Paint.NET, a free and well-regarded graphics editor for Windows, is coming to the Windows Store, Rick Brewster said this week.

Well, actually, Brewster, who is the creator of Paint.NET, originally noted his intention to bring the app to the Store back in June. He did via a quick support forums post.

I’m going to release a 4.0.17 update and then focus just on pushing to Windows Store.

With a few enthusiasts blogs picking up on his plans, Brewster has now come clean. And he’s provided a few more details about his plans.

“My plan is [to] release 4.0.17 which has some important fixes for performance and high-DPI, and then focus exclusively on bringing 4.0.17 to the Windows Store,” he writes. “I’d love to give a date but I’ve always gotten them wrong … my code signing certificate is expiring soon and obviously I need to renew it. Hopefully, that won’t be too onerous.”

Brewster also notes that Paint.NET will remain free in Windows Store form.

For those who are unfamiliar, Paint.NET is a popular graphics editing program, similar to GIMP. It began has a Microsoft Paint replacement but has gotten quite a bit more complex and full-featured. It’s notable for a number of reasons, but for me, the big one is that it was written in C# using the .NET Framework. So I’m curious whether Brewster will add UWP features to the app once it’s in the Store.

Tagged with Windows Store