Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.

Paint.NET is a free photo editor for Windows which features layers, blending modes, special effects, unlimited undo history, and a number of image adjustments and filter effects. Besides the standard pixel-based painting and selection tools, Paint.NET also includes easy to use tools for drawing shapes and lines, a text tool, a clone stamp, and a recolor tool.

Paint.NET is laid out very simply so it should be very easy for most people to start using right away. It is certainly a much better image editor than the Microsoft Paint program included with Windows. In addition, it is free to all and open source.

Although I felt that Paint.NET version 2 was somewhat limited, version 3 is currently in development with some welcome advances such as multi-document support, an improved toolbar, gradients, and more effects. Paint.NET 3.0 Alpha is shown in the screen shot here.

Paint.NET Home Page

ScreenShot :