This is a filetype plugin for Paint.NET that enables both loading and saving of Photoshop .PSD files. It was originally written by Frank Blumenberg in 2006, and has been maintained by Tao Yue since 2010.
If you find the plugin useful and would like to contribute monetarily towards further development, donations are accepted via PayPal:
How to install the plugin
Close Paint.NET, then unzip and copy PhotoShop.dll to the "FileTypes" folder in the directory where Paint.NET is installed.
Paint.NET will automatically detect the filetype plugin the next time it is run.
Features
The plugin can load and save the following features of Photoshop .PSD files with no loss of fidelity:
- RGB images
- Color depth of 8 bits per channel
- Raster images with no use of vector features
- Layers, using the common blend modes
- (Optional) RLE compression
In this way, you can use the plugin to exchange work between Paint.NET and other programs. This is especially important since Paint.NET preserves layers only for the default .PDN format – other file formats are flattened on save. The .PSD file
format thus offers the best way to preserve layers when moving between different graphics programs.
The Photoshop .PSD file format is a de facto standard in the graphics industry. A number of programs can read and write .PSD files: not just the Adobe Creative Suite, but also many non-Adobe programs such as Autodesk Sketchbook, 3ds Max, The GIMP,
and Microsoft Expression Design.
Limitations
Many people use the plugin to open .PSD files that they did not initially create. These files may use features that do not exist in Paint.NET, especially if they originate in Photoshop. The plugin will preserve
visual fidelity when loading these files, but will not be able to preserve the file exactly as-is:
- Other colorspaces can be loaded in, but are converted to RGB:
- Bitmap
- Grayscale
- Duotone (color information discarded, treated as grayscale)
- Indexed color
- CMYK
- Multichannel CMY
- Lab
- Raster layer masks are merged into the alpha channel on load, and are not preserved separately.
- Higher color depths can be loaded, but Paint.NET can only represent 8 bits per channel internally:
- 16 bits per channel. The additional tonal resolution is not preserved.
- 32 bits per channel (High Dynamic Range). The extended dynamic range is not preserved or tone-mapped; it is instead truncated to the visible range.
- Text layers load in as raster images.
The following .PSD features cannot be loaded in:
- Anything vector-related, including vector masks. This can cause hidden portions of the image to “peek out” from behind the mask.
- Color profiles are ignored. Paint.NET is not a color-managed application.
For more details, please read:
Compatibility with Photoshop
What if my .PSD file doesn’t load properly?
If you still have problems or questions, please feel free to:
- Contact me via email
- Post in the
PSD filetype plugin thread on the official Paint.NET forums
- File a bug in the Issue Tracker on Codeplex
Please attach the .PSD file so that I can further investigate the problem.
User feedback is directly responsible for most of the improvements made to the filetype plugin. There have been over a hundred thousand downloads of the plugin since it moved to Codeplex. Even a small bugfix could potentially help out a lot of
other people. So please, don’t hesitate to write in!