After almost a decade a major version update of Paint.NET has been released. Paint.NET has been a feature packed image editor for many years now. Many graphics industry professionals use it for both casual and serious projects. The new version of Paint.NET 5.0.2 has been designed with new code that makes use of new hardware and new technologies. It can make use of your graphics processor to process the images in real time. If you have more than one GPU units connected to your computer’s motherboard, then you can choose which one of these are to be used by Paint.NET.
Here is how you can enable the graphics acceleration as well as choose the rendering device:
- Launch Paint.NET and click on the cogwheel icon in the top-right corner of the Paint.NET window. This should open the settings window for Paint.NET.
- In the settings window, select the Graphics category from the left side.
- Make sure that Use hardware acceleration for UI and Canvas checkbox is selected.
- Click on the drop-down list under the Rendering device category and choose one of the devices. It indicates the fastest device with a rocket icon and the slowest device with a snail icon.
- Click on the Close button to close the settings window.
For many of the Windows users, you will see only two rendering options – GPU and CPU. For some laptops that come with a dedicated discrete GPU and an integrated GPU inside the same chip as the CPU. In any of these case, you will see the available options. If you are not seeing the desired options, then perhaps you will have to enable the right GPU from the system UEFI or BIOS settings.
According to the Paint.NET developers, using the GPU is the best choice and using the CPU should be avoided. Using the fastest GPU is advised for improving the battery life too.