The widely acclaimed image editor Paint.NET has been updated to version 3.5 Beta 1. Paint.NET is a Windows application that is developed using version 3.5 of the .net framework. It was originally developed by a Microsoft-mentored student as a replacement for the basic Microsoft Paint application that ships with Windows.

If you have installed the previous version of Paint.NET, all you need to do is to click on the Check for Updates button under (Help). Paint.Net will by default only search for official release versions (which the beta is obviously not). A click on the options button in the window makes it possible to turn that feature off so that all versions of Paint.Net are considered for upgrades.

The full changelog:

• New effect: Blurs -> Surface Blur, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Dents, by Ed Harvey
• New effect: Distort -> Crystalize, by Ed Harvey
• Effect dialog responsiveness has been greatly improved.
• Images open much faster, especially on single CPU systems.
• Selection outline is no longer animated. Instead of "dancing ants", an antialiased and stippled "XOR" outline is drawn.
• Startup performance on most systems will be better by about 20%.
• Memory usage has been greatly reduced when more than one image is open.
• The font system for the Text tool has been completely rewritten, and problems with missing fonts and crashes should be a thing of the past.
• On Windows XP and Vista, the Text tool has improved text rendering quality (it uses GDI instead of GDI+).
• On Windows 7, the Text tool will use DirectWrite (instead of GDI) which gives even better performance and quality.
• The toolbar font list has improved usability, rendering quality, and significantly improved performance.
• The toolbar font list no longer requires an application restart to recognize newly installed fonts.
• When many fonts are installed, both memory usage and startup performance have been greatly improved.
• Installation prerequisites are now installed automatically, such as .NET Framework and Windows Installer.
• Updates can now be downloaded in the background, and installed automatically once you exit the application.
• General rendering quality has been improved when zoomed in.
• Added a "Utilities" menu. Updates, Languages, and Plugin Errors have been moved here.
• Added a "Manage Fonts" command to the Utilities menu.
• Clicking the middle mouse button on an image thumbnail will now close the image.
• Improved the Unfocus effect.
• The DirectDraw Surface (.DDS) file type now allows you to select the resampling algorithm for auto-generated mip-maps.
• A processor that supports SSE is now required (almost all CPUs purchased this decade satisfy this).
• Fixed an issue with Gaussian Blur and its treatment of alpha values.
• Fixed a crash with the "Units" selector in the toolbar.
• When zoomed in, it is now much easier to resize a very small selection.
• Now includes a Russian translation.

Paint.Net 3.5 can be downloaded from the official Get Paint website.