It could be said that MS paint is one of the most primitive graphics programs known to man. The only justification for using it has been that it’s free. However, that’s changing. There are a multitude of useful free graphics editors, some of which are even website-based. The two best, free, computer-based graphics editors are GIMP and Paint.net (XP SP2-Vista). I downloaded both and did some testing.
Paint.net is a free graphics editor for Windows and Gimp is an open source graphics editor for most common Operating Systems. Gimp and Paint.net have some distinct and fundamental differences. First of all, Paint.net has a distinctly Windowsish interface, while Gimp looks more like Linux. Paint.net is contained within one window (besides promts like save and open). Gimp, however has a rather different UI that includes multiple windows open on your desktop at once. For example, the editing window is contained within it’s own window while the tool bar is in another; this feature can be quite irritating on lower screen resolutions because you would have to switch between windows frequently.
Gimp is best used for touching up existing graphics, not creating your own from scratch. The user interface on gimp requires a steep learning curve to say the least. There is no obvious help button and no obvious save or save as button. The File menu on Gimp contains only open options, so it is not easy to save a photo as something else. The best part about Gimp is it’s large tool bar and customizable tools.
Paint.net will be far easier than Gimp to transition to for anyone who has MS Paint and Windows experience. Some of the highlights of Paint.net are it’s movable tool bars that become transparent when not used, it’s smooth layering system, and it’s history feature which allows you to see or undo all of your previous actions. Paint.net’s color chooser is also amazingly easy and practical, you can expand it for advanced options (which aren’t that hard to use) or shrink it to save screen space. Paint.net’s many built in graphics generators are also really useful for making things like gradients, blurrs, pixelations, tiling and swirl effects, and many more. Paint.net also saves to many standard file formats such as .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .png, ect. When saving files, you can specify the file type and the quality settings. Image resizing is also an easy task that won’t ruin the quality of your photos when MS Paint will.
Overall, if you want something to touch up and edit existing photos, and you are a moderate-to-advanced computer user, then you will probably want to check out Gimp, on the other hand, if you want to generate your own graphics for your website or other purpose, then you will most likely be pleasently suprised by Paint.net (which can be used by any level of user). If you can’t decide which one to use, and you have some extra hard drive space, you may want to take the cheap way out and install both of them.
Paint.net
Gimp
~Robby
