Na vier bèta's en twee release candidates is nu eindelijk de final-release van versie 2.1 van Paint.NET uitgekomen. Dit programma kan worden gezien als vervanger van het bij Windows meegeleverde MS Paint en wordt in C# door enkele mensen van de Washington State University in samenwerking met Microsoft ontwikkeld. De software werkt alleen onder Windows XP of 2000 en uiteraard zal het .NET FrameWork geïnstalleerd moeten staan. In versie 2.1 zijn voornamelijk verbeteringen doorgevoerd in de snelheid van het programma, de comptabiliteit en de kwaliteit van de afbeeldingen. Hieronder staan alle verschillen ten opzichte van versie 2.0:
Changes in Paint.NET 2.1[break]
- Many bug fixes and miscellaneous user interface tweaks.
- Installation via Group Policy is now supported.
- Rendering quality, usage, and performance of selections is improved.
- Much better performance all around.
- Magic Wand selection tool.
- Ellipse/circle selection tool.
- PNG transparency is now supported.
- GIF save quality significantly improved.
- JPEG quality selector and preview, and file size preview.
- Upgraded PDN file format to support very large images.
- Thumbnails are now shown for .PDN files in Windows Explorer.
- Much higher quality rendering when zooming out.
- Background layer is no longer "locked".
- EXIF data is now preserved for supporting file formats.
- Lower memory usage. History items are now saved to disk instead of completely stored in memory.
- Better Tablet PC support. Also, Ink isn't used unless you have a Tablet PC; this has increased compatibility and performance on regular systems.
- Ability to resize image based on a percentage.
- Brand new image resampling routines for Image->Resize menu item (no more transparent borders).
- No more flickering in the UI.
- More optimizations for multiprocessor and multicore systems.
- Startup time is greatly reduced.