Paint without numbers (Paint.net)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Paint.net
Date:	22/04/09 (129 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free

Disadvantages: A couple of one clicks missing

Paint.net is an image manipulation programme which is not that dissimilar to Photoshop CS3. I was using CS3 for a long time, until my computer crashed, lost everything and I couldn't find all the details to reinstall it.

So I started to look for something free to make do while I argued with Adobe over the details and came across Paint.net. It's a free programme, and surprisingly powerful for something that costs you nothing.

Downloading and installing is very simple, go to paint.net and click the download link to download. Then the installation is just a case of clicking 'next', 'next', 'next', even I can manage it.

As someone who has previously attempted to use GIMP, I was so glad to see it looked nothing like it when it was installed, it looks very similar to CS3, with everything in one place, rather than having bits and pieces opening up all over.

When you open the application you are presented with a blank canvas to work on, of course if you are wanting to manipulate a image you already have you can just open that image instead. As with Photoshop, paint.net gives you the ability to work in layers, meaning you can adjust as much or as little as you like. For instance, if I wanted to make myself blonde I could select just my hair in a separate layer to the main background layer, and change my hair colour, without affecting the colours in the rest of the photo.

You can also add text to any image, I can't count the amount of different fonts because my eyes go squiffy trying, but there are loads of them. It falls a little short of Photoshop with the text adjustments, with CS3 you can change the angle of text with one click, here is takes a little more messing around using the distort tool.

For photographers there are the necessary (or for bad photographers like me they are necessary) tools such as curves, saturation, levels, sharpen and noise reduction. You have your history palette, so you can keep track of the changes you are making, and can keep flicking between the them to see which actually looks best. It also shows all open images in the toolbar at the top, so you can flick from one to the other easily.

There are a couple of things I'm not keen on, I haven't been able to find out how to create a new image with a transparent background yet, and there are a couple of one click actions that Photoshop has that are missing, cropping for example.

But all in all, for something free it's an absolutely brilliant and user friendly programme. I am actually thinking of not bothering to continue my discussions with Adobe, and just stick with paint.net.

Summary: Try it, it won't cost you anything.

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