Paint.net 4.0.20 was released today. The new version of the image editor for Windows comes with dark theme and high DPI support and requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.

Paint.net started out as an image editor for Windows. The author released a Windows Store version recently that works on Windows 10 S and other Windows 10 devices. The Store version is not free, but revenue from sales help finance development.

Paint.net 4.0.20

The .NET Framework 4.7 requirement is probably the most significant change in Paint.net 4.0.20. The image editor always relied on a version of Microsoft’s .NET Framework; most recent versions required .NET Framework 4.6.

The change impacts compatibility somewhat. All supported versions of Windows support the .NET Framework 4.7, but it may not be installed on all of them. If the installer detects that the framework is not installed, it will automatically install the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.7.1 on the system.

The updated requirement means that Windows 8 and Windows 10 version 1511 and earlier are no longer supported by Paint.net.

The new version of Paint.net 4.0.20 comes with a dark theme. You enable the dark theme with a click on the settings icon and setting the Color Scheme to dark on the settings page that opens. The change is immediate, and you may restore the default at any time from the color scheme menu.

The developer added another improvement to the image editor. TGA and DDS file types are now supported as Explorer thumbnails after installing the new version.

Last but not least, support for high-DPI displays improved throughout the application.

Paint.net 4.0.20 ships with plenty of fixes including some that fix crashes and hangs, and one that resolves a data loss bug when saving images larger than 4 Gigabytes.

You can check out the author’s blog post on the official website for information on those.

You can run a check for updates in the Paint.net application in the following way:

  1. Open Paint.net on the computer.
  2. Select the settings icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
  3. Switch to updates in the Settings window.
  4. Click on the “check now” button.

Paint.net runs a check for updates and will download any new update that it finds automatically. The Windows Store version of Paint.net is updated automatically.

You can download the new version of Paint.net from the official website as well.