Is there a list of full 'new features' of 4.0 anywhere?

[Humility 23]

I know 4.0 uses more CPU which makes it slower. And with the current version I'm already struggling with images as tiny as 3,000 as 3,000 Having to reduce it to about a 12th of that for a real good pace. So I know there is a serious trade off in going to 4.0 there.

 

So I use paint.net for sharpening, cleaning up and coloring pencil drawings. I don't really use it for much else. So I want to know if 4.0 has any features that will speed this process up for me? Or if I can stay with the current version and not miss a thing?

[Rick Brewster 1,216]

Since when does 4.0 use more CPU and is slower? All reports other than yours have shown it to be quite a bit faster, and it uses less memory. In some cases it will "behave" differently (e.g. the way rendered tiles "trickle in") but it shouldn't be slower.

 

There isn't yet an organized list of new features. Your best bet would be to look through the change logs for each release on the blog: http://blog.getpaint.net/

 

The first 4.0 alpha would be the one to start with as it'll have the list of changes from 3.5: http://blog.getpaint.net/2013/10/13/paint-net-4-0-alpha-build-5034-is-now-available/ . It is not 100% comprehensive. 

 

Also, pay attention to older blog posts that talk about various things in 4.0. Not everything is in the change logs, in other words.

[Humility 23]

I was reading through the 'CPU' usage thread here and someone said it would use more CPU.

 

 

 

 

4.0 will use more CPU but it will be much more responsive to your input/changes as the size of the image increases. As an example, try creating a brand new, very large image. Let's say 10,000 pixels X 10,000 pixels. Now try drawing gradients. You'll see that 4.0 "trickles in" the rendering of things but is immediately responsive to any changes you make. 3.5 will be obviously different.

 

That was actually, you.

 

I'll scan those then.

[Humility 23]

You said it trickles in umm... does that mean I could like put through all the commands I'll need to color a page, then flip over to something else while it carries on my instructions in the back ground? And if so will it have an emergency stop button? So if I miss click like a global paint a few dozen times in a row before realizing I've misclicked I won't have to wait for it to finish going through?

[pagefault 1]

Why don't you just download it and try for yourself? It's done in 1 minute and you get your answers first hand...

[Rick Brewster 1,216]

"Uses more CPU" does not mean "slower." Performance is not a one-dimensional property like that.

[Humility 23]

I ask rather then just 'try it out' because, if I just try it out, without any knowledge of it. Then there is a good chance that I'm just going to use it wrong, decide its worth it and revert. If you've seen some of my other threads, you'll see that I don't know what a tenth of the stuff in paint.net does or how to use it. And what I have been doing are extremely overcomplicated inefficient methods of doing things simply because I had no idea how to properly use the tools.

[pdnnoob 261]

You said it trickles in umm... does that mean I could like put through all the commands I'll need to color a page, then flip over to something else while it carries on my instructions in the back ground?

"trickle in" means, if you are, say, making a gradient or something, you don't have to wait for the whole image to update at once to see your changes. Small pieces will update separately instead.

[Humility 23]

Okay so not something that effects me. If I try 4.0 and find it unusable would it be possible for me to undo the change?

[BoltBait 2,273]

Okay so not something that effects me. If I try 4.0 and find it unusable would it be possible for me to undo the change?

Yes. Just run the 3.5.11 installer again and everything will be reverted back to the old version.

Just be aware that if you update to new plugins for 4.0 you may need to revert them also.

[Ultrapotassium 2]

I noticed this lack of a feature list, too, and thought that it might be useful, so I went and compiled one.

http://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/28533-paintnet-40-new-feature-list/

[Humility 23]

Alright I did the update and my computer didn't explode. Thats good.

[Humility 23]

two small things Umm... first for some reason when I copy and pasted an image little grey pixels appeared surrounding all of my black lines. How do I stop that?

 

Second the brush is effecting pixels outside of the circle even at hardness 100. Its slightly disorienting. Am I doing something wrong am I just going to have to get used to that?

Edited June 3, 2014 by Humility

[Ego Eram Reputo 2,245]

Didn't you believe us?

[BoltBait 2,273]

two small things Umm... first for some reason when I copy and pasted an image little grey pixels appeared surrounding all of my black lines. How do I stop that?

That is the new "soft selections". It is kind of a built-in feathering.

It is controlled (turned on and off) on the tool bar.

____________________

[Humility 23]

Thank you. And I believed that it wouldn't hurt my computer if t was bigger and stronger and not being used by me. But my computer is a small little laptop, and its getting old. Its already a year old. And everything I touch usually makes my computer explode somehow.

 

And that last fact means everything new scares me.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Humility

[Humility 23]

About the brush though, I'm assuming its some sort of wierd drag effect? Because the real thing thats annoying is that when I'm running the brush over an area to clear up some sports or a rough edge the the area actually being colored seems to be halfway behind the circle. No matter which direction I'm going.

[Rick Brewster 1,216]

About the brush though, I'm assuming its some sort of wierd drag effect? Because the real thing thats annoying is that when I'm running the brush over an area to clear up some sports or a rough edge the the area actually being colored seems to be halfway behind the circle. No matter which direction I'm going.

Try it in Photoshop, it'll behave similarly it works by emitting a dab (or "stamp") only after your mouse has moved far enough to warrant it. It doesn't emit a dab on every mouse move or every pixel. In photoshop you can configure a "spacing" parameter. In paint.net this is not configurable -- it is hard-wired to 25%, if I remember correctly, which means a dab of paint won't be emitted until your mouse is (0.25 x D) distance away from the last dab. 'D' is the diameter of the brush stamp, aka "pen width" in the toolbar. Example: you set pen width to 16. A dab of paint is emitted every 4 pixels. If you've only moved 3 pixels so far then it will seem to be "lagging." Maybe it is maybe it isn't, but it's standard and expected.

[Humility 23]

It didn't do that with 3.5.11. Why does this version do that? Makes cleaning up an image with the brush kind of difficult. Is there some advantage to it doing this I'm not seeing?

Edited June 5, 2014 by Humility

[Rick Brewster 1,216]

The brush tool is much more versatile and renders with much higher quality than in 3.5. There's a new "hardness" setting in the toolbar which lets you do soft brushes.

 

What you need is the "spacing" parameter, and that just isn't available yet. When I was writing the new brush rendering engine, I didn't know if it would be an important setting and I needed to focus my time (and not overcrowd the toolbar). I figured it'd be easy to add, but much more difficult to remove, at a later time (easy to code, but difficult to remove something people start depending on!).

 

The brush tools are complete for 4.0, but that doesn't mean they won't continue to evolve post-4.0. The feedback you're giving me is useful for that.

[Humility 23]

Well you probably don't need it on the tool bar. I don't know why anyone would want this delay, but I doubt anyone is going to alter the 'spacing' much.Since once you get used to something, you're used to it. Its just a lot faster. for me to clean up little marks and spots if the brush is completely immediately responsive to me.

 

But I'm pretty sure I'm an outlier. It looks like most of the tools and default settings are for people fixing photographs or making heavily shaded 'natural' looking images. Which is probably the majority. Where as I, have completely unshaded images.

 

Which also makes me not good at giving feedback since I am in the minority and never even touch 99% of your tools.

 

I scan my pencil drawings, and thanks to some recent advice,  I outline them to make their lines more distinct and use contrast brightness to turn the lines 100% black and remove as much of the spots from stray dust, paper grain and pencil bleed through as possible. I then copy 1/12th of my image, make a new image, paste this copy into there. Clean up whatever left over spots there are and fix messed up lines with the paint brush. Then I use the paint bucket and color the whole image. Paste it back into the main image and repeat.

 

And thats it.

 

I don't use enough tools to give any help unfortunately.

[Humility 23]

Just noticed another little thing that is slowing me quite a bit, though I have no idea how I missed it before.

 

As I said I use the paint bucket to color in my images after cleaning them up. I just did that on an image and all my colors are wrong. Trying to figure out why I just noticed there is a 'finish' button.That has to be clicked before moving on to a new color.

 

I like painting, changing color, painting changing color in a very as fast as possible procession. This is really slowing me, is there a way to make it 'auto-finish?' I didn't see a way to set that in the options though I may have missed it.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Humility

[BoltBait 2,273]

You can always press Enter on your keyboard to finish with a tool.

[Humility 23]

Still rather inconvenient and slowing.

[Humility 23]

I can't find the free form shape tool.