The Free Software category here on Smart Saving Investing features free software to help you save tons of money.  There are many software packages that you can find for free to help you use your computer.  Today’s featured free software is Paint.NET.

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. I discovered Paint.NET over a year ago when it was in its infancy.

It started as an undergraduate college design project and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. It has grown into a powerful yet simple image and photo editor tool.

It has been compared to other digital photo editing software packages such as Adobe® Photoshop®, Corel® Paint Shop Pro®, Microsoft Photo Editor, and The GIMP.

It has received rave reviews from some big name reviewers and you can read them on the Paint.NET website.

Paint.NET has come a long way. When it was released to the public a few years ago it was in a state that you really didn’t want to use it. But it has matured to an extremely easy and fast loading image and photo editor.

The screen below shows what Paint.NET looks like after you load it.

Features:

• A “simple, intuitive and innovative interface” that provides tabs where you can view thumbnail versions of the images you’re working on.
• Layers – In image and photo editing, layers allow you to create “levels” of work that are stacked on top of one another to create your final image.
• When you first start Paint.NET it checks to see if there are any new versions that can automatically be downloaded and installed for you. If there are the program will restart to reflect the update.
• Paint.NET includes many standard special effects such as blurring, sharpening, distortion, noise, etc.
• There are many tools included that are typically found in image and photo editing software like a gradient tool, drawing shapes, a text editor, cloning, etc.
• A history list of what you’ve done to an image that is only limited by how much disk space you have. This is a life saver when you’re working with images and you need to make adjustments to what you’ve done.
• An online forum.
• Tutorials
• Paint.NET also allows plugins as well. Plugins are snippets of functionality that help you do specific things.

Here’s a link to the Paint.NET documentation.

I own Photoshop but I am not a heavy photo editing kind of person. For my purposes I use Paint.NET because I’ve been able to do everything I need to and that works very nice for me. Besides, who doesn’t like free when you look at the price of Photoshop. YIKES!!

Download Paint.NET here.