Phillip Whitt - Practical Paint.NET: The Powerful No-Cost Image Editor for Microsoft Windows

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There was a time when digital image editing was a specialty that only trained professionals were capable of performing. Over the years, more and more software programs became available for both professionals and nonprofessionals. Adobe Photoshop has long been the industry standard in professional graphic design and photography, but it has a very steep learning curve and can be daunting for beginners. The open source program GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is free and almost as powerful as Photoshop. Many freelance professionals and advanced amateurs use GIMP, but like Photoshop, it also has a steep learning curve.

For those with little or no image editing experience, Photoshop and GIMP may be too overwhelming. Over the years, Ive had many clients tell me they made an attempt at learning image editing, only to get discouraged by the complexity of either Photoshop or GIMP. Additionally, these programs usually have more features than the casual user really needs.

Paint.NET is a sleek but powerful program for Windows that might be just the ticket. Its free to download and use (although there is a paid version for a nominal fee that helps with development costsmore about that in Chapter ). Even though its not in the same league as Photoshop or GIMP, it is a capable image editing program for nonprofessionals.

Paint.NET can be useful to small business owners, aspiring photographers, genealogists, or anyone with a need for a general-purpose editing program that can handle basic photo-editing tasks or graphics creation. It offers a good assortment of tools and features that allows the user to tackle a variety of editing tasks. The capabilities of Paint.NET can be expanded by installing third-party plugins. Well look closer at that in Chapter .

Figure shows the Paint.NET interface.

Figure 1

The default Paint.NET interface

What Can Paint.NET Do?

Even though (comparatively speaking) Paint.NET is a lightweight program, it can be used to achieve impressive results. It can be used to edit digital photos, such as exposure and color correction, restoration, and retouching. Figure ).

Figure 2

This example shows the power lines removed using Paint.NET

Paint.NET can also be used to create original raster (bitmapped) artwork. The illustration (Figure ) is an example of one I created in Paint.NET in 2019.

Figure 3

This illustration was created using Paint.NET

Paint.NET offers a few artistic effects to turn photos into digital art. Figure shows a before and after example of a photo turned into a digital pen-and-ink drawing using the Ink Sketch Artistic Effect.

Figure 4

A before and after comparison showing the original photo and the image after Ink Sketch Artistic Effect

What Youll Learn from This Book

If youre new to image editing, youll establish a good foundation after youve completed the tutorials. Youll have gained some valuable experience and learn the following:

• The Paint.NET interface

• How to install the BoltBait Plugin Pack to further expand the programs capabilities (youll learn about other plugins available for Paint.NET in the Appendix)

• The Paint.NET tools

• How layers work

• How to make tonal and color adjustments

• How to modify, retouch, and restore photos

• How to make composites (such as add elements or change a background)

• How to create digital art (both from scratch and using artistic effects on photos)