...aaamen. Also, Those of us in corporate environments, especially hardened corporate environments, almost always DO NOT have the admin rights necessary to install software on work machines, and even if they do, usually they have to clear it with corporate security first before being allowed to install it. Often, corporate security simply does not allow employees (except developers) to install unapproved software on corporate equipment at all.
I am lucky. My employer, even though I work in a hardened corporate environment, recognizes that I am a developer/engineer and should get some leeway in this area. So, whenever there is an update to paint.net:
- I log on to my home Windows image where I do have administrative rights
- I run the update installer to update the executable and binary files
- check the 'plugin errors' section of the Preferences to see what plugins don't work anymore and which ones need updating
- Find about 2 hours on a weekend, then tediously sift and hunt and peck through the hundreds of forum posts to see if the author of the plugin has a post that has the download link to the update. If I can't find it, I abandon hope for that plugin and delete it. Usually, I find a post saying the plugin has been updated, then I sift and hunt and peck through the hundreds of additional forum posts to see if I can find the download link. If I find that, I replace the old dll.
- after all that is done, I pull the registry entries and save them to a file in the program directory folder
- then I zip the entire folder up to a usb stick, plug it in to my work computer, and replace the files there.
A tedious process, but there is simply no better alternative to Photoshop than paint.net, so it's worth it, because I only use Photoshop for major projects. Paint.net is just fine for the other 99.99%. On Windows. On the Mac, or Android, that's another story, I have several quality bitmap and vector apps I can use there.