now public, and may be used by plugins that are hosting other effects via IEffectsService2.
• New: Added an accelerator key for Image -> Rotate 90° Counter-clockwise.
• New: Added accelerator keys to the View menu for the Inches, Centimeters, and Pixels choices.
• Changed to use the Windows thread pool instead of the .NET portable thread pool.