Paint.NET free image and photo editing software Photoshop alternative

Paint.NET is image and photo editing software for PCs that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is now maintained and developed by Rick Brewster. Originally intended as a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool. It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

Paint.NET is a very popular photo editor for Windows users. The program is easy to learn, have many useful photo correction functions that raise your photos without losing its quality. The desktop software offers a customizable interface and editable layers, which allow you to perform multi-level image editing. This image editor will not give you the opportunities to make creative photo manipulations or deep skin retouching as Photoshop does, but you may easily edit photos to make them look great and without visible imperfections.

Paint.net is a free photo editing software compatible with any Windows version and can be a good alternative to Photoshop. In fact, it offers a series of editing tools that allow you to edit and enhance images, remove flaws and add filters and effects. The interface is intuitive, similar to Microsoft Paint’s, with numerous brushes to draw shapes, a clone stamp to copy or delete areas of the photo, special effects and a magic wand for quicker edits. With this photo editor you can easily adjust brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, image levels and remove the imperfections, such as red eyes. In addition, Paint.net can be integrated with different plug-ins to add features, filters and effects or support other formats.

Operating System

Windows 11 or Windows 10 (version 1809 or newer)
A 64-bit CPU (Intel/AMD x64 or ARM64)
Optional: A pen or drawing tablet that supports Windows Ink
Recommended: A 64-bit CPU that supports AVX2
Recommended: A GPU or APU that supports Direct3D 11, such as an NVIDIA GeForce, AMD Radeon, Intel Arc, Intel Iris (Plus or Xe), or Intel HD/UHD

Paint.NET runs on Microsoft .NET 7, which is included as part of the app. It does not need to be installed separately. Paint.NET uses your hard drive to store temporary files related to undo/redo history. Because of this, actual disk space requirements will depend on the actions you perform on an image, and on the size of the image.

Pros+

Easy and convenient to use
Many useful functions and effects
Many free plug-ins and plugin packs
Clear and well-ordered user interface
Different formats for saving images after image editing
Editing tools: edit photos with basic or more powerful tools, like the gradient tool, the magic wand, the text editor among others
Special effects: retouch your images with special effects such as blurring, sharpness, relief, red-eye removal, contrast, hue etc.
Layer tool:very useful tool to improve your photos
History Tool: thanks to this action log, you can undo if you make a mistake
Updates are automatic, free and rich with changes and newly released features
Online forum and Online consulting and “how-to” tutorials , join the active online community to stay up-to-date.

Cons-

Limited brush work
No Burn and Dodge
No text correction after applying other effects

Having compared all apps that state themselves as the best free photo editor, Paint.NET is like a free GIMP alternative. The software doesn’t really have many flaws, but since it lacks a layer mask, custom brushes and some more advanced tools, Paint.NET isn’t suitable for professional retouchers and photographers.