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Graphics Software Microsoft Operating Systems Windows

Paint.NET: The Anti-GIMP? 864

Posted by timothy from the translucent-tools-are-smart dept.
Arno contributes a link to Paint.NET, a free-of-charge raster-graphics program for Windows XP machines. "Quote: 'Paint.NET is image and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP. 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.' It really seems like a nice tool. I definitely prefer its UI to GIMP's."
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Paint.NET: The Anti-GIMP? More

Paint.NET: The Anti-GIMP?

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  • Mirror (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:52AM (#11159628)
    I managed to grab a mirror [dealsites.net] if needed. Site kinda seemed slow, especially for a .edu domain.

  • Here it comes. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:52AM (#11159633)
    Before we all do the obligatory "GIMP r0xx0rz, .NET sux", please try downloading this... after it's Slashdotted. Very nice product, it doesn't have the advanced image conversion GIMP does, but very useful indeed.

    I wonder if they used P/Invoke so I can run this on Mono?

    • Re:Here it comes. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by stupidfoo ( 836212 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:13PM (#11159908)
      Speaking of nice features: the lasso-select in this thing is pretty kick ass. Does any other software have similar real time highlighting of the selected area for the lasso?

      • Lasso select ... (Score:3, Informative)

        by tjwhaynes ( 114792 )

        Speaking of nice features: the lasso-select in this thing is pretty kick ass. Does any other software have similar real time highlighting of the selected area for the lasso?

        What you mean, like the GIMP? Press "F" or click the third button in the tool pane and you are using lasso select.

        I'm beginning to think that there are a bunch of people out there who just like to spout off without engaging their brain. The GIMP has a ton of great features, the dockable toolbars work fabulously, it has great support

    • Re:Here it comes. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shokk ( 187512 ) <ernieoporto @ y a h o o .com> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @02:35PM (#11161486) Homepage Journal
      Any reason why I have to reboot after installing a friggin Paint program? This is an app and has nothing to do with the core of the OS. There should be no rebooting for something like this!!

      • Re:Here it comes. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by lawpoop ( 604919 )
        I don't know, but did you have everything with c# and .net ready to go before you installed this program? There might be a simple explanation.

  • I mod this story... (Score:3, Funny)

    by OblongPlatypus ( 233746 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:53AM (#11159640)
    -1, Flamebait.

    Not that it's impossible that this is useful/good software, but to suggest so to slashdot? Come on.. :)

  • MONO? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jj110888 ( 791178 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:54AM (#11159650) Homepage
    So, um, isn't this the kind of thing we can run under mono without having to deal with wine regressions? Didn't M$ just help linux and windows users alike here by using .net?

    • Re:MONO? (Score:3, Informative)

      by cosinezero ( 833532 )
      ... why do you think .NET is around? Cross platform programming is one of the goals of .NET.

      • Re:MONO? (Score:5, Informative)

        by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:20PM (#11159991)
        On paper it is, but not in practice. First let me state that I like and use both Java and .Net daily. If MS intented .Net to be cross-platform, they would have made it so, just like Sun did with Java. Sun _made_ Java run on multiple platforms from the start and didn't do any features that favor Sun's platform. This is not the case with .Net. There are plenty of features that are MS Only on the GUI side. Also, did MS do any work toward cross-platform support? Nope.

        If MS wanted this to really be cross-platform, why didn't the do what Sun did with the GUI side and have it work on other platforms. The only thing MS did was give us the C# language (which is nice) and a reference C# complier. That is a far way off from being cross platform. What really matters are the class libraries. Sun made theirs cross-platform and implemented them on multiple platforms, MS did not. Sun did not tie anything into just Solaris, MS tied the GUI end of .Net into just MS Windows.

        If you write a .Net GUI app, it will not be cross-platform by default. You have to use some other class libraries like GTK#, QT# or wxWindows#. With Java, when you write a GUI app, it _is_ cross-platform.

  • I's so Anti-Gimp (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:54AM (#11159659)
    This program is so Anti gimp that it can walk and has full use of all it's limbs.

  • A replacement for MS Paint (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pacifix ( 465793 ) <zorp@zorpOPENBSDy.com minus bsd> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:55AM (#11159672)
    If it's meant to be a replacement for MS Paint as the blurb states, I don't think the Gimp should feel threatened. The chasm between Paint and Gimp is lightyears wide. It's unlikely this program could attract the OSS devotion necessary to become really big, especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.
    • While it is meant (I would assume from the feature set) to be a replacement for Pain (and it does this admirably) it also has advanced photo editing tools, such as clone stamp, as well as some filters. So while at its present state the GIMP is better at image manipulation, the framework is there for more photo editing features.

    • Nothing irrational at all (Score:5, Insightful)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:45PM (#11160298)
      especially what with its association with MS and the sometimes irrational dislike this inspires in some of us.

      Based on Microsoft's behavior past and present, its effect on the industry and emergence of technology in general (quite negative), and their publicly stated intentions with respect to Linux, software freedon in general, and freedom to innovate vis-a-vis software patents and ligitagion in general (of which their funding of the SCO debacle is but a precursor), I'd say there is absolutely nothing whatsoever "irrational" about the dislike an association with Microsoft inspires in any of us.

      Now, the expression of that dislike can sometimes take irrational forms, just as the expression of anger can on any subject, but that by no means belies the entirely rational, indeed very justified, anger and dislike being felt.

      Finally, given Microsoft's long history and ongoing policy of customer lock-in, and their stated strategy of leveraging .net towards those ends, avoiding any .net project like the proverbial plague is not only wise, it is critical to the self-preservation of any software developer wishing to work in an environment free of Microsoft's coercive control, be it Apple OS X, FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Palm OS, Solaris, or anything else.

      I do agree that this program is no threat to the GIMP. Its licensing is more restrictive, it requires .NET, and, as you say, it addresses a different niche of users.

  • sad to say, but GIMP does lack (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:56AM (#11159678)
    I do a bit of graphics stuff and i would never put my Photoshop to the side. it is by FAR the best graphics program out there. GIMP is nice for little things at work, but for personal use i would never use it.

  • good job /. (Score:5, Informative)

    by the right sock ( 160156 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:56AM (#11159682)
    75gb

    dev, with mirror link: http://blogs.msdn.com/rickbrew/

  • A few questions about it.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:57AM (#11159685) Journal
    • Is it open source?
    • Does it work on anything besides windows?
    • How is this program different from the 100 other free paint programs for windows?
    • Why is this on slashdot and why are they saying this is the anti-gimp?

    • Re:A few questions about it.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheAwfulTruth ( 325623 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:02PM (#11159760) Homepage
      1) Yes.
      2) No.
      3) It's open source.
      4) See #3 and because all /. headlines have to have inflamitory and misleading headlines to attract attention for some reason.

      • Re:A few questions about it.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by suso ( 153703 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:07PM (#11159827) Journal
        4) See #3 and because all /. headlines have to have inflamitory and misleading headlines to attract attention for some reason.

        Yes exactly, I think it would have been better and more helpful to have a headline like "Paint.NET, an open source alternative to MS-Paint". I suppose slashdot has fallen into the same pit that all other mainstream media is trapped in where it must scare its audience into submission.

  • Coral Cache file: (Score:5, Informative)

    by Neophytus ( 642863 ) * on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:57AM (#11159699)
    Much faster [nyud.net] than either of the mirrors listed.

  • Anti-gimp huh... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:58AM (#11159713)
    So does that mean if I install the Gimp and then try to install Paint.NET that my computer will explode?

    Hmm.... sounds fun. Maybe I should try it on a work computer so I can get a new one...

    Unfortunately, just like most anti-particles in our universe, it appears that Paint.NET is in short supply.

  • Looks like it's Open Source. Cool. (Score:5, Informative)

    by stephenb ( 18235 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @11:59AM (#11159719) Homepage
    BSD-like License: http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/paint.net/legal.html [wsu.edu]

  • wow this is SLOW (Score:5, Informative)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:01PM (#11159739)
    try drawing with the fat brush

    i am running a 3.0+ ghz and 2GB ram dell and the graphics painting sucks

    they may want to work on speed a bit if they want to be taken seriously

    • Re:wow this is SLOW (Score:4, Informative)

      by geekster ( 87252 ) * on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:08PM (#11159840) Homepage
      Yeah really. The requirements are 800 Mhz and 256 Mb ram. Which are exactly my specs.

      It was painfully slow. It stopped responding for about 5-10 seconds in the middle of a brush stroke and completely froze when i tried to exit throught the file menu.

    • Re:wow this is SLOW (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:17PM (#11159952)
      As the original author and team leader of this project, I insist that you shut the fuck up and get dual Xeons like I have.

    • Re:wow this is SLOW (Score:3, Informative)

      by I8TheWorm ( 645702 )
      Strange. I just painted with a brush with a width of 100, and had no problems whatsoever. I'm on a 2.8GHz box with 512MB of DDR. All the while I'm running SQL Server 2000 and IIS as well.

    • try drawing with the fat brush

      Why does that sound like a euphemism that I should be afraid to know the real meaning of?
    • I was playing around with this, and wondered what the hell you guys were talking about.

      The fat brush worked just fine for me.

      Then I turned off the "translucent windows" option... and the program slowed right the hell down.

      So, it's one of those odd programs that runs FASTER with the effects TURNED-ON.

  • Windows XP Only? (Score:3, Informative)

    by eberry ( 84517 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:01PM (#11159742)
    ...designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP

    The author mentions twice that it runs only with Windows XP. It runs with Windows 2000, and presumably with any version of Windows that has the .NET Framework installed.

    Now I wonder, does it run with Mono?

    • Re:Windows XP Only? (Score:4, Informative)

      by tagevm ( 152391 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:14PM (#11159916)
      The XP requirement is due to the use of GDI+, which is included with XP.

      However, GDI+ can be installed on NT4,W2K,Win98,ME see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/gdicpp/GDIPlus/GDIPlus.asp

      As Linux doesn't have GDI+ I doubt very much that it will work with Mono.

  • Not Anti-gimp (Score:5, Informative)

    by tsetem ( 59788 ) <tsetemNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:01PM (#11159745)
    I'd say, just like the article, it's intended to be a replacement for MS-Paint. It doesn't appear to have anywhere near all of the advanced features of Gimp.

    It has layers, and an effects API, but that seems to be where the similarity ends.

    The interface appears to be simple like MS Paint's, but I think it's seriously overstating that it's a Gimp competitor. Heck, sounds like the project has only been around for 2 semesters. How mature could it be compared to Gimp or Photoshop?

  • Little logic gap here (Score:3, Interesting)

    by abb3w ( 696381 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:02PM (#11159754) Journal
    designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP.

    Indeed. Listed System Requirements: 600MHz processor (800MHz recommended), 128MB RAM (256MB recommended), Windows XP SP1 or later (all editions), .NET Framework 1.1. However...

    meant to be a free replacement for the MS Paint software that comes with all Windows operating systems.

    If the requirements are XP, it can only be a replacement for the MS Paint Software that comes with XP, not for the MS Paint Software for any other MS OS. Yes, I think I know what they mean; no, that's not what they said.

    (Sorry, my mother was a retired English teacher.)

  • Windows 2000 port? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:05PM (#11159792) Journal
    I have .net installed on my system.

    I can not afford photoshop and I would love a free graphics program that is fast, loads up quick like Xnview, has paint and image texturing functions. I could make some quick backgrounds for websites and 3d graphics programs that I am working on.

    Photoshop is too fancy and the gimp is too slow and unusable on Windows.

    • Photoshop is too fancy and the gimp is too slow and unusable on Windows.

      You may want to consider Photoshop Elements [adobe.com], which costs about $100 or less if you wait for a rebate. It's a surprisingly big subset of Photoshop, missing mainly the pre-press tools that are useful to professionals. It's also a useful training tool if you plan to move up to Photoshop one day.

  • Windows XP? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ThePyro ( 645161 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:05PM (#11159795)

    Why write something using Microsoft's .NET Framework and then say it's for Windows XP? I thought one of the advantages of .NET was that it works the same on all the supported operating systems.

    ('Course, having developed stuff in .NET myself, I can vouch for the fact that stuff doesn't always work the same on different OSes, but it's close enough to release a functional product)

  • Upside down layers (Score:3, Informative)

    by Digital_Quartz ( 75366 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:08PM (#11159834) Homepage
    Looking at their screenshots (can't run it from work, I'm on an aging Solaris workstation), it appears that the "layers" pannel lists the layers backwards. And when I say "backwards", I don't mean "opposite from Photoshop", I mean backwards.

    The whole point of layers is that you can stack them, so that you can see through a layer ON TOP to a layer ON THE BOTTOM. "On top" is generally synonymous with "above", not "below", and if you keep that mentality, you can view the layer window as a horizontal cross-section of your image.

    This is, perhaps, a minor quibble (this is not going to make or break it for me), but it just jumpped out at me as being strange. I can't think why anyone would reverse the layer ordering except to make their software look "not-Photoshop"ish.

  • OSS (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:08PM (#11159847) Homepage
    "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."

    and the license
    " Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

    The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
    "

    Well fuck me, MS is sponsoring not just free software but Free software, Very interesting! Oh and can we take this and shove it on Linux?

  • Heretic. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:26PM (#11160054) Homepage
    The programming language used to create Paint.NET is C#, with GDI+ extensions.' It really seems like a nice tool. I definitely prefer its UI to GIMP's.

    Heretic. Turn in your Linux / Open Source badge and exit the building. Get out.

  • See the trap? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris@[ ]u.org ['bea' in gap]> on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:30PM (#11160103)
    I see several interesting things here. Note how they had to use a GDI+ 'extension'? And someone is reporting sluggishness anyway, even on hardware that is fairly new. Tells me .net suffers from Java's Disease along with any other emulated environment and that the move to add in native hooks is already well underway. And of course it is in Microsoft's interest to make sure that .NET is 'multiplatform' in the hype but Windows only in practice.

    Let this be an object lesson for all you Mono fetishists, .net and all it's works are nothing but a trap for the unwary. And will never live up to the hype anymore than Java did, although there is now hope for Java to become useful by jetisoning the emulation and making it just another object oriented language that GCC will grind down to ELF executables.

  • I was able to try it. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:35PM (#11160162)
    No this doesn't even come close to Gimp or Photoshop. It lacks many features and the biggest draw back is you can only work with _one_ image at a time. If you click "File -> Open in new windows", it spawns a whole new process, not just a new window. Each one of these processes take up around 40MB or so. Not very efficient IMO. I opened two small PNG's that were only 640x480 and it resulted in two separate processes totaling 80MB.

    I will stick with GIMP or Photoshop thanks. Maybe this program will mature in time and I wish the best to the development team. It may sound like I am being harsh and I apologize for that. But this whole topic came off very trollish to Me.

    • Senior programmer? (Score:5, Informative)

      by melted ( 227442 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:53PM (#11160375) Homepage
      Have you heard of page sharing and copy-on-write? Most of these 80MB is shared between two instances of the app. At the same time fore each of the processes it looks like it has 80MB of code and data loaded. In reality both processes have the same thing, except for pages that differ. So code DLLs are mapped to the same areas of physical RAM and data segments are only in physically different locations if they've been written into.

      Yet windows task manager shows 80MB anyway, because that's what individual processes see.

  • Anti-Gimp? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by p0rnking ( 255997 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:42PM (#11160254) Homepage
    What actually makes this "Anti-Gimp"?
    If it's to be Anti-Anything, it would probably be more along the lines of Anti-Paintshop Pro ...
    Just because a project was done with the help of M$, it doesn't mean that there is some *nix app that they are targetting ... afterall, what is Gimp? It's more like an Anti-Photoshop.
    Also, look at M$ Paint? It's a useless "paint" program that hasn't changed since it was first release ... this would make a great replacement

  • after a quick look... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Atilla ( 64444 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @12:45PM (#11160294) Homepage
    ok, so.....

    layer support sucks. only very few basic layer modes.

    to work on multiple images, you basically have to start another instance of the program. functional but not efficient.

    it is incredibly slow. i'm running it on a 1.8 GHz P4, 1 gig of RAM. I apply an effect on a decent size image, and go get a cup of coffee.

    oh, try the "re-color" tool, if you've got nothing to do for a while.

    can't get anti-aliasing to work right.

    interface flickers quite a bit as you navigate through the menus. not critical, but rather annoying.

    color picker does not display the color in hex, which makes it harder to use for web graphics.

    on a good note, the interface is vaguely familiar to the ubiquitous and expensive software that we all love so much.

    how is this anti-GIMP, anyways? it's not cross-platform, it's quite a bit slower, and is targeted at a totally different audience. I agree that it's better than MS Paint, but shit, MS Paint should have been retired years ago.
    • how is this anti-GIMP, anyways? it's not cross-platform, it's quite a bit slower, and is targeted at a totally different audience.

      Well, lets define some words.

      Anti - opposite of

      GIMP - a cross platform graphics manipulation program capable of lots of high-end manipulations if you can figure out the interface.

      Thus, Anti-Gimp would mean a program with a simple interface, not capable of doing a whole lot, Windows only, and as slow as GIMP is fast... Sounds like the headline perfectly matches the product...

  • RTFA + Try The F Program (Score:4, Informative)

    by erroneus ( 253617 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @01:44PM (#11160944) Homepage
    Okay I just loaded it up and I have the following to say about it:

    (BTW, Thanks to whoever it was that supplied the link to the MSI. Very handy considering the death the original site suffered.)

    1. It requires .NET. Why? I don't have a clue.
    2. It can only handle one document at a time, though I can load multiple instances. It doesn't QUITE make up for it... probably eats up gobs more memory than it should as a result though.
    3. It is GOD-AWFUL slow. My machine is 2GHz with 512MB... not a hot-rod but no slouch neither.
    4. There is no ability to drag a layer from one project to another. That's a pretty critical thing when you are importing several images to create a single image.
    5. The UI is nice enough... I'm kinda torn between that and the GIMP UI. But since it's the functionality I care more about than the UI, I lean to The GIMP since it clearly has more and performs FAR better.

    I could probably add more but I won't. This program is NOT (yet) a threat to The GIMP. And since The GIMP is cross-platform, there is no contest in my mind. Cross-platform, however, doesn't mean anything to those who will be using only Windows for the next 3-4 years. (And for that reason, the UI style is best for Windows-only users since they are likely to adapt to it more quickly than that of The GIMP.)

    I think if they could address the problems I listed above, they'd start to have a contender on their hands. I don't like that it's needlessly not cross-platform -- I think someone mentioned something about the Mono project or whatever the Linux .NET comparable thing is... Can it be ported? Again--Why is it necessary?

    Which would I recommend to users? The GIMP without hesitation ... at least for now. I like Paint.NET's simplicity but speed and memory consumption is unusable and it's hard to explain that to users... and the WinXP only thing is the kicker. I know lots of people still running Win98 and even though The GIMP isn't all that great for Win98, it still kinda runs anyway. (I think it'd be nice if someone out there were to build in a compile option to support Win98 and share the binaries... there's a need!)

  • Mainstream GIMP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KillerLoop ( 202131 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @01:54PM (#11161054) Homepage
    A GIMP frontend that mimicks Photoshop (or almost any other image editing software), and I'd wager that you see GIMP on a hella lot of desktops in a rather short time.

    GIMP is an outstanding product completely and utterly crippled by its user interface. There may be a few fans and supporters out there, but the sheer fact that GIMP hasn't taken over yet (despite it's almost feature completeness) should end this argument.

  • Fill Style (Score:3, Funny)

    by BobTheJanitor ( 114890 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @03:29PM (#11162012) Homepage
    I like their varied patterns you can use for the Fill Style. I liked them better back in 1990 when they were included in Hypercard, though.

  • Paint.Net - Constructive Criticism (Score:3, Informative)

    by SloppyElvis ( 450156 ) on Wednesday December 22, 2004 @04:05PM (#11162356)
    I'd have to say that Paint.Net is pretty nice. It has an intuitive interface, and support for the most-used functions in a general picture editor.

    Performance was not a problem on my PC. Some have reported it is on theirs. I am running a P4 3.2 GHz HT w/512 MB RAM. :)

    Now to the constructive criticism...
    1. Tooltips came up under the tools in the toolbox. So, I couldn't see them, and I had to go to the help file to find out what some of the non-standard tools did.
    2. Transparent windows are cute enough, but flicker annoyingly when you drag a selection beneath them.
    3. Better fill options would be nice (like a gradient fill perhaps - I know GDI+ contains support for this).
    4. Huge memory management problems. After playing with an image for about 5 minutes, my Task Manager reported 160 MB memory in use for PaintDotNet. This figure seemingly rose with every operation, and almost never went down. Further, at one point, pencil and brush drawing stopped functioning entirely.

    The memory problem is a big one. I'm guessing that the history list is largely responsible for the offense, and that some disk cacheing could remedy the problems. Garbage collection isn't a license to grab all the RAM on my PC.

    Anyway, a good free program all-in-all. A bit of a heavyweight to be a Paint replacement though.

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