A freeware and portable image editing program.
PaintStar is a freeware and portable image editor which is a great free solution if you're interested in touching up your photographs, doing some retouching or wanting to perform some basic image editing functions like applying filters, creating snapshots of your screen, working with layers which even support transparency and many more.
While this program isn't quite on the same level as Adobe Photoshop, it definitely is a viable alternative if you want to perform some basic functions without shelling out big bucks for an image editing suite.
Since the program has been released as freeware, many features have been added and improved. You're able to use a full set of filling tools like gradients (linear, radial, shapeburst and conical), use the long list of different painting tools in all sorts of shapes and sizes like the pencil tool, airbrush tool, filter brush (highly recommended!), smudge and sharpen among many others.
There's more you can do with PaintStar: Create cool image morphing sequences, edit files of many different formats (JPG, PNG, GIF are among the most known), work extremely easy with layer transparencies, grab images from your scanner or TWAIN source quickly and easily blend layers with a total of 26 different blending modes. The image editor also comes with over 100 effects and filters.
Overall, PaintStar has so many great image editing tools that we were surprised to find out that it was freeware. Again, it isn't as advanced as Photoshop, but it definitely deserves a mention -- especially if you'd like a small program which fits on your USB stick.
Installation note: This program is bundled with adware. The installer may attempt to change your homepage, search engine and browser settings or install third party offers. Pay very close attention when installing; the third party offers are not necessary for this software to function.
Features of PaintStar
- Alpha channel (transparency) supported.
- Auto anti-alias supported
- Color conversion supported include several different dithering methods and palette options.
- Displays EXIF information. EXIF 2.2 supported.
- Displays Histograms (RGB, HSV, HSL, CMYK).
- Full suite of painting tools.
- Gradient Fill tools include linear, radial, square, conical(symmetric), conical(asymmetric) and shapeburst.
- Image morphing supported
- More then 30 File formats supported include JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, BMP and many others.
- Multiple layers, 26 methods of combining modes suppported.
- Multiple paths supported
- Paintbrush, pencil, eraser, airbrush, filter brush, color retouching.
- Selection tools including rectangular, elliptical, free, fuzzy and paths.
- TWAIN supported for scanners and digital cameras.
- Transformation tools
Compatibility and License
PaintStar is provided under a freeware license on Windows from graphics editors with no restrictions on usage. Download and installation of this PC software is free and 2.70 is the latest version last time we checked.
What version of Windows can PaintStar run on?
PaintStar can be used on a computer running Windows 11 or Windows 10. Previous versions of the OS shouldn't be a problem with Windows 8 and Windows 7 having been tested. It runs on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems with no dedicated 64-bit download provided.
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