Paint.Net - Like Photoshop but Free?

[Dark Jezter]

http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/

Anybody tried this yet? I've heard from a few people that it does pretty much everything that Adobe Photoshop does, but it's entirely free of charge: It was created as an undergraduate senior design project by Washington State University students as an optional free replacement for MS Paint, but now it has apparantly grown into a photo/image editing tool that's nearly as powerful as Adobe Photoshop.

I haven't yet downloaded this, but I plan on trying it out because my current version of Photoshop is over 5 years old (v 5.5). Hopefully it is as good as people say.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I got it to toy with, but I don't have the other programs, I just got it as a better version of Paint. I haven't really done much with it, since it's all different from Paint. The buttons are all over the place!

 

[silvermane]

It's a far cry from Photoshop or even gimp, but useful when all you want is to add some transparency to GIFs or eliminate artifacts (MS Paint does not handle transparency).

 

[Thanee]

You could also try The Gimp, which is very, very good.

Bye
Thanee

 

[azhrei_fje]

You could also try The Gimp, which is very, very good.

And can be very, very confusing to someone while they're climbing the learning curve.

Don't get me wrong -- I love the GIMP and I wouldn't spend money on other programs (heck, I don't spend money on software at all!), but I often have a hard time accomplishing what I want to do. I frequently have to resort to the Help system to figure things out. Of course, I guess that's a plug for the documentation, since I do get things figured out.

 

[silvermane]

You could also try The Gimp, which is very, very good.

It is also quite a PITA to install, requiring the gtk libraries and what not. And don't even get me started on gimp-perl.

In contrast Paint.Net, while less functional, has the majority of features you *really* need (if you want more, you'll find out you must buy Photoshop eventually).

 

[Umbran]

I recently had the GIMP recommended to me, though I've yet to try to install it...

For other tasks, I also had OpenOffice Draw recommended as another useful free tool. Anyone with experience with it have comments?

 

[Zinuk]

I'd recommend Inkscape over open-office for vector drawing. It can do much more and is much easier to use. Not yet as good as commercial vector programs, but very promising (it's only in version 0.43).

Another advantage is that you have a whole lot of free clipparts for use in inkscape thanks to the Open Clipart project (SVG, Inkscape's format, is not yet supported in Open Office).

I find Inkscape great for drawing stuff for RPGs (geographical maps, political maps, inn maps, etc.)

 

[XCorvis]

Gimp was very easy for me to install, on windows XP anyway. You just install gtk, then gimp. They use standard graphical installers just like everyone else. It was harder to find the download than it was to install. This is the download page for Windows binaries, btw: http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

I'd put in another vote for Gimp. If you've used photoshop, Gimp is easy and pretty familiar. Even if you haven't, just read up on layers and you'll be fine. Plus, it's 100% free. Paint.net looks pretty nice tho. Thanks for pointing it out.