14 ms·

This is silliness. I Win+R, mspaint at least 10 times a day. I paste in screenshots and quickly cut out just a portion of them. Or leave the screenshot there fo

This is silliness. I Win+R, mspaint at least 10 times a day. I paste in screenshots and quickly cut out just a portion of them. Or leave the screenshot there for later review. Why don't they just remove the file browser? Or how about mouse support?

mschaef 9y ago
Agreed. In fact, I also use OSX a lot, and would love to have 'Paint' there too.
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  Hopefully not for same purpose as OP, since you can just do cmd+shift+4 and draw the region you want. Maybe Microsoft should implement something like this, so maybe shift+screen shot or something like that would let the user just draw rectangle over what they want captured.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
    I use Alt-PrtSc to just capture the current window, which is a good start. Specific regions would be even better though (although the Snipping Tool can do this).
  - mschaef 9y ago
    No... cmd+shift+4 mostly covers that base for me. It's also a nice way to take quick measurements of screen dimensions. (Once the drag is started, <esc> will stop it without capturing an image. But for cropping images in general, zooming in, adding quick bits of emphasis, etc. - Paint is pretty useful. (It also has the benefit of working more or less the same way since pre-Windows 3.0, so the consistency is a nice thing.)
    - sjwright 9y ago
      > cropping images in general, zooming in, adding quick bits of emphasis Preview.app can do all of that.
- zavulon 9y ago
  https://paintbrush.sourceforge.io/ https://paintbrush.sourceforge.io/
- sjwright 9y ago
  It's not paint but Preview.app can crop, edit and annotate screenshots. A handy tip is to include control in the Mac screenshot keyboard command (e.g. ⌘⇧⌃3) to have the output piped to the clipboard instead of a file. Then in Preview.app, File > New opens the contents of the clipboard in a new window. While I'm at it, ⌘⇧4 (and ⌘⇧⌃4) lets you interactively select an arbitrary region. Also ⌘⇧4–Space (and ⌘⇧⌃4–Space) let you grab a single window directly from the compositor. Which means you always get the full window, including its alpha channel. Even if the window is obstructed or partially off-screen, you still get the whole thing including its transparent drop-shadow.
  - mercer 9y ago
    Is there a Preview.app equivalent for Windows these days? It was one of my favorite new tools when I switched to Mac back in the day, because for windows I had to download special 'see all types of files + basic editing' programs.
    - iaskwhy 9y ago
      Not really, no, but Chrome supports some files: pdf, txt, images... View mode only, obviously.
    - krylon 9y ago
      For simply displaying PDF (and a few other formats), I like SumatraPDF. It is pretty lightweight (compared to the crawling horror that is Adobe Reader), and when you re-open a PDF, opens it at the position you were last time(!!!). The latter feature makes it perfect for viewing reference manuals etc. EDIT: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html EDIT²: IrfanView can display many graphic formats and quite a few that are not strictly speaking graphics. Plus, it has some basic image editing capabilities (resize, rotate, ...).
      - vram22 9y ago
        Interesting, have you tried Foxit PDF Reader, and if so, how does it compare to SumatraPDF? I haven't used the latter but have used the former.
- atomicfiredoll 9y ago
  As dumb as it may sound, the lack of a real spiritual successor to MacPaint is something that differentiates Windows from OSX in a small way for me. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying. Like copying a transparent PNG in Windows only to paste something with a black background and no alpha. OSX's lack of a Paint equivalent makes me think, "Windows does it better."
MLR 9y ago
It's being replaced, they're removing the program, not the functionality.
Jaruzel 9y ago
As much as I 100% agree with your comment, from MSs point of view, you now have the Snipping Tool to do that.
DocG 9y ago
I did the same until I discovered that windows has built in snippet tool. Try it out.
- tunetine 9y ago
  You can't draw circles and arrows, etc in that tool though. I need to point out the obvious sometimes. Well, actually most times.
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    There is no built in circles or arrows but there is a pen and an highligher tool.
  - Maert 9y ago
    http://imgur.com/a/0oDU7 http://imgur.com/a/0oDU7
    - Retric 9y ago
      The top 'arrow' looks like a sideways J, I assume it's an arrow based on context, but it's not that clear. Which is why it's nice to have a good tool for the job. PS: If you actually do the same thing in paint they have a lot of useful shapes and you get a preview of how they look. Which is nice if you don't want the chicken scratch look.
      - Maert 9y ago
        Well, for anything serious, paint is not good enough. You can't rotate your arrows, for example. If i need to do something well, then I use Paint.net (which is best parts of Paint and Photoshop combined in a free and super fast package). If I need something quick, then I can use the snipping tool. I literally have not turned on paint ever since I discovered windows snipping tool and paint.net (which is couple of years now).
        Retric 9y ago
tormeh 9y ago
Use the Snipping Tool.
willyyr 9y ago
On Windows 10 try: WIN+SHIFT+S to get instant screen clipping and paste it to e.g. Twitter or whatever.
- jconnop 9y ago
  That is amazing, thank you.
  - dagurp 9y ago
    You could also use Win+W if you want to draw on it
- rbanffy 9y ago
  And it only took them what? 30 years?
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    They had an issue with abusing monopoly power, once upon a time. It's only recently that people stopped coming at them with torches and pitchforks every time they added a feature found in third-party apps.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      The cynic would say their Windows 10 behavior is a continuing abuse - including the unwarranted setting of Edge and other Microsoft apps as defaults (overriding the user's settings) after an update, the forced upgrades, and so on. Except now they have a "but it's about keeping the users safe" pretext, so they don't catch as much hate for it.
      - adventured 9y ago
        > Except now they have a "but it's about keeping the users safe" pretext, so they don't catch as much hate for it. They're not catching much flack for it, because they're no longer feared as they were in the late 1990s, due to the devaluation of the desktop PC. It's no longer regarded as the center of the tech universe, nor is it regarded as the future economic gateway through which everything will flow (as was commonly believed 20 years ago). Back then, Microsoft stood practically alone as the gorilla of the technology industry, today that's not even remotely the case.
aldanor 9y ago
Win > "snip" > <Enter>
- mavhc 9y ago
  Win > snip > wait a bit, now a bit more in case it switches to doing a web search for snip, or finding all files named snip > enter
  - slig 9y ago
    Is it really that bad? I haven't used Windows since XP, and it seems bizarre that they couldn't emulate macOS's Spotlight yet.
  - jongalloway2 9y ago
    I'm running Windows 10 on a 7 year old desktop. Just typed win+snip+enter as fast as I could, it launched the snipping tool.
princeb 9y ago
snipping tool. that allows you to screenshot, draw, highlight, email, copy to clipboard, and you can snip a snip to crop.
nashashmi 9y ago
alt+printscreen to do window screen shot if you have one note, one note has a snipping tool win+S to either copy to clipboard or copy to onenote.
goda90 9y ago
I know it's nice to have built in tools that just work, but if you are looking for a good third-party tool for that functionality, Greenshot is pretty good. It has it's own simple little editor for annotating the image if you want.
jpswade 9y ago
They know this. It has been deprecated, not removed. That sounds like it's likely to remain for now.
devopsproject 9y ago
check out greenshot
hungerstrike 9y ago
You might be interested in switching to Greenshot. The workflows that you described will go much quicker since it pops up a menu of quick actions to take after you press Print Scrn. For screenshots that you want to review later, you just tell Greenshot to save directly to a file that it automatically names with a timestamp. To do quick edits, you can open your screenshot in the built-in editor. Or, you can open them in Paint.NET or any other editor.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  It took me a few minutes to compose the same reply. Try Greenshot: http://getgreenshot.org/ http://getgreenshot.org/ It's open-source, no-nonsense, free software. It takes your 9 keystrokes plus multiple clicks to crop down to one key: PrtScn. The built-in image editor is optimized for the things that you need to do with screenshots. Here's a quick guide I threw together: https://i.imgur.com/tcpZjG0.png https://i.imgur.com/tcpZjG0.png Yeah, it was a bit of a mind-bender editing a screenshot of the screenshot editor with the screenshot editor...
  - vram22 9y ago
    >Yeah, it was a bit of a mind-bender editing a screenshot of the screenshot editor with the screenshot editor... Ha ha, I had the same thought just now, after trying out the (plain) PrintScreen command in DanBC's comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839229 Before that, I'd always used just Alt-PrintScreen to take a screenshot of only a specific window, not the whole screen. So, to try it, I arranged a few app windows in cascaded style (including Paint itself), then did PrintScreen, then pasted the screenshot of Paint (plus other apps) into Paint ... Who GNU that ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU
binthere 9y ago
Snipping tool on Windows solve your problem. No need for paint.
frik 9y ago
Me too, use Win7 snipping tool and or Paint all the time. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad are all useful. Even though I wished MS would give them some love like add UTF-8 as default save option, or a better search function, etc. The new Win8/10 metro/UWP apps and the Store are crap.
bargl 9y ago
Have you looked at greenshot? I love it.
partiallypro 9y ago
They aren't removing it, they are deprecating it.

mschaef 9y ago

Agreed. In fact, I also use OSX a lot, and would love to have 'Paint' there too.

nextlevelwizard 9y ago
Hopefully not for same purpose as OP, since you can just do cmd+shift+4 and draw the region you want. Maybe Microsoft should implement something like this, so maybe shift+screen shot or something like that would let the user just draw rectangle over what they want captured.
- SmellyGeekBoy 9y ago
  I use Alt-PrtSc to just capture the current window, which is a good start. Specific regions would be even better though (although the Snipping Tool can do this).
- mschaef 9y ago
  No... cmd+shift+4 mostly covers that base for me. It's also a nice way to take quick measurements of screen dimensions. (Once the drag is started, <esc> will stop it without capturing an image. But for cropping images in general, zooming in, adding quick bits of emphasis, etc. - Paint is pretty useful. (It also has the benefit of working more or less the same way since pre-Windows 3.0, so the consistency is a nice thing.)
  - sjwright 9y ago
    > cropping images in general, zooming in, adding quick bits of emphasis Preview.app can do all of that.
zavulon 9y ago
https://paintbrush.sourceforge.io/ https://paintbrush.sourceforge.io/
sjwright 9y ago
It's not paint but Preview.app can crop, edit and annotate screenshots. A handy tip is to include control in the Mac screenshot keyboard command (e.g. ⌘⇧⌃3) to have the output piped to the clipboard instead of a file. Then in Preview.app, File > New opens the contents of the clipboard in a new window. While I'm at it, ⌘⇧4 (and ⌘⇧⌃4) lets you interactively select an arbitrary region. Also ⌘⇧4–Space (and ⌘⇧⌃4–Space) let you grab a single window directly from the compositor. Which means you always get the full window, including its alpha channel. Even if the window is obstructed or partially off-screen, you still get the whole thing including its transparent drop-shadow.
- mercer 9y ago
  Is there a Preview.app equivalent for Windows these days? It was one of my favorite new tools when I switched to Mac back in the day, because for windows I had to download special 'see all types of files + basic editing' programs.
  - iaskwhy 9y ago
    Not really, no, but Chrome supports some files: pdf, txt, images... View mode only, obviously.
  - krylon 9y ago
    For simply displaying PDF (and a few other formats), I like SumatraPDF. It is pretty lightweight (compared to the crawling horror that is Adobe Reader), and when you re-open a PDF, opens it at the position you were last time(!!!). The latter feature makes it perfect for viewing reference manuals etc. EDIT: https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader.html EDIT²: IrfanView can display many graphic formats and quite a few that are not strictly speaking graphics. Plus, it has some basic image editing capabilities (resize, rotate, ...).
    - vram22 9y ago
      Interesting, have you tried Foxit PDF Reader, and if so, how does it compare to SumatraPDF? I haven't used the latter but have used the former.
atomicfiredoll 9y ago
As dumb as it may sound, the lack of a real spiritual successor to MacPaint is something that differentiates Windows from OSX in a small way for me. It's not the end of the world, but it's annoying. Like copying a transparent PNG in Windows only to paste something with a black background and no alpha. OSX's lack of a Paint equivalent makes me think, "Windows does it better."

MLR 9y ago

It's being replaced, they're removing the program, not the functionality.

Jaruzel 9y ago

As much as I 100% agree with your comment, from MSs point of view, you now have the Snipping Tool to do that.

DocG 9y ago

I did the same until I discovered that windows has built in snippet tool. Try it out.

tunetine 9y ago
You can't draw circles and arrows, etc in that tool though. I need to point out the obvious sometimes. Well, actually most times.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  There is no built in circles or arrows but there is a pen and an highligher tool.
- Maert 9y ago
  http://imgur.com/a/0oDU7 http://imgur.com/a/0oDU7
  - Retric 9y ago
    The top 'arrow' looks like a sideways J, I assume it's an arrow based on context, but it's not that clear. Which is why it's nice to have a good tool for the job. PS: If you actually do the same thing in paint they have a lot of useful shapes and you get a preview of how they look. Which is nice if you don't want the chicken scratch look.
    - Maert 9y ago
      Well, for anything serious, paint is not good enough. You can't rotate your arrows, for example. If i need to do something well, then I use Paint.net (which is best parts of Paint and Photoshop combined in a free and super fast package). If I need something quick, then I can use the snipping tool. I literally have not turned on paint ever since I discovered windows snipping tool and paint.net (which is couple of years now).
      - Retric 9y ago

tormeh 9y ago

Use the Snipping Tool.

willyyr 9y ago

On Windows 10 try: WIN+SHIFT+S to get instant screen clipping and paste it to e.g. Twitter or whatever.

jconnop 9y ago
That is amazing, thank you.
- dagurp 9y ago
  You could also use Win+W if you want to draw on it
rbanffy 9y ago
And it only took them what? 30 years?
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  They had an issue with abusing monopoly power, once upon a time. It's only recently that people stopped coming at them with torches and pitchforks every time they added a feature found in third-party apps.
  - Karunamon 9y ago
    The cynic would say their Windows 10 behavior is a continuing abuse - including the unwarranted setting of Edge and other Microsoft apps as defaults (overriding the user's settings) after an update, the forced upgrades, and so on. Except now they have a "but it's about keeping the users safe" pretext, so they don't catch as much hate for it.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > Except now they have a "but it's about keeping the users safe" pretext, so they don't catch as much hate for it. They're not catching much flack for it, because they're no longer feared as they were in the late 1990s, due to the devaluation of the desktop PC. It's no longer regarded as the center of the tech universe, nor is it regarded as the future economic gateway through which everything will flow (as was commonly believed 20 years ago). Back then, Microsoft stood practically alone as the gorilla of the technology industry, today that's not even remotely the case.

aldanor 9y ago

Win > "snip" > <Enter>

mavhc 9y ago
Win > snip > wait a bit, now a bit more in case it switches to doing a web search for snip, or finding all files named snip > enter
- slig 9y ago
  Is it really that bad? I haven't used Windows since XP, and it seems bizarre that they couldn't emulate macOS's Spotlight yet.
- jongalloway2 9y ago
  I'm running Windows 10 on a 7 year old desktop. Just typed win+snip+enter as fast as I could, it launched the snipping tool.

princeb 9y ago

snipping tool. that allows you to screenshot, draw, highlight, email, copy to clipboard, and you can snip a snip to crop.

nashashmi 9y ago

alt+printscreen to do window screen shot if you have one note, one note has a snipping tool win+S to either copy to clipboard or copy to onenote.

goda90 9y ago

I know it's nice to have built in tools that just work, but if you are looking for a good third-party tool for that functionality, Greenshot is pretty good. It has it's own simple little editor for annotating the image if you want.

jpswade 9y ago

They know this. It has been deprecated, not removed. That sounds like it's likely to remain for now.

devopsproject 9y ago

check out greenshot

hungerstrike 9y ago

You might be interested in switching to Greenshot. The workflows that you described will go much quicker since it pops up a menu of quick actions to take after you press Print Scrn. For screenshots that you want to review later, you just tell Greenshot to save directly to a file that it automatically names with a timestamp. To do quick edits, you can open your screenshot in the built-in editor. Or, you can open them in Paint.NET or any other editor.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
It took me a few minutes to compose the same reply. Try Greenshot: http://getgreenshot.org/ http://getgreenshot.org/ It's open-source, no-nonsense, free software. It takes your 9 keystrokes plus multiple clicks to crop down to one key: PrtScn. The built-in image editor is optimized for the things that you need to do with screenshots. Here's a quick guide I threw together: https://i.imgur.com/tcpZjG0.png https://i.imgur.com/tcpZjG0.png Yeah, it was a bit of a mind-bender editing a screenshot of the screenshot editor with the screenshot editor...
- vram22 9y ago
  >Yeah, it was a bit of a mind-bender editing a screenshot of the screenshot editor with the screenshot editor... Ha ha, I had the same thought just now, after trying out the (plain) PrintScreen command in DanBC's comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839229 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14839229 Before that, I'd always used just Alt-PrintScreen to take a screenshot of only a specific window, not the whole screen. So, to try it, I arranged a few app windows in cascaded style (including Paint itself), then did PrintScreen, then pasted the screenshot of Paint (plus other apps) into Paint ... Who GNU that ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU

binthere 9y ago

Snipping tool on Windows solve your problem. No need for paint.

frik 9y ago

Me too, use Win7 snipping tool and or Paint all the time. Notepad, Paint, Wordpad are all useful. Even though I wished MS would give them some love like add UTF-8 as default save option, or a better search function, etc. The new Win8/10 metro/UWP apps and the Store are crap.

bargl 9y ago

Have you looked at greenshot? I love it.

partiallypro 9y ago

They aren't removing it, they are deprecating it.