Put the finishing touch to your photographs or paint entire pictures digitally. Professionals have always been relying on rather expensive products like Photoshop or Photo Paint in these cases. On the other hand, hobby users mainly make do with Spartan applications that come with their digital camera or scanner. But there is another possibility, as proven by software giant Microsoft.  Paint.NET, an imaging software that originates from a cooperation between Microsoft and Washington State University, is an excellent and very user friendly application. Apart from handy automated functions there are many effects, manual image processing features and professional tools.

 The software has been initiated in 2004 by students of Washington State University on behalf of Microsoft as a powerful replacement for the rather weak built-in Paint.  It works on Windows XP and Vista.

In order to use Paint.NET, you need to install the free of charge software interface .NET Framework 2.0 <http://dlc.softwareload.de/details/22851> by Microsoft.

 http://www.getpaint.net/