Paint.NET: Free Image Editing Program - A Quick Overview

I've been hearing good things about Paint.NET, which is apparently a newbie-friendly, free photoshop substitute (similar to GIMP, though I've never tried GIMP). It's availible for downloard here, and yes it's totally legal. So now you guys who are lamenting the inability to up the contrast on your photos can now do it with very little troubles at all!

Anyways, I gave it a runthrough today to see how it did and if it limited me at all when it came to editing photos. Paint.NET has a very simple layout construction and is quite simple to navigate. It's unimposing and very straight forward, so it won't scare new users away. It has a lot of good effects that I wasn't expecting it to have, like radial blur, so that was a very pleasant surprise. What I don't like is how it's lacking some very useful but basic features, like the ability to copy-merge.

I had to kind of jump through hoops to get some effects that I was testing to see if it was possible to do them on the application. In the end, it proved achievable. So that means this program won't be too frustrating on people who got spoiled by Photoshop but couldn't find a way to get the program again.

Anyways, here's what I did to test out its limits. And yes, I know it's effect overload-- I was trying to test everything.

The only thing that really, really upsetted me was the font. It was frustrating to work with. Doing the blue-tone coloring was the hardest part, since I couldn't do the typical selective coloring + hue/saturation combos. Radial blur is cool but is centered, so you can't move it around anywhere.

There's a gradient in there too, and their tool for gradients is awesome. No soft light, which is bothersome, so I had to use overlay instead. Gaussian blur's minimum radius is 1 pixel, which is bigger than what I normally use (.5 pixel). Sharpen is a bit strong but can be controlled. You can dictate the transperancy of the brush and radius, but they're too crunchy to use for usual photo-editing purposes. Shape selection is irritating because you can't move your selection around, which leads to redrawing the same thing again and again. Paint.NET has an interesting levels menu plus a very, very nice Curves tool.

But! You don't need that stuff to do what you normal-users want. Typically, you just need to use the program to fix up a little like so!

Edited

All I did there was use the curves a little bit (could've been done with levels, but I reached for curves instinctively), up the saturation a few digits (it got washed out by the curves so I wanted to nudge some color back in), and sharpen once. These were all availible in Paint.NET and only took a few seconds of work, because Paint.NET is much, much smaller than Photoshop, so it doesn't take forever and a day to load.

Except, Paint.NET probably wouldn't be that useful if it comes to drawing. With my tablet and my mouse, the lines came out jagged even when I moved slowly. It has anti-alias on, but there's no pressure-sensitivity. They do have "brushes" though that greatly resemble the tones on PaintBBS. So... if you wanted to do some art that looked like oekaki but wanted some sparkly photoshop effects, you could do it on here.

I'm very pleased with this program. Anyways! Now you guys have no excuse when it comes to low-contrast and dark pictures-- go download this and start prettying up your pictures!

PS: I use Photoshop for this stuff all the time. I'm pretty sure using Paint.NET instead of Photoshop won't cripple you any. It's very good at doing nice photo editing.

 

Yeah, I don't think I'll use this for photo editing in general, and I don't think I'll bother attempting manipulation with it's crunchy brushes. It's a lovely program for free. ;3 Now people won't have any excuses, either. Ho ho ho.

 

Lunafelis - No prob! And I can't remember which editorial it is and who it's by, but here's the rest of the set:

One, two, three, four, five, and six.

Raine Delmont - Yay, I'm glad he likes it.