Graphics editing program that is created by the Washington State University with help also from Microsoft.

I think the authors of this outstanding graphics program state it better than I could and also touch on the collaborative side to the project,"Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP or 2000. Paint.NET is jointly developed at Washington State University with additional help from Microsoft, and is meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems. The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with GDI+ extensions.

Paint.NET has many of the powerful features that expensive commercial applications have, including the ability to use layers. This is the second semester that Paint.NET has been a project at Washington State University, and we have the goal of adding as much functionality as expensive commercial applications provide, but of course, for free! In the spirit of all this freedom, we welcome any suggestions, as well as provide the source code free of charge for anyone who wishes to tinker with it. Please explore this website, download the software and try out many of the things you would do on those expensive commercial applications. "
Very nicely done, and check out the pluig-ins available for this prog here
Note: The d/l link will take you to a list of d/l mirror locations.

Requires NET Framework 2 be installed.