Paint.Net – more tool than I thought

paintScreenshotYou ever find out about something that's been right under your nose, and you just missed it?  I've known about Paint.Net forever.  It's a great little graphics program written in Microsoft's .Net platform.  Sort of a replacement for Paint, right?  I get it.

I didn't get it.

Think a little closer to Photoshop.  It turns out that Paint.Net has some pretty sophisticated capabilities hidden in there, including the biggie - plugin support.  There's an active community site with tutorials, tons of downloadable plugins, and more.  I downloaded some of these plugins and played with them a bit, and there's lots, lots more here than I'd been aware of.  If you don't already have a high-end graphics package, this is worth checking out.