Paint.NET 4.0 Beta 4 restores Line/Curve tool, improves rendering quality and performance

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dotPDN LLC has released the fourth beta of Paint.NET 4.0, the latest pre-release of this eagerly anticipated freeware image-editing tool for Windows.

The fourth beta -- build 5628 -- sees the Line/Curve tool restored, having previously been incorporated into the Shapes tool. It also sees a number of rendering quality and performance improvements alongside a slew of other minor tweaks and bug fixes as Paint.NET edges towards its final release.

The main change in the fourth Paint.NET 4.0 beta is the restoration of the Line/Curve tool, which has been split off from the Shapes tool where it had been integrated in previous version 4 releases. The tool has also been tweaked to improve its rendering quality, which is most noticeable when anti-aliasing is disabled.

Other rendering quality improvements can be found when using both brush tools (again, with no anti-aliasing) and the Nearest Neighbor option under Image > Resize.

The rectangle shape tool now draws using an "inset" brush stroke, which prevents blurriness when using odd-sized brush widths. Its parent Shapes tool now permits users to commit changes by clicking outside the bounding box of the current shape.

Both Shapes and Line/Curve tools have also been optimized for improved performance on any PC whose CPU has less than eight cores, which covers the vast majority of users.

Users with Intel GPUs will discover the hardware acceleration option has been disabled by default -- this can be restored via the Settings button. One feature restored to version 4 from 3.5 is the ability to copy files in File Explorer and then paste them directly into the program.

The new beta includes a number of fixes, including one that made the Palette chooser in the Colors window lose focus when attempting to move the mouse to click on any of its items. A number of small miscellaneous crashes have also been fixed.

Paint.NET 4.0.0 Beta 4 (build 5628) is available now as a a freeware download now for dual-core (or better) PCs running Windows 7 or later. The .NET Framework 4.5 is also required, but will be downloaded automatically if not present.  Also available is Paint.NET 3.5.11 for Windows XP or later. The usual warnings about using pre-release software apply: don’t rely on the program for day-to-day use and work on a duplicate copy of images.

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