When all you need to do is some simple photo editing, or quick graphics, monster programs like Photoshop are overkill, hogging your system memory and your financial resources. But for all of you frugal photo editor’s tired of being abused by Adobe’s (and its various clones’) hard hitting prices, a new photo editing application has come to save the day. And yes, thrivers on thrift, it’s a deal you can’t refuse.

I’m talking about Paint.NET, yes that’s Microsoft’s .NET, which means too bad for all you Apple and Linux folks out there (though I’m sure you’ve already got a replacement of sorts)

So, if you have Windows, you’re good to go. While not an official Microsoft product, Paint.NET is considered to be a long needed upgrade to the MS Paint that comes free with Windows.

Paint.Net supports most of the popular image formats, JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF; as a trade of for its ultra sleak performance, you won’t get support for super high resolution images.

There are however, many of the features expected in a graphics application, Magic Wand, Lasso Select, and Gradient Fill to name a few. Though the deal maker for this application is from its support of Layers, Actions, and the semi-transparent interface that makes viewing your image easier!

In it’s third version, and as a beta release, Paint.NET is an awesomely sharp program built on the scaffolds of the powerful .NET framework. With its great features, slick interface, and $0 price, Paint.NET is an application worth the attention of anyone who needs quick and simple image edits.

Product Rating: A-

Features direct from getPaint.net
Simple, intuitive user interface
Every feature and user interface element was designed to be immediately intuitive and quickly learnable without assistance. It is also designed to be immediately familiar to users of the original MS Paint software that comes with Windows.

Layers
Usually only found on expensive or complicated professional software, layers form the basis for a rich image composition experience. You may think of them as a stack of transparency slides that, when viewed together at the same time, form one image.

Powerful Tools
Paint.NET includes simple tools for drawing shapes, including an easy-to-use curve tool for drawing splines or Bezier curves. The Gradient tool, new for 3.0, has been cited as a huge improvement over similar tools provided by other software. The facilities for creating and working with selections is powerful, yet still simple enough to be picked up quickly. Other powerful tools include the Magic Wand for selecting regions of similar color, and the Clone Stamp for copying or erasing portions of an image. There is also a simple text editor, a tool for zooming, and a Recolor tool.

Unlimited History
Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody changes their mind. To accommodate this, every action you perform on an image is recorded in the History window and may be undone. Once you’ve undone an action, you can also redo it. The length of the history is only limited by available disk space.

Special Effects
Many special effects are included for perfecting your images. Everything from blurring, sharpening, red-eye removal, distortion, noise, and embossing are included. Also included is our unique 3D Rotate/Zoom effect that makes it very easy to add perspective and tilting.

Adjustments are also included which help you tweak an image’s brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, curves, and levels. You can also convert an image to black and white, or sepia-toned.

Open Source and Free
Paint.NET is provided free-of-charge, and the source code (all 133,000 lines of it) is also available for free under generous licensing terms. The bulk of Paint.NET is written in C#, with only a small amount of code related to setup and shell-integration written in C++.