Paint.NET 5.1 is now available!

[Rick Brewster]

This is a major update to Paint.NET that includes a raft of technology upgrades including full color management, support for HDR and Wide Color Gamut displays, major improvements to input latency and memory usage, and new and revamped blur effects. In addition, the migration of effects and adjustments to the GPU has been completed, further improving their performance and quality. There are also some new canvas customization settings.

 

Color Management

Paint.NET finally has full color management support, a feature commonly found in more expensive or complicated imaging software. This ensures that images with embedded color profiles look the way they're supposed to, as originally captured by a camera or as intended by the author. Most cellphone cameras nowadays will take photos in a wide gamut color space like Display P3, and now those photos will have correct colors, brightness, and saturation when opened in Paint.NET.

 

Here's an example using a NASA photograph of the Cosmic Cliffs nebula taken by the James Webb telescope (source). It was captured in infrared and then shifted to the visible light spectrum, and the final result uses the ProPhoto RGB color space so as to utilize a very large spectrum of colors.
 

(Note that this screenshot's color is clamped to sRGB. The real image looks even better on an actual HDR or WCG display!)

 

On the left is how the image looks if the color profile is ignored, as you'd see in Paint.NET 5.0 and earlier. On the right, however, the color profile is being applied in real-time to ensure that everything looks exactly as NASA intended it to.

 

Color Management is configured in Settings, but there isn't much that needs to be configured. Windows Advanced Color, enabled by default, is used to provide one-click color management support for your display. When the display is configured for High Dynamic Range (HDR) or Wide Color Gamut (WCG) mode, this enables high bit-depth output (e.g. 10-bits or more) and use of the display's full color gamut. Windows then ensures accurate and consistent color reproduction, based on what the display itself tells the system via EDID.

 

Displays configured for Standard Dynamic Range (SDR) do not support Windows Advanced Color, so Paint.NET will run in sRGB mode which ensures consistent color reproduction. Color accuracy is then dependent on the display itself being configured for sRGB color output.

 

There are instructions to guide you through enabling HDR or WCG for your display over in Windows Display Settings. A status section gives clear information about the state of color management and the display:

 

Wide Color Gamut mode is new for Windows 11 v24H2, and is essentially an upgraded SDR mode with high bit-depth output support, automatic color management, desktop composition in linear gamma and at FP16 precision, and none of the fussiness of HDR mode. Your monitor does not transition to HDR mode when this is enabled -- it is still operating in SDR mode. I highly recommend checking this out if it is available on your system!

 

The new Image -> Color Profile dialog replaces the Image -> Apply Embedded Color Profile command introduced in 5.0, which was a one-way "destructive" process that converted the image to the sRGB color space and then removed the embedded color profile.

 

Here you can select from the image's current color profile, as well as sRGB, Adobe RGB, Display P3, and ProPhoto RGB. Or, you can import a color profile from any *.icc/*.icm file. You can also export the current image's color profile to a file. I'm planning to revise and expand this dialog as I received feedback about it from the community.

 

The Convert button will transform the image from its current color profile to the newly selected one. It will still appear the same on-screen, modulo any precision or gamut limitations. You will then be able to edit the image in the new color space defined by the new color profile.

 

The Assign button will change the color profile but not transform the colors of the image, usually resulting in it looking very different. This is useful when you have an image that has the wrong color profile embedded in it, or where the color profile was removed (such as when using "image crushers" that remove all metadata). Another possible use of this is to assign the Display P3 profile to an image to increase its saturation in a way that many people like (some feel that sRGB is undersaturated when displayed correctly).

 

GPU effects and plugins will automatically participate in color management unless they opt-out of it. The default WorkingSpaceLinear color context will convert the image to linear gamma in a way that is correct for the image's color profile. The linearized image is then fed into the effect, which will do its rendering, and then the output of that effect will be converted back to the (non-linearized) color space defined by the image's color profile. There are also many new APIs for working with colors and color profiles, for both GPU and CPU effects.

 

I'd like to give a special mention and big thanks to Clinton Ingram (aka @saucecontrol), not only for his PhotoSauce library, but for the hours and hours and hours of time he patiently discussed color management with me on Discord. This dialogue spanned several months, during which I slowly learned to crawl and then eventually walk in this extremely complicated, highly technical, and difficult problem space. This feature would not have been possible without his guidance!

 

New and Updated Effects

There are two new blur effects, some updates to existing effects, and all* built-in adjustments and effects have now been fully migrated to run on the GPU.

 

Sketch Blur is a new blur effect unique to Paint.NET. It was adapted from Andrey Akinshin's (website, twitter) implementation of the P² Quantile Estimator algorithm, which is used to calculate an approximation of the median for a stream of values. You can read more about this effect over here, where I released it as a plugin for 5.0 under the name Median Sketch. It has been further optimized since the release of the plugin, with respect to both performance and quality.

 

 

Square Blur is a very simple blur effect that computes the average color of the surrounding square area around each pixel. It could even be considered a very high-performance, but very inaccurate approximation, of the Bokeh Blur effect (which averages out the surrounding circular area).

 

 

Median Blur is a rewrite of the old Noise->Median effect. It accomplishes the same thing but uses the GPU for rendering. It is based on @_koh_'s "Hi-Lo" algorithm which cleverly uses a binary search approach to calculating the median at a specific precision. You can fine-tune the precision (quality) for the result you want to achieve; lower values produce an interesting posterized look. This effect is also Paint.NET's first foray into the realm of compute shaders, the use of which unlocked more than a 3x performance improvement over the original pixel shader implementation!

 

  

Auto-Level, Curves, Levels, Oil Painting, Reduce Noise, Surface Blur, and Outline have also been converted to run on the GPU. This completes the transition to a fully GPU-enabled effect system that was started with last year's 5.0 release.

 

ALL of the built-in GPU effects are available for use by GPU effect plugins, where you can use them as part of a larger Direct2D effect graph to do all sorts of sophisticated and creative image processing. I highly recommend checking out CodeLab, which has been updated to support GPU effect development. @BoltBait's GPU Accelerated Plugin Pack is also a rich source of useful and interesting GPU effects (and some non-GPU effects!), and has always been an essential addition to Paint.NET. There is also source code (on GitHub) for a set of sample effects that I wrote to illustrate how to work with the GPU effect system, which has now been updated for 5.1. Lastly, there is API documentation for both the built-in GPU effects and the set of built-in and extended Direct2D effects.

 

In addition, plugins can now make use of the HistogramEffect2 analysis effect. Compared to Direct2D's built-in HistogramEffect, it is more precise, can calculate up to 4096 bins (vs. 256), and works on any image size (vs. a max of 4096x4096).

 

* There are actually 2 effects that still do not run on the GPU. The first is Colors->Quantize, whose algorithm isn't amenable to running on the GPU. The second is Photo->Red Eye Removal, which is actually just a wrapper for a GDI+ effect.

 

Canvas Customization

The new Canvas settings section has two new settings to let you customize the canvas to your liking. The first is a simple toggle for the drop shadow, and the second is the ability to change the border color (sometimes called the "background" color). In addition, the Transparency Checkerboard Brightness setting has found a new home here.

 

 

You might be wondering ... why? Well, there are 3 big reasons for adding these, and I'll list them in decreasing order of importance:

1. Accessibility. Being able to customize the color of the canvas border is important for some people who are using high-contrast themes. Paint.NET doesn't really know what to do with these for some of its theme colors, and this allows folks to set a color that is comfortable for their eyes and lighting conditions.
2. Contrast. Sometimes when you're editing an image, the drop shadow can trick your eyes into thinking the image is a slightly different size than it actually is. In addition, it can be important to have the ability to change the canvas border color because light bleeds. Whether you realize it or not, the color of the canvas border can slightly and subtly affect your perception of the colors in the image. Changing that allows you to choose a color that is neutral for the images you are working on.
3. Fun. Some people just want a purple canvas ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ This is a bonus/corollary feature and was not the primary motivation for developing it.

 

Memory Usage and Input Latency

Last but not least, let's talk about two important fundamentals: memory usage and input latency (or "lag"). I've been chipping away at these little by little over the years, but in 5.1 there have been breakthrough improvements for both of them.

 

With regard to memory usage, there are two big optimizations that have came through. The first changes the canvas tile cache so that it now moves tiles to the CPU instead of copying them, which saves quite a lot of CPU memory. The second optimization changes how swapchains are handled: instead of 1 per image tab, there are only 2 that are shared between all of the them: one for the visible tab, and a spare to help prevent flickering when switching tabs. The more images you open, the more GPU memory is saved -- sometimes several gigabytes! More information on these two optimizations can be found in the release notes for a beta build released back in August.

 

With regard to input latency, there are two upgrades that greatly improve things here. The first is the adoption of DXGI Flip Model, which is the presentation technology designed by Microsoft to reduce input latency and power consumption for DirectX games and applications. The second is something I call Async Present, which moves the call to IDXGISwapChain::Present() (or IDXGISwapChain1::Present1()) to a dedicated, high-priority background thread. In simple terms, this means that the CPU and GPU work are better parallelized: while the GPU is busy finalizing and pushing pixels over to the display, the CPU (specifically the UI thread) can continue receiving and processing input. This has produced very noticeable improvements to input latency and smoothness on most systems.

 

Further Reading

If you'd like to learn more about DXGI Flip Model, Windows Advanced Color, Automatic Color Management, etc. then here are some links:

• For best performance, use DXGI flip model (DirectX Developer Blog)
• Advancing the State of Color Management in Windows (DirectX Developer Blog)
• Use DirectX with Advanced Color on high/standard dynamic range displays (MSDN)
• ICC profile behavior with Advanced Color (MSDN)
• Windows hardware display color calibration pipeline (MSDN)

Get the Update

There are two releases of Paint.NET:

• Microsoft Store release (recommended)
  • You can purchase it here. This helps fund development and is an alternative or supplement to sending in a donation. In addition, updates happen automatically in the background when you're not using the app.
  • If you already have it installed, the update should happen automatically once Microsoft certifies the update, usually within the next day or so. To get the update immediately (once it's certified), you can follow the instructions listed here.
     
• Classic Desktop release
  • Download the installer from the website. This is the recommended download if you don't have Paint.NET installed. It can also be used to update the app.
  • If you already have it installed, you should be offered the update automatically within the next few days, but you can also get it immediately by going to ⚙ Settings -> Updates -> Check Now.
  • Offline Installers and Portable ZIPs are available over on GitHub.

Change Log

Changes since 5.0.13:

• New: Color Management support
  • Images with embedded color profiles will now be displayed correctly using real-time color conversion built on PhotoSauce and Direct2D.
  • On HDR and WCG (Wide Color Gamut) displays, Paint.NET will make use of Windows Advanced Color which then enables high bit-depth output and use of the display's full color gamut. Windows ensures color consistency and accuracy for the whole desktop.
  • On SDR displays, Paint.NET will operate in sRGB mode and provide consistent color reproduction. If the display is configured for sRGB then colors will also be accurate.
• New: Image->Color Profile replaces Image->Apply Embedded Color Profile, and provides the ability to change the image's color profile via Assign and Convert actions.
• New: Fully modernized canvas presentation engine that utilizes DXGI Flip Model, Advanced Color, and Windows.UI.Composition.
• Improved: Input latency has been significantly reduced by using DXGI Flip Model and Async Present.
• New: Canvas section in Settings provides the ability to customize the canvas brightness, border color, and shadow
• Improved the canvas rendering quality by using linear gamma. This improves overall performance and also improves the appearance of selection handles and other canvas UI elements.
• Updated: All remaining effects and adjustments have been ported to use the GPU
  • Newly converted in 5.1 are: Auto-Level, Curves, Levels, Oil Painting, Surface Blur, Reduce Noise, and Outline.
  • The two exceptions to this are Effects->Color->Quantize and Effects->Photo->Red Eye Removal. The first is not amenable to running on the GPU, and the second is actually a wrapper around an old GDI+ effect.
• New: Effects->Blur->Sketch Blur is a new blur effect that gives the appearance of a painting drawn with a coarse brush.
• New: Effects->Blur->Median Blur replaces Effects->Noise->Median, and now runs on the GPU with much higher quality.
• New: Effects->Blur->Square Blur
• Changed: Gaussian Blur and Bokeh Blur now have a "Gamma Boost" slider instead of a "Gamma" property. This is now used to configure the change in gamma rather than specifying the gamma that the image should be assumed to have. The intent is still to provide something of a brightness/highlights amplifier for creative purposes.
• Changed: Effects -> Blur -> Motion Blur now uses a Gaussian kernel.
• New: Effects->Render->Clouds now has a Colors tab for configuring the colors that are used
• Changed: Image->Canvas Size will no longer use the secondary color to fill in new areas for the "background" layer. It will always fill with transparent black (#00000000).
• Improved dithering quality when saving an image at 8-bit or lower color depth, and when using Effects->Color->Quantize
• New: Updated to use Mica effects in the title bar on Windows 11
• Fixed some more scrollbars to respect dark theme (thanks @toe_head2001!)
• Fixed: The Move Selected Pixels tool will no longer finish (commit) when toggling layer visibility. This was a workaround for a bug during an early beta of 4.0 that does not seem to be necessary anymore.
• Improved: Greatly reduced CPU memory usage by maintaining the tile cache only on the GPU instead of having a copy on the CPU-side as well.
• Improved: Significantly reduced GPU memory usage by consolidating down to 2 swapchains that are shared among image tabs, instead of each image tab having its own private swapchain.
• Improved: GPU effects now use a smaller tile size on GPUs with less RAM, which should enable faster updates and cancellation response on older GPUs. This also significantly lowers the probability of TDR events, particularly for expensive effects like Median Blur.
• Fixed: The Save Configuration dialog sometimes looked like it was having a seizure when panning after zooming (w/ Ctrl + Mouse Wheel)
• Fixed: The Line/Curve and Shapes tools would cancel instead of commit (Finish) when pressing ESC too soon after using the arrow keys to move the shape
• Improved the performance of the portable release by reducing how often the JSON settings file is flushed.
• New: CMYK64 images can now be loaded. Note that CMYK images are always transformed to Adobe RGB.
• New: Added the ExponentialScale double property for IndirectUI. The default value is 2.0. It goes along with the UseExponentialScale boolean property.
• New: GPU effect plugins can now use compute shaders. Note that this is "raw" support by providing access to the necessary Direct2D interfaces (e.g. ID2D1ComputeInfo).
• Deprecated: The classic/legacy effect system has been marked as [Obsolete]. Compiling a classic/legacy effect will produce a compile-time warning along with a message about migrating to the new GpuEffect or BitmapEffect systems. This will be changed to a compile-time error in a future update (either v5.2 or v6.0, whichever is next).
• Removed: Settings -> UI -> Show image previews in the Windows taskbar.
• Removed: Settings -> UI -> Enable scrolling past the edge of the canvas (overscroll). This is now always enabled.
• Updated to use .NET 9.0 (previously this was .NET 7.0)
• Updated the minimum OS requirement to Windows 10 v21H2 (previously this was Windows 10 v1809)
• Updated the bundled AVIF FileType to version 3.10.0.0. Thanks @null54!
• Updated the bundled DDS FileType Plus to version 1.12.11.0. Thanks @null54!
• Updated the bundled WebP FileType to version 1.4.0.0. Thanks @null54!

[Rick Brewster]

Also, a big thanks to @Ego Eram Reputo for maintaining and updating the Help Documentation. There was a lot to update and revise for 5.1!

 

https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/

[Omninano]

It's heeeeeere!! Woohoo! GPU usage all the way!

[BDP]

No problems here with the installation - thank you

 

Brian

[BerndH]

I just installed the new version, which worked fine, yet immediately ran into an issue when editing a photo. Whenever I want to add a white frame to a photo, I go to "canvas resize" and add the additional width, that is, the photo frame. Now however this will not work anymore and instead of a white frame I get a checkerboard border. I did look at the settings and read the section about the new "canvas customisation feature" - however I couldn't find anything about how to get back the plain ordinary white frame I would like to apply. Please advise.

 

Bernd

[Rick Brewster]

1 hour ago, BerndH said:

I just installed the new version, which worked fine, yet immediately ran into an issue when editing a photo. Whenever I want to add a white frame to a photo, I go to "canvas resize" and add the additional width, that is, the photo frame. Now however this will not work anymore and instead of a white frame I get a checkerboard border. I did look at the settings and read the section about the new "canvas customisation feature" - however I couldn't find anything about how to get back the plain ordinary white frame I would like to apply. Please advise.

 

Bernd

 

This is a change in behavior. See above,

 

Quote

Changed: Image->Canvas Size will no longer use the secondary color to fill in new areas for the "background" layer. It will always fill with transparent black (#00000000).

 

The checkerboard is transparency, it is not actually part of the image.

 

You can create a new layer, move it to the bottom, fill it with white (or whatever). Then, click on the layer above it and then do Layers -> Merge Down.

 

The old behavior was convenient in some cases, but was not really consistent in a way that made sense in the broader scheme of things. It was also a very old design decision from 2004 that just wasn't the right decision anymore in 2024.

[BerndH]

Thanks for the quick reply! - As I don't work with layers at all (I do not need them for photo editing), I don't think I will try the new method as it seems to involve multiple steps, while the old approach was simple and convient. I understand that this change makes sense for some users - yet not for me. Can I roll back paint.net to the previous version? Otherwise I'll have to start using a different software.

 

Cheers

Bernd

[Ryan Deardorff]

The program is broken after updating to this version.  The screen won't paint fully, and I have to kill it using Task Manager.  I tried uninstalling and re-installing, but the result is the same...

 

 

[Rick Brewster]

2 minutes ago, BerndH said:

Thanks for the quick reply! - As I don't work with layers at all (I do not need them for photo editing), I don't think I will try the new method as it seems to involve multiple steps, while the old approach was simple and convient. I understand that this change makes sense for some users - yet not for me. Can I roll back paint.net to the previous version? Otherwise I'll have to start using a different software.

 

Cheers

Bernd

 

I really can't recommend that, and we do not support using anything but the latest version. It's very important to make sure things are ironed out in the latest/newest version so that everyone can benefit from the latest fixes and tweaks. (And so that we don't get bogged down with support requests for older versions, it's just not sustainable.)

 

You could also use this method:

 

1. Do the Canvas Resize like you always do

2. Switch to the Paint Bucket tool

3. Change the Tolerance in the toolbar to 0

4. Select the color you want in the Colors window

5. Click once in the newly transparent area

 

There is also the possibility that I may add a selector in Canvas Size to choose whether you want to fill the new area with Transparent, or the Primary/Secondary color. So if that happens, you won't see that if you stick to the old version -- and you won't benefit from all the newer improvements, fixes, and optimizations.

[vajoja]

I just downloaded 5.1 via the website, but it is immediately removed by Windows Defender as a trojan script.

 

[BerndH]

Thank you very much again for all the information! - I read the section about the new "cavas resize" features and (sort of) understand the reasoning behind the change ... and I'm sure it is good for many - only, unfortunately, it doesn't work for me and the way I use paint.net (and I won't start using multiple steps to achieve a similar result as before, especially as I like to be able to increase / decrease the size of the frames quickly to try out what works best.) So a "canvas size plus colour selector" would be really useful for me.

Meanwhile, I've tried a few things, and what I'll start doing for the time being is to continue with my usual photo editing using paint.net - because I really, really like the convienence of paint.net. And whenever I decide I'd like a white frame around a photo, I'll use MS paint or IrfanView to add it, as both programmes offer a simple one-step way of doing this.

Regards

Bernd

[Rick Brewster]

@vajoja it's a false positive. This can happen on Windows 10 if it hasn't updated its antivirus definitions yet. This happens a lot with new releases, it takes a few days for some antivirus software to "learn" that new software isn't "bad". What you're seeing isn't a detection of a specific virus, it's just seeing that the installer does things like copying EXEs and DLLs, modifying the registry, etc. As it turns out, malware likes to do that stuff too.

 

This doesn't happen on Windows 11 because it's been updated to recognize the signing certificate that I use, which is from Microsoft.

 

Do be sure you've got all the latest Windows Update.

[frio]

1 minute ago, Rick Brewster said:

his happens a lot with new releases, it takes a few days for some antivirus software to "learn" that new software isn't "bad". What you're seeing isn't a detection of a specific virus, it's just seeing that the installer does things like copying EXEs and DLLs, modifying the registry, etc. As it turns out, malware likes to do that stuff too.

I have to mention as a funny side note, I wrote a small console C# app to help with my plugin updates, and it was detected as that exact same trojan reported above and immediately quarantined (and then again detected as a different trojan in the recycle bin after I had deleted it). It only loaded an array and computed a change on the values and dumped it to the console, compiled C# really seems to trigger that detection with very little code.

[Pixey]

@Rick Brewster 5.1 Congratulations - 

[Rick Brewster]

1 hour ago, BerndH said:

Meanwhile, I've tried a few things, and what I'll start doing for the time being is to continue with my usual photo editing using paint.net - because I really, really like the convienence of paint.net. And whenever I decide I'd like a white frame around a photo, I'll use MS paint or IrfanView to add it, as both programmes offer a simple one-step way of doing this.

Okay great Just keep checking back in PDN's Image->Canvas Size after each update to see if I've added that color selector thing. (It'll also be in the release notes of course)

[vajoja]

2 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

@vajoja it's a false positive. This can happen on Windows 10 if it hasn't updated its antivirus definitions yet. This happens a lot with new releases, it takes a few days for some antivirus software to "learn" that new software isn't "bad". What you're seeing isn't a detection of a specific virus, it's just seeing that the installer does things like copying EXEs and DLLs, modifying the registry, etc. As it turns out, malware likes to do that stuff too.

 

This doesn't happen on Windows 11 because it's been updated to recognize the signing certificate that I use, which is from Microsoft.

 

Do be sure you've got all the latest Windows Update.

 

Thank you for the info. I assumed this was the case, though will mention that I am on Windows 11 (24H2) and it has still flagged it as a false-positive.

[Tactilis]

3 hours ago, BerndH said:

it doesn't work for me and the way I use paint.net (and I won't start using multiple steps to achieve a similar result as before)

 

You have a single background layer and you want the expanded region to be filled with the Secondary colour. The steps to do this are:

  1. Press F to activate the Paint Bucket tool.

  2. Right-click anywhere on the transparent expanded region to fill it with the Secondary colour.

  3. If necessary, set the Tolerance to 0% to ensure that only the transparent region is filled. Generally this step won't be necessary.

  4. Press Return to Finish the Paint Bucket fill.

So it's just 3 simple steps:  F  right-click  Return   to turn the transparent area into the Secondary color.

 

 

 

 

[wanderingfrostwizard]

Hi guys

 

I tried updating to 5.1 from the Non Microsoft store version of Paint.net and the program fails to completely boot, it would sit in an endless loop for over 5 mins using around 9% of CPU, (no I don't have a garbage CPU....) which worried me, so I un-installed it, the restarted the PC to complete the process.

 

I then downloaded the latest version from your website (also 5.1 non-Microsoft version) and tried re-installing it, then rebooting to be sure, now it won't boot at all now.  I have re-tried this step twice.

Each time I try to boot the program I get a Pop-up error window saying

 

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| SetupDownloader.exe - Application Error                                                           |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000007b). Click OK            |
| to close the application.                                                                                        |
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

 

Hope this helps. I look forward to using Paint.net again, it is an awesome product, well done team for making it.

 

And I won't be downloading it from the Microsoft store, bugger them.

 

Regards Cam

 

[andy_p]

2 hours ago, vajoja said:

 

Thank you for the info. I assumed this was the case, though will mention that I am on Windows 11 (24H2) and it has still flagged it as a false-positive.

I am also on win11, and windows defender detects Trojan:Script/Sabsik.FL.A!ml in the paint.net.5.1.install.anycpu.web.zip downloader, and the autoupdate process fails with error 1603. However, I could install it from the offline installer paint.net.5.1.install.x64.zip on github without any further problem.

Edited November 13 by andy_p
accuracy; I don't know for sure that the virus detection caused the autoupdate to fail

[Rick Brewster]

15 minutes ago, wanderingfrostwizard said:

Each time I try to boot the program I get a Pop-up error window saying

Try this? 

 

[Ronstang]

On 11/12/2024 at 10:35 AM, Rick Brewster said:

Changed: Image->Canvas Size will no longer use the secondary color to fill in new areas for the "background" layer. It will always fill with transparent black (#00000000).

OK, thanks but now the question is WHY?  That is not how increasing the canvas size should work.  I want it to fill with the color I choose.  Why would anyone want to fill with transparent black?  How do I correct this?

[Rick Brewster]

6 hours ago, Ryan Deardorff said:

The program is broken after updating to this version.  The screen won't paint fully, and I have to kill it using Task Manager.  I tried uninstalling and re-installing, but the result is the same...

 

 

See here: 

 

[Rick Brewster]

3 minutes ago, Ronstang said:

OK, thanks but now the question is WHY?  That is not how increasing the canvas size should work.  I want it to fill with the color I choose.  Why would anyone want to fill with transparent black?  How do I correct this?

 

Read the two comments I linked you to in the other thread. I gave 2 ways to achieve the same thing, and indicated this may become easily configurable in a near-term release (e.g. 5.1.1 or 5.1.2 or something like that).

[Ronstang]

6 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

1. Do the Canvas Resize like you always do

2. Switch to the Paint Bucket tool

3. Change the Tolerance in the toolbar to 0

4. Select the color you want in the Colors window

5. Click once in the newly transparent area

 

Unfortunately that is not going to work for me.  I use Paint. NET for one reason and that is to edit CD cover art and movie posters for my emby server.  I need to be able to quickly add anywhere from a couple to 20 pixels in width to an image and keep the color I chose for a quick look to see if it is close enough.  Other times I measure and add specific amounts of pixels but each border can be a slightly different color so I need to quickly select for that particular border.  Using the method you suggest just makes it tedious and will affect my productivity so my only option is to revert to the latest version before this update I can find online or use another program.  I am no professional but I have established some very productive ways to do all this rather quickly over the last couple of years I have been using this great program and this one upgrade simply destroys all of that.

 

6 hours ago, Rick Brewster said:

There is also the possibility that I may add a selector in Canvas Size to choose whether you want to fill the new area with Transparent, or the Primary/Secondary color. So if that happens, you won't see that if you stick to the old version -- and you won't benefit from all the newer improvements, fixes, and optimizations.

Ok, this change makes the most sense and I would greatly appreciate it but the only option for me is to revert to an older version and  just check the change log occasionally to see if you implemented it because as the program sits now it is essentially unusable for me.

 

I see a lot of awesome upgrades in this version I would like to play with when I have time but I am neither a artist nor a professional and I need simple tasks for most things so I will have to wait for them until/if you choose the selector box.

 

I apologize for earlier.  This change happened to me right in the middle of getting some work done and now I am sitting here trying to figure out a solution as I cannot do my work.  This is a great program and every update I look forward to because you keep adding awesome abilities that I see a possible use for and have occasionally changed my procedures when I learn something new.  You are doing an awesome job because this program is the closest thing to Adobe Photoshop I have ever found.  

 

Thanks for a great program!

 

[Ego Eram Reputo]

1 hour ago, Ronstang said:

Using the method you suggest just makes it tedious and will affect my productivity s

1. Create a new layer with Ctrl + Shift + N
2. Drag the new layer below the one with the artwork.
3. Select all the new layer with Ctrl + A
4. Press backspace to fill with the secondary color.

Six keys and a little mouse action. Wasn't hard at all was it?