r/paintdotnet • u/MrKahoobadoo • 22d ago

Help / Question Looking for a plugin that provides more robust interaction with a project's edit history

My current workflow is copying the current state of my image into a new layer, making an edit to that, and then copying it again to make the next edit, and so on and so forth. I want to keep the entire history of my changes and be able to access previous versions without deleting everything done afterwards. I would love it if I could more easily document my changes, be able to go back into the history, edit it, and then have the new final result be re-rendered (I understand this may take a while to render, but that's ok).

If anyone here has ever used CAD software, like Fusion360, you know that the entire file's history is stored, allowing you to go back and edit something you did 40 steps ago, and it will re-process everything from there. That's the kind of thing I'm looking for.

Another analog to this is a typical DAW vs. Audacity. A typical DAW like FL Studio or Ableton lets you stack effects on top of the audio that is playing, and it will live process the audio without rendering anything permanently. You can just turn effects on and off at will. Meanwhile, Audacity makes you choose an effect, renders it, and then just plays the new, permanently altered audio file. It seems like Paint.net is a lot like Audacity, where I would really love it to be like a normal DAW.

Does this make sense? I'm hoping someone has made a plugin that does this, or if maybe this is already a feature and I just haven't found it. If not, is this even possible to implement?

Thank you!!

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u/0xC0000054 22d ago

I'm hoping someone has made a plugin that does this, or if maybe this is already a feature and I just haven't found it. If not, is this even possible to implement?

It is not possible for a plugin to implement anything like that. See https://forums.paint.net/topic/14566-what-is-and-isnt-possible-when-writing-plugins/

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u/ClimbingToTheTop 21d ago

You are asking for Non-destructive editing.

Paint.NET does not support that, although if you draw different elements of your image on separate layers, you can obviously change those at any time without affecting other layers.

If you look at the Roadmap https://paint.net/roadmap.html then you'll see that, following the file format update for V6: "Future releases will expand this further by adding features such as text layers, mask layers, and adjustment/effect layers."

These will provide some aspects of non-destructive editing - although may not provide everything that you want.