Paint's journey has been so weird. It was going to be replaced by Paint 3D, made an optional component, and now it's getting updates I would have killed to have 20 years ago. But it's been such a useful and enduring tool because of both its ubiquity and its simplicity, so I hope the upcoming changes will be as minimalist as those of the past.
I hope it keeps its blazing-fast startup. I regularly used Paint instead of Photoshop on a system where I had both because Paint starts instantly but Photoshop took a bit.
Nice. Basically this gets it to parity with the feature-set I <i>actually used</i> in Photoshop when I pirated it as a teen. I assume most people with straightforward needs who aren't pirates are going to be really happy to be able to just use this. Think about people editing a meme graphic or "photoshopping" an extra person into an image for non-serious purposes.<p>(Sidenote: Shoutout for Pixelmator Pro, the Mac app that similarly has more than enough for me, and has allowed me to stop needing Photoshop. I've never bought an Adobe product outside of work, and now I don't use any either.)
Microsoft should just replace Paint with Paint.NET. In my experience, it is the best paint tool for Windows. Much more intuitive UI than photoshop or gimp.
At some level I feel like they should just drop paint and install paint.net as a default.<p>But then, that would probably get paint.net on a downward spiral, so maybe it's for the best?
One of my favorite "MS Paint" clones is KolourPaint[1]. I've been using it for over a decade (you have to search around to get it on non-linux platforms but I presently have it on MacOS). One of my favorite features is how it handles transparency, where it's just treated like another "color".<p>If anyone is heavy into pixel art, you may also be interested in Aseprite[2].<p>[1] <a href="http://www.kolourpaint.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.kolourpaint.org/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.aseprite.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.aseprite.org/</a>
I always kind of felt that Microsoft should have made gradual updates to Paint. I'm not saying that they should be itching to take on Photoshop or anything, but I feel that between Windows 95 until Windows Vista, Paint was pretty much unchanged.<p>I think it would have been kind of cool if they kept a small team dedicated to making Paint gradually better, getting it into parity with something like Paint.NET or something like that.
Seems like a lot to add to such a simple program. I bet they didn't do that.<p>Years ago I re-released an old and honored tool. A strange path.<p>It was the simple code editor used on an early office computer. The programmers all used it daily.<p>First, the source was gone. The team that made it, the last remaining member that remembered it, said "It was just a checkpointed version of our general document editor. We've continued development and have a hundred more features now."<p>Moving to the document editor wouldn't do. Can't have programmers confused by formatting and mail-merge features on a C source file.<p>So I took the current Document Designer source, ripped out everything formatting-related, kept some useful multi-document features. Added some special programmer-specific features (paste-to-anchor point etc for fast prototyping). Got something not too much larger than the old Editor, and much much smaller than the latest document tool.<p>And...hardly anybody used it. Even a little change from ol faithful was too much for most of the teams. No surprise; their job was writing code, not relearning tools to write code.<p>Anyway I had my own personal useful tool after that. Even if I was the only one that knew how to use it.
Given the treatment they gave the photo viewer, asking people to sign-up for a subscription-based video editor, I have low hopes for these features to arrive without paying a hefty non-optional cost.
Last time I used paint in Windows 7 and, boy, was it crippled beyond recognition! Palette management - terrible, tool switching - horrendous, working with 8-bit images - plain impossible (it ruins BMP palette no matter what you do)! The only remaining use for mspaint for me was occasional math/dev schematic sketch. Shame on you, M$!<p>(no, I didn't move to paint.net. LodePaint, Wally and pure old PS (before CS))
You can tell windows 3.1 users by how they open this app - back on 16-bit windows it was pbrush.exe - 32-bit it was renamed mspaint.exe - but both launch it.
and here I am, carting around my mspaint.exe from install to install since windows2k or something, because I've got Krita for when I want something to launch slowly and have a bunch of features that aren't useful for drawing an arrow on a screenshot<p>(modern paint seems fine, and it does launch quickly, but the vibes are off)
I find it surprising that MS hasn't acquired Paint.NET. It's a stellar product, a decent free Photoshop alternative, and miles ahead of whatever MS Paint ever was. It even has .NET in the name, which probably confuses new users into thinking it is owned by MS, so kind of surprised MS hasn't sued over that either.<p>That said, I'm grateful that Paint.NET has managed to remain independent, as MS might've ruined it.<p>I do wonder who still uses MS Paint that would find these new features compelling, and why MS keeps adding new features to it. Surely they've done some research that shows people want this? Or is it still developed to justify paying the team that maintains it?