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原始链接: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39871186

Paint.net 是一款用户友好的图像编辑软件，适合中等复杂度的艺术作品任务。它的界面很简单，并且提供了大量的插件，尽管它具有专有的格式。为了方便起见，用户通常将项目保存为 JPG 或 PNG，而不是 Paint.net (PDN) 格式。尽管 Paint.net 拥有一个多年来维护免费软件的活跃社区，但 Krita 等较新的选项为插件提供了改进的组织和功能。该软件的突出特点是它分离了用于操作图像选择的简单控件。这种易用性可以快速完成裁剪和调整大小等任务，在某些方面超越了 Krita 和 GIMP 等竞争对手。尽管 Paint.net 仅适用于 Windows，并且通过 Pinta 在 Linux 上提供的稳定性较差，但对于那些寻求简化的体验来满足频繁图像编辑需求的人来说，Paint.net 仍然很受欢迎。虽然 Paint.net 不是开源的，但它对从 Windows 环境过渡到 Linux 环境的用户具有怀旧的价值。

I've been using paint.net for years now and it does have some pros.

- Sufficient even for mid-complexity art tasks

- Nice, simple interface

- Plenty of plugins

I don't mind the proprietary format -- since I'm usually just doing quick tasks in it, I'm either saving as jpg or png, or don't expect to need to open the pdn file at some later time or in other software.

However for anyone looking to start with something new, I'd really recommend using Krita or some other more recent program. Paint.net's available plugins are wildly disorganized, spread across at least one forum and hundreds of threads, often out of date or not working as intended, etc.

Great community and they deserve all the praise for maintaining free software for many years, but much like Gimp, it's just not the best free option available anymore.

To me, Paint.NET hits the right complexity spot.

Offers basic functionality, that allows the user to easily achieve most goals.

It's not intended as a Photoshop replacement (GIMP tries to) or a professional tool.

But most other users will find that what they're trying to achieve is straightforward compared to other options.

The best part is it did it in a way that it’s still accessible to basic needs

Gimp on the other hand… only for power users. I recently tried using it for some quick edits (apt install gimp popped into my head first) What a nightmare.

Linux apps of old were the bare engine with no seat belts and cup holders, and often no steering wheel. Windows apps back in the day were often way better about easing users in.

If there is one thing about Paint.net that I really like, it is that is has separate, simple controls for manipulating a selection independently of whatever the selection is selecting. Like you can move the marching ants around super easy. Years ago I had a job that involved a lot of cropping + rescaling images and my workflow with paint.net was so much faster than anything else

I have tried all but pdn is the best software for quick editing. In the time it takes for Krita or GIMP to launch, I'm already halfway in pdn. I really miss it when using Linux.

For Linux there is Pinta, which is a very similar UI to pdn. It works well enough much of the time but I've found it way more unstable than pdn (and without the plugin ecosystem).

Pinta actually uses an older version of the paint.net image manipulation functionality from when Paint.net was open source, with a rewritten UI (in gtk# if I recall correctly, compared to WPF for Paint.net). However, that new UI is significantly inferior to Paint.net's. One example - last time I tried it, the "marching arts" to highlight selections was sized in terms of pixels in the source image. It was always 1 source image pixel wide, rather than 1 screen pixel. This significantly hurt its usefulness for pixel art type situations.

I'm not sure what it is on my machine(s), but I've found Pinta to be very unstable. It'll crash to desktop without warning in the middle of random operations. If it would just work reliably it's the paint app I want to use.

There have been issues with the packaging of the app. I can't remember precisely, but I do remember some crashes due to mismatches of some expected library version in Debian family. I'm using the version on Flathub which seems to work, and while I dislike some of the recent UI decisions like the ColorPicker is now worse (apparently enforced on them via GTK changes), I do still like Pinta.

It's also Windows only and one of the few things still holding me back from going full KDE. Krita is frankly overcomplicated for basic everyday stuff and Pinta is a decent clone with the same workflow and shortcuts, but still falls short in most aspects and is not very performant.

Paint.net is the one thing I missed when I switched from Windows to Mac when M1 came out.

It's a brilliant quick photo editor.

People say to use Pinta on Mac but it's not the same. The closest I've found is Pixelmator Pro, which is also awesome, but is not free and quite a bit heavier than Paint.net.

Paint.Net is by far the best non-pro graphics editor ever. So practical and intuitive. To me lack of Paint.Net seems the biggest problem of desktop Linux, also of Mac. Sadly Pinta appears buggy. But it still is tolerable and has no real alternative. Both Photoshop and GIMP feel too unintuitive and this way take too much time to do simple things when you are not a graphics pro. GIMP also arguably looks ugly. Paint.Net is a great example of the whole UX (intuitiveness, convenience and aesthetics) done right.

As I understand Paint.Net it is a WPF app. I wish the author would just use Avalonia XPF to port it to Linux and Mac. XPF is a drop-in replacement for WPF which can easily make WPF apps cross-platform for some money. I wouldn't mind paying my share.

Yup, Paint.NET was the thing I mourned the most switching from Windows to Linux... still do. I'm somewhat surprised that there hasn't been more of an effort to get it working on Wine. I figure there's some context I'm missing, but still. It just seems odd that so many games have been made to work, but Paint.NET is sitting with a listed rank of "Garbage".

Both WPF and WinForms, additionally at least DirectWrite and Direct2D and by now a bunch of shader code for the various effects. I guess there's a lot of things that can go wrong when trying to run it via Wine.

Many quality Mac apps are not free. Fair enough IMO, then we know the developer gets some income for their work and hopefully stay motivated to refine the application.

My favourite in this category is Flying Meat’s Acorn. Really nice.

I am not sure how it compares to recent versions of Paint.NET, but on my Apple desktop computer, I like to use Aseprite [0] (which is also not free). At the very least, Aseprite seems to have more features compared to the Paint.NET version that came with my Windows 10 installation (I think).

It's more of a graphic program for game design, but still very good in my opinion. And multiplatform, so usable on Windows and Linux as well.

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[0]: https://www.aseprite.org/

yes, and it's the same for foobar2000

some software can't be replaced and don't have good enough alternatives, and prevent me from switch to linux

windows is getting worse, but not bad enough to justify me switching to linux, exactly because of those softwares

it's odd in a way, because the free software for windows is generally higher in quality that the one I find on linux.

And Gimp will never replace paint.net. Inkscape also have a very difficult UI.

This is from when I was using Linux full-time around 2010, but I was a foobar2000 user on Windows and wound up using Quod Libet as the best Linux-side replacement for it I could find. It wasn't a perfect substitute, but it worked for my needs.

(Some searching suggests that DeaDBeeF might be an even closer match these days, but it was brand new and I didn't hear about it back then.)

People use foorbar in different ways, but when I moved (foorbar works well in Wine btw), I discovered that Quodlibet is actually a better version of what I was using foobar for.

Inkscape certainly has some idiosyncracies in its UI, but yeah, for the most part it's very reasonable and mostly adheres to common UI/UX conventions. Not sure how much it deviates from, say, Illustrator, as I haven't used the latter.

The tooling back then was so good for windows desktop though. Before the recent mess. It enabled a lot of really nice apps. Good example of what great dev support can do for a platform.

I switched over to pixlr web apps and I love them - definitely recommend checking them out. I pay for premium (like $3/mo maybe) purely because I want to support them, not for the features.

I use Paint.Net on my Windows machines. It's a great piece of software—and free. I bought the Microsoft Store version to support the author, although I continue to install the free download.

I also run https://github.com/viliusle/miniPaint using Cloudflare Pages so it's hosted in one of my sub-domains as minipaint.[mydomainhere] and it's great for quick jobs.

That's a cool tip! Can you run Minipaint for free on Cloudflare or do you have to subscribe to their services to use it?

How does it compare to something like photopea.com ?

Oh yes. I found Paint.Net and used it for many years as a quick photo editing solution. It's lightweight, reasonably fast and sophisticated enough for most daily tasks. However, I find I no longer install it on my new Windows boxes because of Photopea. Photopea is kind of a Photoshop Express clone and runs entirely in the browser. It's amazing how fast and easy photo editing software can be. WASM is really amazing stuff!

If you want a cross-platform photo editing tool, give it a try!

Its always amazing to me how, even on a site inhabited almost exclusively by people that make a living writing software, people get so offended by the idea of paying for software. As long as software does not have lock-in and is offered for a reasonable price, I'm very happy to pay someone for their time and ingenuity.

Some people will be okay with the ads.

Others will prefer to go the subscription fee route to get rid of them.

Some others will look at the ads and just decide to use software without anything like that in the first place, something truly free.

I think it's nice that we get the choice and that there's enough software out there for that to be the case. At the same time, if developers are successfully monetizing web based software, I wonder why that's not the case for desktop software.

I remember using a program called RaiDrive (https://www.raidrive.com/) to mount ext4 volumes through SFTP on a Windows machine and it worked pretty well, however they had an ad banner at the top of the window which seemed oddly fitting for a free version of software with lots of functionality, but maybe that's just due to me being used to ads everywhere nowadays (albeit uBlock Origin and Pi-hole exist).

Like many others, I was a die hard Paint.NET person while Windows-only. When I went multiplatform 8 years ago, Krita took its place. Bulkier, buggier and in some ways less convenient, but so many great features and fully cross platform. I tried pdn again recently and was shocked at the chaos that plugins still are.

I recall trying Gimp 2.99 with the new UI some years ago (they take their time don't they) and finally liking it a lot. I would love for it to get a popularity boost like Blender did.

Did something new happen with paint.net? Or just a post to remind us?

I love paint.net. Recently purchased a windows store license for it. Clearly a winner for most of the image editing needs I have, for things like basic cropping, dpi changes, or changing formats. I treat it like I did GraphicConverter on Mac. Just a beloved image tool.

Lately I’ve been using it for simple file conversion with roll20, to hand-tune my assets for small downloads with webp.

paint.net is one of the only pieces of software that I miss from Windows. After having started with Tux Paint, I found paint.net extremely intuitive and easy to use (very nice for making goofy memes in middle/high school, and quick/easy drawings). I think that even after not having used it for years I am still more productive in it than I am in, say, Photoshop or GIMP.

I have found Pinta (pinta-project.com) is a great replacement that works on Linux. I don't use it very often anymore but last time I did it was basically a drop-in replacement.

No affiliation, just something I have used.

Slightly related, if someone wants Photoshop like features, I would recommend Photopea. It's basically photoshop but all processing is done in browser and doesn't need to be installed.

It is one of few softwares, I believe MSFT should simply sponsor and promote, maybe make it opensource. It is a perfect application, Windows only built in dotnet, loved by users and has a perfect positioning.

It used to be FOSS:

> Initially, Paint.NET was released under a modified version of the MIT License, with the exclusion of the installer, text, and graphics.[7] However, citing issues with the open source code being plagiarized by others that had rebranded the software as their own and bundled user content without their permission, the availability of the source code was restricted, in December 2007 Brewster announced his intent to restrict access to components of the program (including its installer, resources, and user interface).[8] In November 2009, the software was made proprietary, restricting the sale or creation of derivative works of the software.[8][9] [[1]]

I quit using it when it wasn't anymore.

I now use Pixelmator Pro on macOS, and I love it, but it isn't FOSS. Price was OK though. Is it the best? I don't know.

[[1]] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paint.NET

Big cosign on this. Paint.net is about as good as it gets in the freeware closed source world.

The other one I love is MusicBee, which is a fantastic music library organizer and player.

I always try to pick open source options when they're available, but these two apps are so great it's hard to find a replacement.

I've been using Pant dot NET for 20 years since the initial version.

The project was originally started by WSU (Washington State University)'s Rick Brewster and his team with backed MSFT.

But it wasn't adopted for Windows.

This was _the_ one thing that kept me switching from Windows to Linux.

Bit the bullet and now I full time use Krita and Linux Mint. But it doesn't stop me from pulling it open anytime I need to do work on a Windows PC. Great for Cg (with its builtin .dds support!) and texture work (.vtf and other plugins)

The community has been good to me. Good piece of software.

I use a Mac now, but have a Windows VM running in Parallels. Paint.net is one of the first apps I installed on that VM. It's ridiculously easy and intuitive.

The closest program I've found for Mac is Pixelmator Pro, but it's not free, and the UI/workflow is more complex in my opinion. Paint.NET is still one of my favorite pieces of software on Windows.

Ah, memories. When I was on Windows I did all my edits and 'shops in this. Capable enough for layering and clone stamping, I touched up images of friends and I in absurd situations. E.g. a photo of us camping was made to look like a battle scene from Call of Duty 4. Then I shared it on Fb for a few likes and comments.

I wonder if the younger generation still make time for things like this. Wouldn't have happened without Paint.NET, I was too conscientious to pirate Photoshop.

The main thing I remember about Paint.net are forced updates and being the only software besides windows update to create system restore points. Always felt a bit overkill for updating a basic graphics program. It was great to have something free with more features than Paint and less complicated than GIMP though.

When I remember right, Paint.net has this funny origin story: someone wanted to proof that .NET was not suitable for delivering a paint application. He proofed himself otherwise and made a permanent job out of it.

Always choose this app but find myself using Irfan view for printing nearly every time as the Windows native print dialog which paint.net and other image apps use to be severely lacking.

I do not use this for two reasons:

- It is not open source.

- It does only run on Windows.

Alternatives include Krita, Pinta and The GIMP.

Yep, I'm happy with Pinta as Paint.NET alternative on macOS. Sometimes, I feel GIMP is a bit complicated when I typically want simple quick processes like cropping, paintbrush, etc.

this app is almost as old as dotNet and always felt like a showcase. it works, but understand your concerns. especially as the format is exclusive to their app (and the only way to have layers)

It's sad to see that paint.net (the domain) is parked now. Back in the day they had a little notice at the top of their site for people (like me) who were looking for Paint.NET's website. I always thought that was super cool of them because they didn't have to do that.

I still prefer paint shop pro from the 1990's (some of the versions from back then are 32 bit and mostly run in windows)

it runs extremely fast on any modern windows box

Regarding its native file format, IIRC it's a dump (aka serialization) of the internal structures used in the program. More or less like the old Office did for its native doc and xls files.

Disappointing to see that they still didn't port it to other platforms after all these years. I thought that should be easy to do since .net is multiplatform.

I can't say I understand the strategy, there are enough painting programs for Windows (which they even seem to focus on extra much on the frontpage of the website too) yet they are donation based but exclude other platforms.

Paint.Net is an example of how to make great apps. Very focused, fast and easy to use.

I tried multiple alternatives, including Krita, which was the most decent. But its layout, speed, colorschemes, behaviors and some visual bugs are meh compared to subj. The most annoying is its content window black-flash when the cursor crosses the border.

Btw, does someone know a good SD webui plugin for PDN?

proprietary app, proprietary format (pdn), which coincidentally is the only supported one that works with layers. save yourself the trouble of locking yourself into this format and app.

Been using paint.net for years. The only downside it has is mentioning it's name, because people keep going to the completely unrelated "paint.net" website. Super fucking annoying.

Anyhow, the only paint program I've used in years. I consider it to be the modern Deluxe Paint ][. Can't get anyone to use it though, because they're all clueless normies stuck in the belief they need to use PhotoShop for everything.

If that makes no sense to you, consider the insane amount of people who buy an expensive DSLR, because they believe it makes them better photographers. Hint: It doesn't.

I fully agree with a lot of that. It's the modern Deluxe Paint in a lot of ways.

I've had web developers hear "paint.net" and think Microsoft Paint (maybe the ".net" makes them think Microsoft), and why am I using something so basic?

> insane amount of people who buy an expensive DSLR

I'm not with you at all on that one. DSLR sales have plummeted every year for the last decade. "Normies", as you put it, think their smartphone camera is a high-end camera and all they could possibly ever need for taking top-quality photographs. The appalling noise their tiny sensors produce seems to have become so normalised, they don't even notice.

Paint.net is great. I even purchased it from the Windows store even though you can install it for free outside of that channel. The one thing that does annoy me about it is that there's no way to dock the floating windows. I'm sure being able to rearrange them is great for some people's workflows but for me, I'd prefer them just to be docked to the main window. Maybe something like Visual Studio where everything can be docked to any side or completely undocked but just a everything docked option would be fine for me.

Photopea.com! It's basically a free version of Photoshop.

I haven't used paint.net in like a decade(maybe 2 decades). I didn't like the interface at all. And it seemed to heavily rely on .NET graphics APIs, which are fine, I guess. Hopefully it's improved since then. Doesn't sound like it. Closed source now? Meh.

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