Paint.NET, a FREE photo editing software the competes directly with Photoshop, one of Adobe’s best-selling software products, has recently unleashed a new version of the software. The new version is called v3.0, is in Beta 3, and is now available for download.
Paint.NET was created using the C# and a small amount of C++ programming languages. Paint.NET has a simple to use interface and is similar to Photoshop. The source code behind Paint.NET is open and is available for download. At the beginning of the software development life cycle for the original Paint.NET, an undergraduate college senior initialized the design of the software and Microsoft served as a mentor with the idea of using Paint.NET to replace Microsoft Paint.
Before downloading the new version of Paint.NET, please note that the software no longer supports Windows 2000 and it will not install unless you are running Windows XP SP2 or newest. If you have Windows 2000, then you must install v2.72.
So what’s new in 3.0? Translations are more complete, especially German. Toolbar layout issues have been fixed. A clouds effect was added. Some extra hotkeys were added. One of the best new features added is a Multiple Document Interface (MDI) that have tabs that show thumbnails for all opened images. The previous version of Paint.NET did not have this feature, so this is why I’m sure many people still stuck around with Photoshop. Now that this feature has been integrated, I could imagine more people to make the switch.
From a strategic standpoint, how worried should Adobe be over Paint.NET? I believe that so many people have been accustomed with Photoshop at this point and it is installed on every computer for major universities (from what I’ve noticed at University of Michigan and Michigan State University).
I believe Paint.NET will capture more of a web-savvy audience that have limited budgets for graphics development. Photoshop is definitely an expensive software. However, since Adobe has acquired Macromedia, creator of Flash software, and Flash was one the biggest things of 2006, I doubt that Paint.NET would be their biggest concern right now… but I’m sure it will be soon enough.
