Paint.Net 4.0 is now available • Hacker News Board

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#21

Post by dtech » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:57 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #13

dtech wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major improvement for everyone is decreased startup time thanks to Multicore JIT. That was one of my few irritations with Paint.NET. Paint.NET should perform better overal thanks to GPU acceleration and multithreaded rendering. I've personally used the alpha's and beta's for a while now and it just feels zippier.

For several years I had put off using Paint.NET over GIMP due to the dependency on .NET, but as soon as I realized that it still managed to outperform GIMP, I moved on the spot. Still do not get how GIMP gets compiled on Windows to perform so poorly.

JIT'ed bytecode only carries a ~10% performance overhead versus well-optimized compiled native code, so the argument that a .NET program would be slower is bogus nonetheless.

In this case, GIMP is fully POSIX and GTK based so it needs to translate all POSIX stuff for Windows + rely on a subpar implementation of GTK for the Windows platform.

A good example of how native vs managed usually impacts performance much less than the application structure.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#22

Post by omnibrain » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:57 AM UTC

My GF is a teacher who did some graphics design and typesetting part-time during her time at the university. She used the Adobe products of course. When teaching at a school for the first time, and doing image manipulation with the pupils, she had to use Gimp because it is free and because of that the "oficially recommended" program. She had real trouble adjust to the GUI and teaching it to her pupils and at the same time the tool was way oversized for the tasks. I showed her Paint.NET and it was like heaven-sent for her.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#23

Post by a-saleh » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:57 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #2

Paint.NET is one of the first things I get when I install windows somewhere. It's actually pretty frustrating that there isn't a nice simple image editing tool like that for Mac (or Linux). There's Gimp but...

It has been long time since I tried, but ... http://code.google.com/p/paint-mono/

Then there is http://pinta-project.com/, that was created basically as a cross-platform clone of paint.net

Apart from that, if you want a painting tool, Krita is reasonably good.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#24

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 7:59 AM UTC

codebolt wrote: post #18

I appreciate that the author wants to get something back, but really? Why would I have to click through 4 or 5 pages just to get the download started, while nearly being tricked to click several abusive CNET "Download Here!" ads. Free apps like this would make a much more professional impression if they didn't clutter their websites with ads that no one will ever click (except for by mistake).

[deleted]

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#25

Post by dtech » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:00 AM UTC

CmonDev wrote: post #16

imdsm wrote: post #10

I had this, but got rid. I find my mastery of regular paint suffices and for anything else, I can hop into Photoshop.

Well, Paint.NET is for people who don't want to buy Photoshop. Adobe products are not priced for people who only use them occasionally.

Plus Paint.NET occupies a sweet spot: it is simple enough to easily do easy tasks like cropping, while complex enough to do so slightly more advanced things.

I find it to be especially popular among IT professionals as they usually don't need to do photo-manipulation ("photoshopping"), but need to process images every so often.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#26

Post by zeinology » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:01 AM UTC

without further ado

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#27

Post by codeulike » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:08 AM UTC

I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and wondering why all the word files got so big.

Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that.

Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from recommending it to people recently.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#28

Post by bakareika » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:11 AM UTC

shurcooL wrote: post #20

rtpg wrote: post #2

Paint.NET is one of the first things I get when I install windows somewhere. It's actually pretty frustrating that there isn't a nice simple image editing tool like that for Mac (or Linux). There's Gimp but...

Pixelmator is my go-to OS X alternative.

I second Pixelmator. It's great for simple edits, and also provides some of the more complex, Photoshop-esque tools. Also pretty fast.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#29

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:12 AM UTC

codeulike wrote: post #27

I've been in several offices where people think they need Photoshop to crop or resize photos. Consequently no-one has Photoshop (because its expensive) and people end up pasting 2000x800 images of logos into their letterhead and wondering why all the word files got so big. Paint.Net is brilliant for doing common tasks like that. Its a shame you have to play 'guess the download link' - that has really stopped me from…

Artweaver is pretty nice too - there is a freeware edition for non-commercial and academic purposes.

Re: Paint.Net 4.0 is now available

#30

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jun 25, 2014, 8:13 AM UTC

dtech wrote: post #21

pjmlp wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For several years I had put off using Paint.NET over GIMP due to the dependency on .NET, but as soon as I realized that it still managed to outperform GIMP, I moved on the spot. Still do not get how GIMP gets compiled on Windows to perform so poorly.

JIT'ed bytecode only carries a ~10% performance overhead versus well-optimized compiled native code, so the argument that a .NET program would be slower is bogus nonetheless. In this case, GIMP is fully POSIX and GTK based so it needs to translate all POSIX stuff for Windows + rely on a subpar implementation of GTK for the Windows platform. A good example of how native vs managed usually impacts performance much less…

Sure, I am aware of JIT vs AOT compilation, although .NET JIT has not been touched that much on the last years. Looking forward to RyuJIT improvements.

Just that a statement that writing something in C does not make it fast by itself.