Paint.NET from Rick Brewster (FreeWare)
Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.
It started development as an undergraduate college senior design project mentored by Microsoft, and is currently being maintained by some of the alumni that originally worked on it. Originally intended as a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with Windows, it has grown into a powerful yet simple tool for photo and image editing.
The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with a small amount of C++ for installation and shell-integration related functionality.
It must be noted that although the program itself is FreeWare but Portions Copyright belong to Microsoft Co - because the application has been based on the .NET Framework platform developed and distributed by Microsoft.
Unlike most other freeware image editors that are, in essence, rather simple tools (simetimes they’re like student works) that mostly ignore layers, Paint.NET is rather advanced and capable to work with multilayer images.
The Main menu of the application consists of nine options: File, Edit, View, Image, Layers, Effects, Tools, Window and Help.
The option File opens File Dialog. The first group of options in the File Dialog popup deals with creating a new image/opening an existing image: New… - creates a new image with properties the user defines in the Image Properties window, Open… - opens an existing image file on the disk, Open Recent - allows opening the image from the list of recently opened files, and Acquire - allows acquiring the image from the system Clipboard, or from a scanner or a camera. The next group of options deals with application windows: New Window - it simply creates a new image window in the application, and Open in New Window - allows opening yet another image in a new application window. Then there are options of saving images to disk: Save and Save As. The program supports the native image format Paint.NET (*.pdn) as well as standard image formats - Bitmap, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF and TARGA.
Then there is the option Print for printing images. The printing process is conducted with the help of the Print wizard.
The next two options of the File Dialog actually don’t belong to the File Dialog proper. These are: Language, which sets the application interface language, and Updates, which allows checking for program updates in the Web. Basically, the application interface could be set either English or German (Deutsch). It must be noted, however, that changing of the language doesn’t come into force immediately after setting; you must restart the program execution.
The last option of the File Dialog - Exit - cancels the program execution and quits the application.
The option Edit of the Main menu starts Edit Dialog. The first group of options in it are options of undoing/redoing changes Undo and Redo. Then there are standard editing options such as Cut, Copy and Paste. The option Paste in to New Layer allows to paste a selection to a new layer in the image. There are options Erase Selection and Invert Selection. There are options of selecting all the content Select All and deselecting Deselect.
The option View of the Main menu starts View Dialog which serves for changing the image size. There are various options of zooming: Zoom In, Zoom Out, Zoom to Window and Zoom to Selection; the option of restoring the actual size of the image Actual Size; the options Grid and Rulers which can be applied to the image; and the option Units allowing to change the unit of the image size (pixels, centimeters or inches). The currentrly selected and chosen unit applies to the grid and rulers.
The option Image deals with image resizing. In the Image Dialog popup there are options: Crop to Selection (allows cropping the image to the current selection if there is any), Resize… and Canvas Size… (allows to set the size of the image or canvas in current units - pixels, for example). In this popup there are also options of flipping Flip and rotating Rotate the image, and the option Flatten.
The options Layerof the Main menu handles image layers. It allows Add New Layer, Delete Layer, Duplicate Layer, Import [layer] From File…, various Adjustments of layers, Flip or Rotate/Zoom layers. The option Layer properties… opens a window indicating the layer properties.
The option Effects allows applying various effects to the current image or layer. Each effect in this popup is described in the application help which features image samples, too.
The option Tools allows picking for work a needed editing/painting tool. Actually it duplicates the application toolbars.
The option Window deals with application windows.
The option Help opens the popup with options of Help Topics, Donate… (a link for donating money to the developers 
), Send feedback or bug report and About (opens the window with some information about the program and its developers). The application Help is structured and indexed although that’s not done in Microsoft Help format. One very useful feature of the Help is providing a link to tutorials at the Paint.NET forum in the Web. Here is the link to the Paint.NET forum itself
Under the Main menu of the application window there are two taskbars. In the application window are located its toolbars (basically these are Colours, Tools, History and Layers). You can select the current colour of the tool either from a palette or directly indicating its RGB characteristics. You can select either the color proper or a shade of grey. Hint: the Colour toolbar selects to selecting a shade of grey if you clicks a geometrical centre of the color palette. The History toolbar maintains a list of actions of the current working session. You can repeat the action once more simply by clicking on its item in the actions list. The Layers toolbar shows all the layers in the current image and allows some actions with them; buttons for actions with layers are located at the bottom of the toolbar. Each such button has on-line tip whic activates if you touches the button with mouse pointer.
At the bottom of the Main applications window there is a status bar showing some information about current position of the mouse pointer, tips for the currently selected tool and size of the image.
Downloading of the application is available at the web-page http://www.getpaint.net/index.html. It must be noted that the utility demands prior installing on the user’s PC .NET Framework package from Microsoft. If you don’t sure whether you have the package on your PC there is the link on the web-page for downloading the utility AND the .NET Framework package. The size of the downloadable installer is rather small for such a complex and advanced application - only 3.9 Mb. But it’s only if you’d have .NET Framework already.