Paint no more.
July 24, 2017 9:40 AM   Subscribe

Microsoft has killed Paint after 32 years of faithful service.
posted by not_that_epiphanius (118 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
My response
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:43 AM on July 24, 2017 [15 favorites]




I honestly use paint almost every day to crop things. It's so quick and easy for that and I don't have to try to convince my office to pay for something we don't need so I can crop photos for social media use.
posted by crush at 9:48 AM on July 24, 2017 [74 favorites]


Accordingly to valley gossip, MSFT is relaunching it as an Azure Enterprise Cloud App with 99.99% SLA and built-in support for drawing massive veiny dicks and hairy butts with stink lines.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:48 AM on July 24, 2017 [46 favorites]


I have to admit I still use paint at work. It is super handy for quick additions to maps to indicate where a section of a parking lot will be closed off or an entrance to a station is changed.
posted by agatha_magatha at 9:51 AM on July 24, 2017 [13 favorites]


MSoft just can't figure out how to not be a jerk. The pictures app on Win 10 hangs and freezes, but opening stuff in paint is pretty easy. It can be used for quick-n-dirty image resizing, screenshots, and even actual editing. Is it going to be disabled if I already have it? Is Wordpad next?
posted by theora55 at 9:53 AM on July 24, 2017 [20 favorites]


Really interesting that Paint is their only "success" in the graphics space, and not for lack of trying - I remember when they acquired Alvy Ray Smith's imaging software "Altamira Composer", which was subsequently given away until shelved, with Alvy being shelved by them as well, a total waste. Microsoft never "got" creativity software, a fact that remains valid to this day.
posted by dbiedny at 9:55 AM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]




"Killed" is a strong way to say "will not continue to develop." It will not be removed in the Fall update, and MS hasn't announced any plans to remove it in the future.
posted by skymt at 9:58 AM on July 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


bitmapped .
posted by Gelatin at 10:00 AM on July 24, 2017



posted by Kabanos at 10:03 AM on July 24, 2017 [6 favorites]


paint.net Problem solved.
posted by Naberius at 10:06 AM on July 24, 2017 [29 favorites]


Maybe it's not on the chopping block - perhaps, like TeX, paint.exe is simply complete - thus no development need ever be done on it ever again.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:07 AM on July 24, 2017 [24 favorites]


paint.net Problem solved.

Yep. That's good stuff.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:09 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I actually use Paint on the reg at work; it's just the quickest, easiest way I know of and have access to (I'm a librarian, not any kind of graphic designer) to crop and resize photos, change formats, etc..
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:10 AM on July 24, 2017 [7 favorites]


paint.net Problem solved.

Yep. That's good stuff.


Came in here to recommend paint.net as well. I've been using it for light editing for the last 4-5 years. Safe, reliable, and fairly easy to use.
posted by Fizz at 10:11 AM on July 24, 2017


.





Just used Paint this morning to downsize a headshot slightly.
posted by Mental Wimp at 10:12 AM on July 24, 2017


Paint is one of the few apps that will save a JPEG just the way that certain application specifications demand (as a JFIF, if you're interested). Nearly everything else exports an EXIF-formatted JPEG that will fail an otherwise-stellar project when run through the verification process.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:13 AM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


I will forever love this comedy sketch — MS Paint by Free Love Forum — featuring people who eventually went on to write for the Onion, the Colbert Report, et. al.
posted by D.Billy at 10:19 AM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


Sacrilege! Heresy! My childhood design abilities came from Paint (and KidPix). Microsoft, why do you do this to us????

.
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:21 AM on July 24, 2017


I <3 Paint. This is really, really dumb news.


PS: Maybe there's something wrong with my Chrome, but when I go to paint.net, I get redirected to www.warrenpaint.com?
posted by ApathyGirl at 10:27 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Paint is by far the easiest way to paste in a screenshot you just took through Windows and then crop it for use.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:27 AM on July 24, 2017 [14 favorites]


Crop, resize, save as... all functions I use extremely regularly. Not many people I know use paint to actually eh paint anymore
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:30 AM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


MS Paint is how I channeled all my vandalism urges as a youth. Using the spray paint tool.
posted by Fizz at 10:31 AM on July 24, 2017 [10 favorites]


Paint is by far the easiest way to paste in a screenshot you just took through Windows and then crop it for use.

RRGH I moved from mostly using a Mac environment to mostly using a PC environment almost 10 years ago and to this day it still boggles my fucking mind that there is no built-in PC equivalent to shift+command+4. I mean what the fuck?? I used it multiple times a day! I had to download some crappy third party plugin thing that has three times as many steps just to approximate this elegant and useful command, rather than this ridiculously pointless "copy the entire screen and then paste it somewhere and then crop it manually and then save the file you pasted it into" garbage.

why
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:32 AM on July 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


For those looking to download Paint.NET, the correct link is https://www.getpaint.net/
posted by figment of my conation at 10:32 AM on July 24, 2017 [10 favorites]


Is Wordpad next?

Nooooooooooooo
posted by Melismata at 10:35 AM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


it still boggles my fucking mind that there is no built-in PC equivalent to shift+command+4.

Hit the windows key, type "snip", hit enter.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:35 AM on July 24, 2017 [35 favorites]


In my medical clinic, it's a fairly regular thing to photograph rashes, wounds, blood and guts on an iPhone. Because medical software is about 20 years behind the times, to get photos into the medical record, you have to email the photo to yourself on the secure protected health information network, make a stop in MS Paint, then cut and paste into the medical chart.

Needless to say, this has resulted in some fairly hilarious edits which I would never post publicly but my colleagues and I apparently have no problem texting them to each other, usually around dinner time. One year I had a photo calendar made for my nurse. It's a good thing we don't have photoshop on the network because it is super inappropriate. Black medical humor is the best kind of humor, because oh the horror.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:37 AM on July 24, 2017 [22 favorites]


Hit the windows key, type "snip", hit enter.

Hmm, this looks a lot like the thing I downloaded but like a step shorter. Still - no keyboard shortcut?
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:38 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I actually use Paint on the reg at work; it's just the quickest, easiest way I know of and have access to (I'm a librarian, not any kind of graphic designer) to crop and resize photos, change formats, etc..

For me, that's IrfanView.
(Free for noncommercial home use and educational use; public libraries are explicitly included in that.)
posted by Shmuel510 at 10:41 AM on July 24, 2017 [13 favorites]


Microsoft never "got" creativity software, a fact that remains valid to this day.

My 12 year old self calls bullshit because Creative Writer is the best thing ever.
posted by Talez at 10:46 AM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


I've made many a quickly doctored picture in paint. I am saddened. When I hired a guy named Yash, what program did I turn to to change the album Cover from Queen's Flash Gordon into Yash Gordon? What program did I use to create Sushmit's data pirate adventure? What program did I use to welcome Space Commander Welsch and his rocket to planet Big Data?

Paint... every single time...
posted by Nanukthedog at 10:51 AM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Hmm, this looks a lot like the thing I downloaded but like a step shorter. Still - no keyboard shortcut?

Assign it one by going into Snipping Tool's properties. You can even make it Ctrl-Shift-4, if you'd like.
posted by linux at 10:56 AM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


It's an entire artform... gone. Walled gardens :(
posted by ethansr at 10:56 AM on July 24, 2017


...... 32 years?! Feeling really old now.
posted by TrinsicWS at 11:02 AM on July 24, 2017


But does deprecating mean that it will be removed?
posted by Splunge at 11:13 AM on July 24, 2017


This world, this time, permits of nothing beautiful for long. You will be mourned and missed, little program. You did a small but needful job well.
posted by penduluum at 11:15 AM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


The fuck? Paint sucks, but it's there and it's free and it allows you to do some of the basic shit that you want to do on a computer. Simple image editing is such a core part of how people operate these days that an OS that can't do it out of the box is basically broken. What Microsoft should have done, long ago, is develop Paint into something with a bit more capability and an interface that's not total garbage. There's always been a huge, yawning void between free, stupid Paint and awesome, way-too-expensive Photoshop. Filling that void with something a little more professional and useful than Paint would have been really nice and helpful and I don't know why MS never bothered. Stopping Paint is a step in the wrong direction; if they phase it out entirely or just let it gradually become incompatible, they're breaking their OS.

For that matter, Windows should come with a real text editor. Notepad has been the same piece of shit for so long that a whole generation of computer users don't even realize how helpful a real text editor is to have. People constantly use MS Word in totally inappropriate ways for lack of a decent text editor.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:37 AM on July 24, 2017 [12 favorites]


*pours 40 of paint thinner on curb*
posted by jonmc at 11:38 AM on July 24, 2017 [7 favorites]


Assign it one by going into Snipping Tool's properties. You can even make it Ctrl-Shift-4, if you'd like.

I make a ton of screenshots for my work, so I have it as a permanent addition to my Win toolbar.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:38 AM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


If only they had released the source code under a sufficiently permissive licence, then a user community could take on development from here.

Oh well, I guess that doesn't serve the rent-seeking model well enough!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:39 AM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


For those looking for better Windows screenshots, I can't recommend Greenshot enough. It's a free lightweight program ala F.Lux that does exactly what you need it to do. Faster and nicer than using snipping tool and it'll take over your Print Screen button so no hotkey memorization is necessary.
posted by matrixclown at 11:41 AM on July 24, 2017 [8 favorites]


The snipping tool is what I use all the time for editing screenshots. MS Paint was/is good for non-screenshot image re-saving, though. :(
posted by jillithd at 11:46 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


One year I had a photo calendar made for my nurse. It's a good thing we don't have photoshop on the network because it is super inappropriate. Black medical humor is the best kind of humor, because oh the horror.

This is one reason people hate you! We don't want photographs of our hideous medical conditions being passed around for the lulz.
posted by thelonius at 11:47 AM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yet somehow, against all odds, calc.exe lives on.
posted by atbash at 11:48 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Dear god. This is giving me flashbacks about losing Clippy :(
posted by chance at 11:49 AM on July 24, 2017


I use the snipping tool for all cropping/copy/paste things (and then the Shapes in Powerpoint, Excel, whatever other Windows products to add in arrows, circles, etc), but I use Paint to draw safety incidents for documentation that I wasn't able to photograph before they got fixed. I am getting really good at it too! This news makes me sad.
posted by Fig at 11:52 AM on July 24, 2017


My favourite thing about paint.net is that their website is getpaint.net because somehow they don't own the rights to paint.net. Did they ever? Was the domain purchased out from under them? This is the kind of tales of the internet story I'd love to hear.
posted by thecjm at 11:52 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Paint is by far the easiest way to paste in a screenshot you just took through Windows and then crop it for use.

the quickest, easiest way I know of and have access to (I'm a librarian, not any kind of graphic designer) to crop and resize photos, change formats, etc..

For me, that's IrfanView.


IfranView is the best freeware for browsing through a folder full of photos and cropping/resizing them.

Photofiltre is my go-to freeware for doing MSPaint-type stuff and is a really quick and easy place to paste and manipulate a screenshot. It's a very quick, easy, powerful middle ground between a simple image viewer and something like GIMP.
posted by straight at 11:56 AM on July 24, 2017 [9 favorites]


Despair not, beleaguered citizens! Searching for "best free image editor windows" brings up plenty of alternatives to MS Paint (and most of them have more/better features).
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:58 AM on July 24, 2017


Oh my god, the snipping tool has just changed my life. THANKS, METAFILTER!
posted by something something at 11:58 AM on July 24, 2017 [12 favorites]


What Microsoft should have done, long ago, is develop Paint into something with a bit more capability and an interface that's not total garbage.

Like Paint3D, which Paint is being replaced with?

My favourite thing about paint.net is that their website is getpaint.net because somehow they don't own the rights to paint.net. Did they ever? Was the domain purchased out from under them? This is the kind of tales of the internet story I'd love to hear.

Paint.NET isn't a Microsoft product, it's third-party freeware.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:59 AM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


In simpler, more innocent times, the best thing to do with a colleague's unattended computer was open Paint, draw something truly offensive, set it as the desktop image, maximise he window they were working on and walk away.

.
posted by stanf at 12:00 PM on July 24, 2017 [6 favorites]


My favourite thing about paint.net is that their website is getpaint.net because somehow they don't own the rights to paint.net. Did they ever? Was the domain purchased out from under them?

Judging from the snippet of info on the homepage, the name is probably based on Microsoft's stupidly-named .NET framework (as in "like MS Paint...but using .NET!) rather than the URL of the website the programmer hoped to use.
posted by straight at 12:01 PM on July 24, 2017


No the original paint.net was a pre-existing paint company website.

Paint.net the software is nothing to do with Microsoft beyond using .NET, it was developed by Washington State University.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:06 PM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


I was going to post the Paint.net name derivation but straight beat me to it.

Paint.net (sorry, I guess it's officially Paint.NET per its namesake) is the "looks close enough to Paint it's a drop-in replacement) for me, and Paint 3D is the "well it's installed by default and cropping seems easy enough" future I'm ambivalent about living in.
posted by mikeh at 12:07 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Microsoft should buy Notpad++ and replace Notepad and Wordpad.
Microsoft should buy Paint.net and replace Paint.
Microsoft should buy...
posted by blue_beetle at 12:07 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


My favourite thing about paint.net is that their website is getpaint.net because somehow they don't own the rights to paint.net. Did they ever? Was the domain purchased out from under them?

I'm going to guess some late 90s venture capital firm gave three million to somebody who bought the URL to start an online paint store.
posted by TrialByMedia at 12:07 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Honest question: Is there an easy way to resize an image in Windows other than Paint?
posted by Rock Steady at 12:10 PM on July 24, 2017


This Mac user sympathizes with all you MS Paint users out there. I like to take pictures and my most used organizing/editing software by far is Aperture. Apple stopped development on it in 2014 and took it out of the App Store a few months later, so I'm just a few software updates away from losing it. The Photos app that replaced it is nowhere near as good, so I guess I'll end up using something from Adobe that is probably subscription based. 😡
posted by TedW at 12:16 PM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Is Wordpad next?

Notepad++. A multiple-tabbed & always-cached text editor just feels so right that you'll wonder why you ever used Notepad in the first place.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:17 PM on July 24, 2017 [11 favorites]


DID NO ONE THINK OF ALLIE BROSH???
posted by mudpuppie at 12:25 PM on July 24, 2017 [33 favorites]


@TrialByMedia nope, and Paint.NET wss developed by Washington State U.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 12:28 PM on July 24, 2017


Oh, I missed that there was a replacement. I'm much less irritated now. The replacement might suck, but the original was crap too (I mean Paint doesn't even support ctrl+/ctrl- to zoom) so whatever. Carry on!

And yeah, the always-cached nature of Notepad++ is amazing. I constantly take short-term notes and don't even bother saving them because I know it'll always be there unless I either get rid of it or Something Bad Happens. A lot of the time that's plenty good enough and it saves on having to manage a big pile of text messages for what is essentially ephemera.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:29 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


*pours 40 of paint thinner on curb*
posted by jonmc


That does look like a step up from the drink in your userpic.
posted by maryr at 12:31 PM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wordpad is still essential though. It's the only way I have of viewing .doc files, since my work laptop A: doesn't have Office, B: doesn't let me install software myself and C: doesn't have remote administration, meaning that I'd have to physically drive to the office (where I almost never go) and give it to the IT dude to put Office on. Yet since it's for Work Stuff, I obviously still need to view .docs from time to time.

I don't have a PDF viewer on this either. It's kinda ridiculous, honestly.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 12:32 PM on July 24, 2017


> I actually use Paint on the reg at work; it's just the quickest, easiest way I know of and have access to (I'm a librarian, not any kind of graphic designer)...

I am a graphic designer and I've used Paint on the regular in my second career as a developer (and my work situation has stuck me with a Windows laptop).

Paint is tight at what it does. Its problem is that it tempts you with many things that it could do but doesn't.
posted by ardgedee at 12:33 PM on July 24, 2017 [5 favorites]


Yet somehow, against all odds, calc.exe lives on.

Hey, I use that all the time. I don't need Big Brother Google to know all of my calculations. (Just my temperature conversions. And every other facet of my life.)
posted by maryr at 12:34 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


@TedW, they took Aperture out of the public App Store, but if you had already bought it, it is there under "Purchased", just like prior OS X updates, etc. You can still download it and save it somewhere safe.

Signed,
A fellow Aperture fan
posted by xedrik at 12:34 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Microsoft should buy...

...Abso-friggin-lutely nothing, and let independent developers continue to create other, better software alternatives!
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:42 PM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sublime is even better than Notepad++, guys. I used Notepad++ for ages but Sublime has converted me. And Inkspace fills that (free) void between photoshop and paint pretty well.

(really though I'm just bitter about trying to port programs onto Linux since I switched OSes)
posted by sciatrix at 12:42 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I used paint this morning to take a Google Earth 3/4 view of the Ben Franklin Parkway and draw lines and a legend to demonstrate to my mother that no, I do not have to walk across a major highway on my way to work. That there are, in fact, bridges.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:47 PM on July 24, 2017 [7 favorites]


Yeah, I'll second Inkscape. It's pretty danged good.

I use VIM for Windows instead of either Notepad or Notepad++, though, because I'm a fucking nerd.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:48 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Microsoft should buy Notpad++ and replace Notepad and Wordpad.

I love Notepad not for everything it does but for everything it doesn't do. Simple, light-weight, utterly barebones and predictable. No aggravating formatting or autocorrect. In stark contrast to Word, where the user experience frequently involves shouting NO FUCK YOU STOP WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT.
posted by dephlogisticated at 12:53 PM on July 24, 2017 [18 favorites]


My Notepad replacement is EditPad Pro ($49.95 and worth every penny). Multiple tabs, all drafts saved automatically, search-and-replace with regular expressions, syntax highlighting, lightweight. There's a stripped-down version that's free for personal use, EditPad Lite.
posted by Shmuel510 at 12:57 PM on July 24, 2017


Just my temperature conversions
Google's ability to respond to conversion requests as ridiculous as these is, I would say, the last shred of anything I find endearing about it.
posted by Wolfdog at 1:16 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


Guess I will to switch to doing my photo editing using adobe acrobat now.
posted by srboisvert at 1:18 PM on July 24, 2017


Pixelmator is a decent Mac alternative to Photoshop for image editing, not sure how good it is for photo retouching.

I miss downloadable Gimpshop builds for the Mac.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:21 PM on July 24, 2017


I use Paint to draw pokemon badly as a lesson in writing instructions in my tech writing classes (inspired by an old Noelle Stevenson tumblr gag). I will miss it.
posted by Tesseractive at 1:24 PM on July 24, 2017


I love Notepad not for everything it does but for everything it doesn't do. Simple, light-weight, utterly barebones and predictable. No aggravating formatting or autocorrect. In stark contrast to Word, where the user experience frequently involves shouting NO FUCK YOU STOP WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING THAT.

My workflow frequently involves copy/pasting text into Notepad and then copy/pasting it to wherever I actually need it as the easiest way to get NO REALLY JUST COMPLETELY UNFORMATTED TEXT.
posted by straight at 1:24 PM on July 24, 2017 [22 favorites]


Lots of people know that the "Print Screen" or "PrtScrn" key will copy a bitmap of the Windows desktop to the clipboard.

Not enough people know that "Alt+PrtScrn" will copy a bitmap of the active window only to the clipboard. If that's what you're actually after (it quite often is, in my experience) the built-in shortcut is way faster than fooling around with the Snipping Tool. I'm not aware of anyplace Microsoft admits this shortcut exists, but it works.

The Snipping Tool is great but it's also an optional Windows component; I have bumped into Windows machines that didn't have it. Alt+PrtScrn always works.
posted by Western Infidels at 1:27 PM on July 24, 2017 [18 favorites]


The lack of a good Notepad-like on my phone means I use email drafts for unformatted text notes now.
posted by maryr at 1:27 PM on July 24, 2017


I use it daily. This is Reader all over again.
posted by infini at 1:33 PM on July 24, 2017


Rock Steady: "Is there an easy way to resize an image in Windows other than Paint?"

Hard for me to tell how easy it is as I may have internalized it's quirks from a couple decades of use but XnView is my goto for this.

Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The: "I don't have a PDF viewer on this either. It's kinda ridiculous, honestly."

Foxit Portable is my solution to this ridiculous situation.

straight: "My workflow frequently involves copy/pasting text into Notepad and then copy/pasting it to wherever I actually need it as the easiest way to get NO REALLY JUST COMPLETELY UNFORMATTED TEXT."

I do this using the search box in Firefox. Sometimes embarrassing when I accidentally hit search.
posted by Mitheral at 1:44 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


DID NO ONE THINK OF ALLIE BROSH???

I was actually just wondering how she is going to continue drawing stupid dogs and cake-addicted children :(
posted by sexyrobot at 1:46 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]




mudpuppie, sexyrobot: I read in an interview that Allie Brosh is a Mac user, and uses Paintbrush for her comics. It's free!

Edit: Here's the interview.
posted by SansPoint at 2:10 PM on July 24, 2017 [2 favorites]


*pours 40 of paint thinner on curb*

Dude! Stop! What the hell are you doing!? *lays down on back in the gutter, mouth open* Ok, proceed.
posted by loquacious at 2:24 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


The 'creators update' of Windows 10 introduced some more screenshot options:
windows key + print screen = save screenshot of entire desktop to documents/screenshots/
windows key + shift + s = draw a box and copy just that region to clipboard (still need paint/equivalent to save though)

There doesn't seem to be a shortcut to draw the box and save to file, which seems like an oversight.

Also, Microsoft has their own Sublime/Atom text editor clone, confusingly named 'Visual Studio Code', so they don't need to buy anybody on that front.
posted by Pyry at 2:41 PM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wordpad is still essential though. It's the only way I have of viewing .doc files...

If you have an internet connection and a Google/gmail account, loading it up to Google Drive should allow you to view .doc files, too.
posted by jillithd at 3:00 PM on July 24, 2017


and to this day it still boggles my fucking mind that there is no built-in PC equivalent to shift+command+4. I mean what the fuck??

Win-Shift-S (on windows 10)
posted by markr at 3:16 PM on July 24, 2017


National Treasure Alexandra Petri, WaPo: Farewell, MS Paint: A retrospective
This grief, though common to all, also strikes me on a personal level. MS Paint was my creative outlet for many years.

Indeed, there was a time when I spent the majority of my time drawing terrible pictures in MS Paint that were, at best, tangentially related to the news. Now that MS Paint is leaving us, it is as good a time as any to go through all these drawings and wonder what I was thinking.

A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but I think if the picture is made in MS Paint, the going rate might be slightly less.

Thank you, MS Paint, for allowing this to happen. You were a tool well-suited to my skills, or lack thereof.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:22 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I never really used Paint. but once in a while I find myself in a computer software workshop on a strange computer whose games have been hidden, and boredom will cause me to open Paint and create masterpieces.
posted by acrasis at 3:52 PM on July 24, 2017


Don't panic! Paint is being deprecated, not removed. It'll still be there if you search for it. (Source: Taylor Swift)
posted by officer_fred at 3:58 PM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Deprecators gonna dep dep deprecate.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:17 PM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Alt+PrtScrn copies the active window, handy if you have a large display or just want 1 app.
posted by theora55 at 4:25 PM on July 24, 2017


AOANLA,T: "And yeah, the always-cached nature of Notepad++ is amazing. I constantly take short-term notes and don't even bother saving them because I know it'll always be there unless I either get rid of it or Something Bad Happens."

When they added Saved States to OSX I thought it was a dumb trivial feature. Then I thought about it a bit and realised it actually made sense to incorporate that into the OS session manager rather than leaving implementation to individual apps (though I still thought it was a trivial feature).

Then it saved my arse a few times. Now I just take it for granted.
posted by Pinback at 4:29 PM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


So it looks to me that Paint isn't being removed after 32 years of service, it's actually going to version 2.0 after 32 years.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:06 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


Greenshot is free and has a ton of really nice features for screenshots, including a really cool interactive mode which lets you hover around your open windows and resizes the capture region dynamically. You can use custom hot keys and have it automatically save to a specific folder or open up in its very nice (similar to MS Paint) simple Editor before copying or saving again. It's so good, I use it constantly for work.
posted by Doleful Creature at 7:43 PM on July 24, 2017 [4 favorites]


I was always baffled as a kid about HOW BAD I was at drawing in Paint. I eventually realized that I'm a lefty with a pen and a righty with a mouse, but my right hand does not know how to draw for shit.
posted by Grandysaur at 7:54 PM on July 24, 2017 [3 favorites]


Another happy user of paint.NET since ~2007.

I'm in pre-panic re the day Microsoft deprecates OneNote 2010, i.e., the last stand-alone version of that wonderful program. (I absolutely hate the online version.) I have thousands of pages in several notebooks, including several years worth of genealogy research, in a format whose days are numbered.
posted by she's not there at 7:54 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I use Paint at work for quick stuff. My kids prefer the free Autodesk online program:
https://pixlr.com/editor/
posted by eye of newt at 8:26 PM on July 24, 2017 [1 favorite]


I can't recommend Greenshot enough.

Thirded. If Windows is what you're stuck with, Greenshot is absolutely the least painful way to get screenshots off it.

Its preferences have a ton of options well worth investigating, but it does good work straight out of the box as well.
posted by flabdablet at 10:23 PM on July 24, 2017


Another Greenshot fan here too. Why would you use anything else?
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:34 AM on July 25, 2017


dbiedny:

In re: Altamira Composer

God, what wonderful program that was! IMO, Adobe Photoshop has given over the decades
what graphic artists and photographers think that they need. Alvy Ray Smith's program
gave to the user what they didn't even know that they wanted, from the get go.
Every graphic element a first class object, etc. An actual virtual workspace that functioned as a real life designer's desk!

Curse you, Microsoft!
posted by Chitownfats at 2:07 AM on July 25, 2017 [1 favorite]




Greenshot FTW.
posted by mikelieman at 3:51 AM on July 25, 2017


> Paint will continue to be available...

As the article notes, since it will become a downloadable app, it's effectively anathema to millions of office PCs, many of whose users were heavily leveraging Paint as the tool of last (or only) resort for graphics work being expected of them.

The more I consider it, the more I feel like this is a dick move on Microsoft's part. You'll be seeing even more people using Excel as their graphics editor now.
posted by ardgedee at 4:15 AM on July 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've never heard of the windows snipping tool before! Thanks, Metafilter!
posted by numaner at 4:57 AM on July 25, 2017


The more I consider it, the more I feel like this is a dick move on Microsoft's part. You'll be seeing even more people using Excel as their graphics editor now.

And PowerPoint. But yeah, I don't entirely understand why Microsoft seems so keen on abandoning desktops.
posted by maryr at 8:50 AM on July 25, 2017


There is a new low-cost photo editor in town, and it's fantastic, powerful, straightforward and costs $50, which is insanely inexpensive for what one gets. For basic stuff, GIMP is indeed more than adequate.
posted by dbiedny at 10:09 AM on July 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


As the article notes, since it will become a downloadable app, it's effectively anathema to millions of office PCs, many of whose users were heavily leveraging Paint as the tool of last (or only) resort for graphics work being expected of them.

Microsoft never removes features from Windows. I think it'll be available from Start > Run > mspaint for years to come; it just won't have a preloaded shortcut in the Start Menu anymore so you won't be able to find it unless you know it's there.

But it seems like they're also going put it in the Windows Store. I think this is purely for PR purposes to pick up a few users and warm feelings for the Windows Store. Apple has clearly demonstrated that making open platforms is for schmucks. If you want to make real money in the technology industry, you need to create a locked down curated platform where you take a cut of every transaction. Microsoft is desperate to get this level of control in Windows so they're going to do everything they can think of to shamelessly push the Windows Store until they can finally restrict Windows from running non-store apps without pissing their users off too much. (Note that they're already attempting this in the education/Chromebook market segment with Windows 10 S.)
posted by zixyer at 11:40 AM on July 25, 2017


I've been very happy with PicPick (screen-cap/editor) for a few years now.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:27 PM on July 25, 2017


I'd just like to point out that "snipping tool" is an incredibly fun phrase to say, especially for exclaiming in an outraged tone of voice after your husband suggests you use it instead of Paint.
posted by zeusianfog at 2:14 PM on July 25, 2017


Sounds like a euphemism: "Geez, he's really acting like an utter snipping tool!"
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:05 PM on July 25, 2017 [2 favorites]


Yet somehow, against all odds, calc.exe lives on.

Hey now, I use calc for adding things up all the time. But I also use the slide rule on my desk all the time, so I may not be representative of the general population.
posted by ctmf at 9:26 PM on July 25, 2017


zixyer: "Microsoft never removes features from Windows."

That's not true. Even the update that depreciates Paint has several removals and not all them are because of "equivalent" features being integrated into other products.

Most removed features are not as well known as Paint though.
posted by Mitheral at 11:44 PM on July 25, 2017


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