This improves performance, and also helps battery life on laptops. More of the UI is now using using the GPU, including the Layers and History windows, the ruler, the image list at the top of the main windows, and the UI for the Curves and Levels adjustments. In v5.0, support for the GPU has been greatly expanded.

In v4.1, GPU acceleration was added to a few effects (blurs, mostly). Paint.NET, since v4.0, has already been using hardware accelerated rendering for drawing the canvas to the screen. Support for more brush shapes and types, including custom brushes, will be making an appearance in a future update. The newly rewritten brush engine is supported by all of the brush tools: Paintbrush, Eraser, Clone Stamp, and Recolor.

This also enables new styles of drawing, such as the following which was drawn with a spacing value of 200%: The default is 15% which does a great job, but sometimes you need finer control. There is a new spacing property in the toolbar. Path smoothing, sometimes called stabilization, is now implemented (enabled by default in the toolbar): Most devices support this, including the Surface Pen and various drawing tablets from Wacom, UGEE, and more. Support for the Windows 'pointer' input system (aka 'Windows Ink') is required. And now it's time to share it with all of youīack by popular demand*, pressure sensitivity is now supported, enabling you to draw beautiful, natural-looking brush strokes (see above). Almost all of the built-in adjustments and effects now render using the GPU, greatly improving their performance and quality.ĭevelopment on this new version began after the release of v4.3 and has been proceeding at a breakneck pace for the last year. Welcome to Paint.NET 5.0! This is the first public alpha build of this large update which has many major performance improvements, new features including pressure sensitivity for pens and drawing tablets, and a brand new effect plugin system with GPU rendering support. I plan on enabling the in-app updater within the next few weeks once it's clear that it's ready for a larger audience. You can use the download links below to get either the installer or the portable version of the app. NOTE: This alpha build is not available via the in-app updater.

Free downloads Paint.NET 5.0.9