Paint.NET is a free image and photo editing program for Microsoft Windows. Some of the features that this software allows you to do is resize, crop, brighten, sharpen, and retouch photos and images. It also comes with a red-eye removal tool that worked well with the photos I tested. It supports working with layers so you can combine images or add text to them. It also supports transparency so you can remove or change the background from your images and photos. It also comes with drawing tools for example the paintbrush and pencil as well as shape tools. Creating web graphics such as icons, buttons, backgrounds and banners are also possible. To preserve the layers you would save the file as .PDN, which is the same concept as Adobe Photoshop’s .PSD format for saving layers. File formats that Paint.NET supports are PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TGA, DDS, and TIFF.
- It is completely free for home use.
- Simple, intuitive, and innovative user interface.
- Suports Layers: Usually only found on expensive or complicated professional software, layers form the basis for a rich image composition experience. You may think of them as a stack of transparency slides that, when viewed together at the same time, form one image.
- Special Effects: Many special effects are included for enhancing and perfecting your images. Everything from blurring, sharpening, red-eye removal, distortion, noise, and embossing are included. Also included is our unique 3D Rotate/Zoom effect that makes it very easy to add perspective and tilting. Adjustments are also included which help you tweak an image’s brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, curves, and levels. You can also convert an image to black and white, or sepia-toned.
- Powerful Tools: Paint.NET includes simple tools for drawing shapes, including an easy-to-use curve tool for drawing splines or Bezier curves. The Gradient tool, new for 3.0, has been cited as an innovative improvement over similar tools provided by other software. The facilities for creating and working with selections is powerful, yet still simple enough to be picked up quickly. Other powerful tools include the Magic Wand for selecting regions of similar color, and the Clone Stamp for copying or erasing portions of an image. There is also a simple text editor, a tool for zooming, and a Recolor tool.
Screenshots of Paint.NET Image/Photo Editor

- Publisher: dotPDN
- Price: Free
- Compatible with: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10.
- Version: 4.2.1