A-EON Technology is pleased to announce that it has taken over the development of Personal Paint from Cloanto. The two companies had already started to cooperate in 2014 which resulted in the release of Personal Paint 7.2 and 7.3, the first new versions for several years.

As part of the agreement A-EON will exclusively develop and own all future AmigaOS versions of Personal Paint (including possible MorphOS and AROS ports). Additionally, A-EON and Cloanto will share joint ownership of Classic Amiga versions up to version 7.2, while Cloanto may continue to work on future non-Amiga versions.

Matthew Leaman, A-EON Managing Director, said, "A-EON Technology is proud to conclude this agreement with Cloanto. Personal Paint always had a strong following with Classic Amiga users and we are excited to drive it's future." Trevor Dickinson, A-EON’s co-founder added, "I've been an avid user of Personal Paint for many years. It became the leading easy-to-use Amiga program for bitmapped graphics and animation and was one of the first to support AGA and RTG graphics. These advanced features allowed Personal Paint to replace Deluxe Paint in Commodore's Amiga computer software bundles."

Personal Paint was the first commercial Amiga graphics program to break the 2Mb chip RAM barrier and to support PowerPC CPUs. However, it also included numerous other unique features which made it a favourite with many Classic Amiga owners. These included: professional colour reduction and merge, multiple brushes, filters, animation, file format plugins and stereograms together with PostScript and 24-bit printing. The constant reinvention of the possible applications of animated GIFs (also thanks to the expiration of related patents) helped drive continued demand for Personal Paint's exceptional support for palette based modes and optimised GIF code.

Cloanto's Michael C. Battilana commented on the transfer, "I am delighted to see future Amiga Personal Paint development efforts in the hands of an extremely motivated and talented team. I would also like to pay special thanks to Trevor. Without his generous commitment, the Amiga community wouldn't be as alive and kicking as it still is today."

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