paint.net - What paint should have been

Michael Gartenberg | March 13, 2007, 09:45 AM

While I love the new Photo Gallery feature in Vista, there are times I still need to do a little more such as resize an image or some more detailed editing. Let's face it,the Paint app in Vista hasn't changed all that much and really isn't that useful. In the past, I've relied on Photoshop to do some of that work. But the truth is Photoshop is overkill for me these days. For the last few weeks I've been using a fantastic app called paint.net. What is it? From their website.

" Paint.NET is free (yes free) image editing 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."

It really is a great freeware application. It won't replace Photoshop if you're a graphics designer but for modest casual users like myself, this is the perfect complement to Vista's Photo Gallery application. Highly recommended!