Paint.NET

What's new in this version:

# 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.