RealWorld Paint.COM 2009.1

Published by Vlasta on April 14th 2009.

Entering the “freeware image editor” segment with Paint.COM some 3 months ago was pretty exciting. Despite being a bit rough around the edges, people were in general satisfied with the software. There were a couple of feature requests related to image editing, but most often people asked for a portable and translatable version. And here it comes.

What’s new?

Let’s see…

New drawing tools

• LASSO - create a filled shape by drawing its outline. After the shape is drawn, it can be moved around and the fill style can be further adjusted. SELECT_LASSO can be used to quickly create arbitrary selections.
• MOVE - allows you to easily move the entire image. Also, SELECT_MOVE can be used to move the selection (the image mask). Exterior can either be filled with given color or the image can be wrapped around (handy if you are designing seamless textures).
• FILL - this tool just fills the entire image (or selection) using active fill style. Works kind like the Gradient tool in other image editors.

Extended portability

Portability seems to be an important feature for a significant amount of users. While it was possible to make the older version portable, there were certain annoyances associated with it. These issues are now taken care of.

There is an official portable download package that can be just unzipped and placed on your USB stick. When the application is in portable mode, it saves all its “user-related” data to a path relative to the executable.

Also, plug-in installation procedure was simplified. It is now enough to copy plug-ins into a dedicated folder. Photoshop-compatible filters can be placed on the USB stick as well and the Paint.COM will find them even if the drive letter changes.

Last but not least, beside XP and Vista, the application is now able to run on Windows 2000 (it is old, I know, but maybe the computers in your school are still running it), and on Windows 7 beta.

Translations made easy

While it was possible to translate the original version, it was also very hard due to a large amount of text and the necessity to compile the translated resources before they can be used.

In the new version, it is no longer necessary to translate the whole application. Partial translation will work as well and multiple independent people can cooperate on the translation task. The application will even monitor, which expressions are used most often and user can translate those first. Translators can directly see the results of their work in the application and then “upload” the translated strings to the server for others.

Internally, a single “dictionary” text file is used for each language.

Staying in touch

A start screen with an embedded browser shows latest news about the application and links to important resources. If there is an update or an new tutorial available, users will know, where to find it.

Download from the Paint.COM image editor home page.

Summary

Well, that’s it. There are of course other minor changes and tweaks, but I will not go into details.

I have high hopes for this version. The superior portability should make Paint.COM the image editor of choice for people, who travel a lot. And the unprecedented community translation subsystem should make Paint.COM accessible to a whole new group of users not speaking English. Time will tell.

Recent comments

Anonymous

Signed comments carry more weight! Don't be a stranger - log-in or register. It only takes few seconds.