Paint.NET 5.1 is now available to download. The update includes new effects, support for HDR and Wide Color Gamut displays, and robust color management, to name but a few.

The Paint.NET developers have been testing color management in the v5.1 beta since August, and now this and other new features are available in the stable build. With it, the free Windows photo editing tool is now a tad more capable for work where color consistency is key.

Color management ensures a consistent look for images, provided all devices in the pipeline support color management. You want the colors of your photos in Paint.NET to look exactly the same as in the camera you’ve used to take them. Paint.NET 5.1 supports applying built-in color profiles (ProPhoto RGB, sRGB, Display P3, and Adobe RGB), importing new ones, and using the color profile of your display via the new Image > Color Profile menu option.

Color management goes hand in hand with another new feature in Paint.NET 5.1: support for HDR and Wide Color Gamut displays (you must first calibrate HDR in Windows 11 for this work). With that done, HDR photos taken on your smartphone will be rendered in the app in the full spectrum of colors on your HDR-enabled monitor. On on-HDR monitors, Paint.NET still runs in sRGB mode like before to ensure compatibility and consistent color reproduction. Keep in mind that Wide Color Gamut mode requires Windows 11 v24H2 or later.

There are also new canvas options, including a toggle for the drop shadow and adjusting the background color (useful when using high-contrast themes).

The new blur effects in Paint.NET 5.1 include Sketch Blur and Square Blur. The former applies artistic effects to make images resemble impressionist paintings, while the latter creates a bokeh effect with squarish points of light. Also, the Median Blur (previously the Noise > Median effect) has been rewritten to run up to 3x faster on the GPU and use compute shaders.

As a matter of fact, all effects (sans plugins) and adjustments in Paint.NET app now run much smoother as they have been optimized for the GPU, including Auto-Level, Curves, Levels, Oil Painting, Reduce Noise, Surface Blur, and Outline.

The only effects still relying on the CPU are Quantize and Red Eye Removal. Offloading heavy-lifting to the GPU has made Paint.NET significantly faster and nimbler than before, developers claim, with notable improvements to input latency and memory usage as well.

You can download Paint.NET 5.1 from the official website. The update should download and install automatically for those who already have the app installed. Paint.NET is also available via the Microsoft Store as a paid download.

Source: Paint.NET