Download NPS Image Editor 4.2.7 build 5727 beta

NPS Image Editor is a free, unique image editing program that is perfect for pixel art, drawing, and photo editing. It is lightweight, customizable, and intuitive, yet surprisingly powerful.

Added support for indexed colors and animated GIFs

Release date: January 5, 2025

Select a file to download

nps_4.2.7_5727.exe
Full installer, recommended for most users. May require admin rights.
nps_4.2.7_5727.zip
Standalone zip archive that does not require installation or admin rights

Release notes for this version

  • New editing features
    • Added support for editing animated GIF and multi-page TIF
    • Added frame mode so each layer can display individually
    • Added new color modes: High Color, Web Safe, Palette, Indexed, Bitmap (monochrome)
    • Added Transparency Mode for controlling layer transparency, use transparent background color when transparency is disabled
    • Added PgUp/PgDn keyboard shortcuts to move between layers. Hold Shift to toggle visibility (e.g. stepping through an animated GIF). Shift+Space toggles visibility without moving to the next layer.
    • Added warning when loading truecolor GIF, just in case it's mis-detected and was intended to be an animated GIF
    • Added Show All/Hide All to layer list
  • Indexed color support
    • Added support for editing indexed images including BMP, GIF, and PNG
    • Global color mode, allowing you to share a palette across all layers
    • Palette generation using Median Cut, Uniform, Most Common, and First X algorithms
    • Quantization to predefined palette including custom palettes
    • Powerful palette editor with the ability to sort, deduplicate, export, and replace colors; also supports re-indexing an existing indexed image
    • Palette filters for indexed images, e.g. you can use channel mixers to adjust palette colors without modifying image pixels in Indexed mode
    • Limited support for semi-transparent palette entries in PNGs
    • Support indexed mode in most tools (though some tools are restricted, e.g. Airbrush Smooth mode will be disabled)
    • Add "reduce color depth" to Color menu, quantizes the image without changing format
  • Appearance and theming
    • New modern menus and toolbar buttons with rounded corners (can be disabled in settings)
    • Segoe UI font used in more dialogs
    • Limited maximum height of MsgBoxEx and added scrollbar
    • Updated button colors in Acrylic Dark theme
    • Added theming to progress dialog
    • Better support for per-monitor scaling. Note that it is still not perfect.
  • Color picker and palettes
    • Added indexed color support and better palette support
    • Added Swatches from Image command to generate a swatch palette from your current image
    • Added transparent color to Default palette
    • Control drag-to-reorder in swatch palette via Edit menu (to avoid accidental editing)
    • Added quantization support to classic palette
    • Updated swatch palettes with erroneous colors: Basic Colors, NPS Legacy, VGA
    • Added new swatch palettes: Iron, Wide
  • Updated NPSD format to version 1.4
    • Support for indexed image editing
    • Support for more color modes and transparency modes
    • Support for animation
  • Bug fixes and general improvements
    • Speed up color picker loading on 2nd time
    • Add progress indicator to multi-frame file load
    • Fixed NPSD loading layers in wrong order when more than 10 layers
    • Fixed layers moving to 0,0 during Canvas Size operation
    • Fixed unrecoverable crash when trying to flatten a single layer
    • Fixed missing title for Document Recovery
    • Grayscale for disabled menu icons
    • Fixed disabled images not scaling in menus
    • Jump to active layer after opening file
    • Fixed layer control getting stuck in drag mode
    • Updated indexed and multilayer warnings for GIF and TIF (since we support both indexed and multilayer now)
    • Replaced deprecated DotNetZip with ProDotNetZip to resolve security vulnerability in that library
    • Fixed broken brush saving
    • Updated color picker loading icon
    • Fix crash when creating negative stride image from clipboard
    • Fixed text tool preview cut off
    • Renamed "Add Palette Entry" to "Edit Palette Entry" when editing
    • Added Validate feature to debug mode to check if all needed libraries actually can load, useful for verifying it works on e.g. corporate computers with blocked DLLs
    • Fixed some filters crashing in silent mode
    • Fixed crash when saving swatch palette after editing properties
    • Fixed palette description sometimes showing up as the text "0"
    • Hide "Show border" checkbox in swatch palette properties
    • Updated tip of the day