I had heard about Paint.NET previously, but just brushed it off as another Adobe Photoshop
Then I decided to finally give Paint.NET a try. To my utter surprise, it was a very refreshing experience! First off, it runs extremely fast. By the time Photoshop even opens, you can open Paint.NET and practically have your work done. Every tool is incredibly smooth in its response time. There is no “catching up” time for brushes and other tools.
Aside from speed, what really grabbed my attention is the sheer intuitiveness of the interface. After using Paint.NET for 5 minutes, I constantly ask myself, “why doesn’t Photoshop have this feature?” Here’s what really stands out to me:
- The gradient tool lets you see the gradient as you are applying it, as opposed to drawing a line and seeing it after you’ve made your selection. It can be easily switched to color mode or transparency mode.
- When covering your image, the tool windows (colors, layers, etc.) become slightly transparent so you can see underneath.
- The toolbar contains an area where thumbnails of all your open images are placed. That means that you don’t have to remember which “Untitled” image was the one you were working with last. Just select its thumbnail.
- Cropping is done using the standard selection tool. Just make your selection and choose “Image->Crop to Selection”.
- Use your background color for brushes and shapes by creating them with your right mouse button instead of your left.
There are several other nice little features that I haven’t mentioned, but are worth discovering for yourself. Overall, this is a very nice freeware program!
Tags: Photoshop, image editor, freeware, Paint.NET, tools, Windows
