Paint.NET 4.1.5

This release adds numerous enhancements and tweaks to the built-in effects, a re-organized Effects menu, a new and much easier system for effect plugin development, better error handling for plugins, and the ability to draw Fixed Ratio and Fixed Size selections with the Rectangle Select tool. It also includes the customary list of tweaks and fixes.

* Rectangle Select tool can now draw selections based on a Fixed Size or Fixed Ratio setting.
* The selection combination mode is now accessible from the toolbar (Replace, Add, Subtract, Invert ("xor")).
* The "flood mode" for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tool are now accessible from the toolbar (Continuous, or Global).
* Reorganized the Effects menu so that all effects are classified under submenus named Artistic, Blurs, Distort, Noise, Photo, Render, and Stylize.
* Improved rendering quality for the Motion Blur effect.
* Enhanced the Radial Blur effect so that the center of blurring can be chosen, as well as the quality.
* Enhanced the Zoom Blur effect so that the center of zooming can be chosen.
* Enhanced the Bulge distortion effect so that the center of "bulging" can be chosen.
* Enhanced the Frosted Glass distortion effect in several ways: 1) performance has been improved from between 1,000% to 10,000% depending on image size and property settings, 2) the scatter radius can now be set up to 200 pixels, 3) a "minimum" scatter radius can be chosen, 4) a smoothness setting is now available.
* Enhanced the Tile Reflection distortion effect by adding a Quality property.
* Enhanced the Twist distortion effect by 1) allowing counter-clockwise twisting, 2) allowing the size of the twisted area to be configured, 3) allowing the location/center of twisting to be chosen.
* Enhanced the Add Noise effect by adding a "coverage" property.
* New Mandelbrot Fractal and Julia Fractal render effects.
* New IndirectUI system for plugin authors so that they can develop much more sophisticated effect configuration dialogs with a fraction of the amount of work that used to be required.
* If an effect plugin crashes, it is much more likely that Paint.NET will be able to recover from the error.
* The option to restart Paint.NET will then be provided as a recommended course of action.
* If an effect plugin fails to load, or is blocked from loading, then a "View Plugin Load Errors..." item will be added to the File menu which can be clicked on to show the error and/or diagnostic information.
* Improved the cursors for the Magic Wand and Paint Bucket tools.
* Ctrl+Alt+0 now works for View->Actual Size (aka, "Zoom to 100%"), which is a shortcut key that other software uses (e.g., Photoshop).
* Updates are now installed faster by only creating one System Restore point instead of two (it used to implicitly create one for uninstall, then one for the reinstall).
* Lots of little bug fixes.

* Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages.
* Fixed: If a floating tool window (Colors, History, Layers, Tools) was not docked/snapped, and the screen resolution was lowered or a Remote Desktop session was initiated, then the window would stay off screen and be "lost". It is now moved to keep it on-screen.
* Fixed: An issue for plugin developers where Effect`1.Render(3) was incorrectly throwing an exception when indirectly called through Effect.Render(6). This was preventing an updated version of the "Film Noir" plugin from working, even though its code was correct.
* Integrated updated translations for Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), and Chinese (Simplified). An updated German translation will be present in the final release.

* Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages.
* Fixed: Drawing a "Fixed Size" selection was resulting in a rectangle that was 1 pixel too wide, and 1 pixel too tall
* Fixed: A small layout glitch in the toolbar that was hiding the "Fixed Size" units selector
* Fixed: A layout glitch in the Red Eye Removal dialog that caused it to show a scroll bar when it wasn't necessary
* Fixed: Header's etched line control rendering in XP with the Luna visual style
* Fixed: A few rare crash bugs
* Fixed: Some corner-case glitches and crashes in the new IndirectUI and property system

* Note: New features will be displayed in English through the Alpha and Beta release(s). The final release will include full translations for the other supported languages.
* Improved: Updating performance should now be faster. It used to be the case that two system restore points were created during update (one for uninstall, and one for re-install), but now only one is created to cover the entire transaction.
* Changed: Ctrl+Alt+0 now works for "View actual size". This is not listed in the View menu as a shortcut, but should help those used to keyboard commands from Photoshop, etc.
* Changed: Some plugins that were causing stability problems are now blocked from loading. They will show up in the File->View Plugin Load Errors dialog.
* Changed: Old effect plugin DLL's that have since been integrated into Paint.NET (Glow, Portrait, etc.) are now blocked from loading.
* Fixed: For revamped effect configuration dialogs, the first textbox is now auto-selected instead of the OK button. This makes keyboard usage more convenient.
* Fixed: Close/Cancel button flickering while downloading an update
* Fixed: The floating tool windows (Tools, History, Layers, Color) will double-check that they are on-screen when they are toggled on/off
* Fixed: If two images had the text tool active and both had active text being edited, then Backspace would not always be routed to the correct image
* Fixed: Open/Save dialogs in Windows Vista with high-DPI would sometimes have garbled thumbnail rendering (fixed by adding "high DPI aware" flag to EXE manifest instead of using SetProcessDPIAware function)
* Fixed: Some minor high-DPI glitches in new UI features
* Fixed: For newly revamped effect configuration dialogs, the focus rectangle ("dotted rectangle") for sliders is drawn only when necessary
* Fixed: Several rare crashes

# New: Soften Portrait effect, by David Issel, http://www.BoltBait.com .
# New: Ink Sketch effect, by David Issel, http://www.BoltBait.com .
# New: DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format support, by Dean Ashton, http://www.dmashton.co.uk/ . Improved from the original source code by optimizing the DXT compression library ("Squish") to take advantage of multiple cores / processors.
# New: "Paint.NET Search", available from the Help menu (shortcut key is Ctrl+E), allows you to search for Paint.NET help, forum posts, tutorials, plugins, and other related material: http://searchpaint.net (Note: This feature is only available in English.)
# Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the Layers window.
# Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the close / 'X' button on image thumbnails.
# Improved: Small (about 5-10%) performance improvements for some effects such as Oil Painting, Frosted Glass, and Gaussian Blur.
# Improved: Increased max brush size to 500, as per forum members request.
# Improved: Expanded list of available font sizes up through 288.
# Changed: The keyboard shortcut key for the Color Picker is now 'k'. This makes it so that the toolbar option, "After click: Switch to previous tool", is not useless for those using the keyboard shortcuts.
# Fixed: In some cases, undoing an action that removed a layer would result in the un-removed layer not showing up until you resized the Layers window ("ghost layers").
# Fixed: Pressing F1 from the main window no longer launches the online help in two browser tabs.
# Fixed: Adding a new layer now adds it above the currently active layer, instead of at the very top of the layer list.
# Fixed: Merge Down now activates the merged layer instead of the one above it.
# Fixed: In Vista, clicking on a URL link from the installer will no longer launch the web browser with inherited, elevated privileges.
# Fixed: Pressing Ctrl+[ no longer cancels out of drawing a line/curve, but instead decreases the brush size by 5 as expected.
# Fixed: Ctrl+clicking on the brush size +/- buttons now changes the brush size in increments of 5.
# Fixed: Save Configuration dialog would "creep downward" from its last position every time it was opened again.
# Fixed: TGA codec now saves the # of alpha bits to the image descriptor byte. This was causing some other applications to load TGA files saved with Paint.NET as solid black images.
# Fixed: Clicking the 'X' to close the Layer Properties dialog was not reverting changes made to the layer while the dialog was open.
# Fixed: Installation will not proceed unless Paint.NET is closed, and will also not allow Paint.NET to be opened until installation is completed. This helps to ensure a fully coherent and complete installation or update.
# Fixed: If a file failed to open, and there were no open images, and the user pressed either the Zoom In or Zoom Out toolbar buttons, then Paint.NET would crash.
# Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the Save As dialog by typing a filename that was too long.
# Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the updater if you let the UAC prompt time-out.
# Fixed: It was possible to crash Paint.NET on some systems by clicking on a tool in the Tools window while the "Save As" dialog was open.

* Note: For the beta, the new features are only presented in English. The final release will have complete translations for the other supported languages.
* Changed: Increased max brush size to 500, as per forum members request
* Fixed: Some layout issues with the Save Configuration dialog and the DDS configuration control
* Fixed: In some cases, undoing an action that removed a layer would result in the un-removed layer not showing up until you resized the Layers window ("ghost layers")
* Fixed: Pressing F1 from the main window would launch the online help in two browser tabs
* Fixed: Adding a new layer now adds it above the currently active layer, instead of at the very top of the layer list
* Fixed: Merge Down now activates the merged layer instead of the one above it
* Fixed: Put the 'x' close button back in the Layer Properties window (managed to fix the bug w/o necessitation removal of the 'x')
* Fixed: In Vista, clicking on a URL link from the installer will no longer launch the web browser with inherited, elevated privileges

# Note: For the beta, the new features are only presented in English. The final release will have complete translations for the other supported languages.
# New: Soften Portrait effect, by David Issel
# New: Ink Sketch effect, by David Issel
# New: DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format support, by Dean Ashton. Improved from the original source code by optimizing the DXT compression library ("Squish") to take advantage of multiple cores or processors.
# Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the Layers window.
# Improved: Visual fit-and-finish for the close / 'X' button on image thumbnails.
# Improved: Small (about 5-10%) performance improvements for some effects such as Oil Painting, Frosted Glass, and Gaussian Blur
# Changed: The keyboard shortcut key for the Color Picker is now 'k'. This makes it so that the toolbar option, "After click: Switch to previous tool", is not useless for those using the keyboard shortcuts.
# Fixed: Pressing Ctrl+[ no longer cancels out of drawing a line/curve, but instead decreases the brush size by 5 as expected.
# Fixed: Ctrl+clicking on the brush size +/- buttons now changes the brush size in increments of 5
# Fixed: Save Configuration dialog would "creep downward" from its last position every time it was opened again
# Fixed: TGA codec now saves the # of alpha bits to the image descriptor byte. This was causing some other applications to load TGA files saved with Paint.NET as solid black images.
# Fixed: Clicking the 'X' to close the Layer Properties dialog was not reverting changes made to the layer while the dialog was open.
# Fixed: Installation will not proceed unless Paint.NET is closed, and will also not allow Paint.NET to be opened until installation is completed. This helps to ensure a fully coherent and complete installation or update.
# Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the Save As dialog by typing a filename that was too long.
# Fixed: In Vista, it was possible to crash the updater if you let the UAC prompt time-out.
# Fixed: It was possible to crash Paint.NET on some systems by clicking on a tool in the Tools window while the "Save As" dialog was open.

Fixed minor bugs

This is mostly a service release that fixes some bugs, while also improving keyboard / accessibility cues for some dialogs.

* Fixed: Pasting an image from Office 2003 applications now works (e.g. Excel 2003 graphs).
* Fixed: Some dialogs were not indicating which command button was the default. These buttons now have a highlight to indicate which one will be activated if the user presses Enter or Space.
* Fixed: Some minor keyboard navigation issues with task dialogs
* Fixed: Performance issue with the File->Acquire submenu taking a long time to appear
* Fixed: Window activation issue when the Print wizard was finished / closed
* Fixed: Crash when there was 1 image open and the user pressed Ctrl+Q and then Ctrl+W
* Fixed: Minor performance issue if the user had 1 modified image open and then canceled the "Save changes?" dialog
* Fixed: Misbehaving filetype factory implementations (plugins) will no longer cause a crash

* New: Line/Curve tool has been enhanced to allow drawing arrowheads, and to draw with various dashed- and dotted- styles.
* New: Image tab thumbnails now have an indicator if the respective image has unsaved changes (an orange asterisk is shown).
* Improved: The Save Configuration dialog (choose JPEG quality, etc.) now allows you to maximize it. It also remembers its relative location and size.
* Changed: The help file / documentation is now hosted online. This has reduced the download size by more than 3 MB, and will also allow us to provide translations without ballooning the size of the download (each language would have added between 2 and 4MB).
* Changed: The "image list button" (downward triangle) is also shown when only 1 image is open (it used to only display if 2 or more images were open). This is being done for the sake of consistency.
* Fixed: Some operations would reset the selected layer to the first/lowest layer. This selection is now preserved.
* Fixed: The Image->Rotate commands no longer hangs if a selection was active.
* Fixed: Several problems have been fixed with our implementation surrounding the new Vista Open/Save dialogs. This includes: opening an image from an http:// source, opening images from a digital camera that is not mapped to a file system path (such as a drive letter), the Save dialog not always prompting you about overwriting an existing file, and many corner cases that previously caused crashes.

- Note: For the beta, the new features are only in English. The translations will be complete for the final release.
- New: Line/Curve tool has been enhanced to allow drawing arrowheads, and to draw with various dashed- and dotted- styles.
- New: Image tab thumbnails now have an indicator if the respective image has unsaved changes (an orange asterisk is shown).
- Improved: The Save Configuration dialog (choose JPEG quality, etc.) now allows you to maximize it. It also remembers its relative location and size.
- Changed: The help file / documentation is now hosted online. This has reduced the download size by more than 3 MB, and will also allow us to provide translations without ballooning the size of the download (each language would have added between 2 and 4MB).
- Changed: The "image list button" (downward triangle) is also shown when only 1 image is open (it used to only display if 2 or more images were open). This is being done for the sake of consistency.
- Fixed: Some operations would reset the selected layer to the first/lowest layer. This selection is now preserved.
- Fixed: Several problems have been fixed within our implementation surrounding the new Vista Open/Save dialogs. This includes: opening an image from an http:// source, opening images from a digital camera that is not mapped to a file system path (such as a drive letter), the Save dialog not always prompting you about overwriting an existing file, and many corner cases that previously caused crashes.

Changes since last full release.
This is a minor update that adds a new effect, improves certain parts of the user interface, and fixes a few minor bugs.

- New: Pencil Sketch effect
- New: In Windows Vista, the new-style Save/Open dialogs are used. Among other things, this enables Search functionality.
- Changed: The View->Units, Image->Flip, Image->Rotate, and Layers->Flip submenus have been "flattened" (their commands were moved out into the View, Image, Image, and Layers menus respectively)
- Improved: Download size reduced by about 300 KB by using PNGOUT
- Improved: Some uses of confusing "MessageBox" style dialogs have been changed to a much friendlier "TaskDialog" style interface
- Improved: When changing the language, Paint.NET can now restart itself automatically
- Improved: Better performance for Move Selected Pixels tool for quad-core systems. This issue is documented and explained here, http://blogs.msdn.com/rickbrew/archive/2007/03/01/paint-net-many-core-performance-scaling-analyzed.aspx
- Removed: The "Clear History" button has been removed because it was not very useful
- Fixed: Sometimes the Colors window would get "lost" between sessions of Paint.NET
- Fixed: Stack-overflow crash when using certain effects, such as Gaussian Blur, on very large images with certain settings (such as a 200 pixel radius)
- Fixed: When cancelling the multi-image Unsaved Changes dialog, the input focus was sometimes confused
- Changed: Renamed PdnLib.dll to PaintDotNet.Core.dll
- Fixed: Very rare race condition in background thumbnail renderer

- New effect: Glow
- New effect: Bulge
- New effect: Polar Inversion
- New effect: Tile Reflection
- New effect: Twist
- Updated system requirements
- Fixed nub selection for Line/Curve and Move tools where the cursor would sometimes affect the wrong nub when zoomed in

A note on the system requirements. Paint.NET now requires that if you are using Windows XP that you have SP2 installed. For Windows 2000 users, you must now have SP4 installed (previously SP3 was allowed). For Windows Server 2003 users, SP1 is now required.

This small updates fixes a few minor bugs, and improves Windows Vista compatibility. As a bonus, it also adds much better GIF save quality.

* Improved GIF save quality by implementing Floyd-Steinburg error diffusion algorithm
* Printing now works in Windows Vista
* Fixed a startup performance problem on some systems that was an artifact of the way the .NET Framework was verifying Authenticode signatures as part of its assembly loading process
* Executable files now have UAC manifests to ensure proper execution privilege and to disable file and registry virtualization in Windows Vista

* Built-in updater now works in Vista without having to use "Run as Administrator" beforehand (UAC permission is still required to install updates)
* Fixed a color intensity calculation that had Red and Blue swapped (affects Brightness/Contrast adjustment, and some plugins)
* Fixed .PDN images with transparency having a black background in their Explorer thumbnail
* Fixed crash when an image has bizarre DPI settings (such as 6 billion DPI)
* Fixed crash when an image has an invalid resolution unit specified (neither pixels, inches, nor centimeters)
* Fixed a few rare race conditions which resulted in crashes
* Fixed a rare crash with the history
* Fixed crashlog being created when the updates dialog appears over another modal dialog
* Fixed crashlog not reporting application version with certain damaged installations
* Placed a clickable Windows Live OneCare ad in the Setup wizard