Paint.net 4.3.8 is likely the last version for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

[harlan4096]

The developer of the popular Paint.net image editor has released Paint.net 4.3.8 to the public on February 16, 2022. The new version marks the end of the 4.3.x branch of the application and support for Microsoft's operating systems Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.



The next major version of the image editor, Paint.net 4.4, will support 64-bit or ARM devices running Windows 10 and later only. While there is a chance that a bug fix release will become available before Paint.net 4.4 is released, users of the application who use it on Windows 8.1 or older devices won't be able to upgrade to Paint.net 4.4 once it is released by the developer.

Paint.net 4.3.8 installs fine on all supported devices. Users can download the latest version from the project website or the Microsoft Store. Paint.net users may also select the question mark icon in the Paint.net interface and then about to display the current version of the application and run a check for updates.

Paint.net 4.3.8 improves the performance of certain operations in the application. The change log mentions "greatly improved performance" for the Line/Curve and Shapes tools, and "improved performance" for the Move Selected Pixels tool when using Bicubic resampling.

Users of the image editor find a new command to toggle the layer visibility menu either by selecting Layers > Toggle Layer Visibility, or by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Comma.

The remaining changes fix various issues in the application or update plugins that it uses to provide certain functionality. The most notable fix addresses a performance bug in the canvas renderer that caused tiles to be copied more often to the GPU than necessary. Another fix patches a "small memory leak" in the application.

Closing Words

Work on Paint.net 4.4 has started already and users who use the image editor on Windows 7 or 8.1 machines have two main options once it is released: either stick with the last release version, which will never be updated again, or switch to another image editor. Free image editors like GIMP continue to support older versions of Windows. While it seems likely that support will end eventually as well, switching to these ensures that the image editor receives updates until that happens.

Updates may introduce support for new image formats and features, but also fix critical issues or security vulnerabilities.

Now You: which image editor do you use?
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