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MS Paint is here to stay
- fiatjaf 9y agoIs there an alternative to MS Paint that can be easily installed and used? Not GIMP or other complicated things, I want my 4-year-old son to use it.
- bradenb 9y agoI have found Paint.NET to be my go-to middle-ground image editor. I think it is more than simple enough for your 4-year-old son.
- foxfired 9y ago> The original art app isn’t going anywhere – except to the Windows Store for free! Does it mean that from now on we would have to download it?
- peterburkimsher 9y agoI think so. That also means that for shared or strictly managed computers, it won't be installed or installable. No more screenshots on the hospital PC, then.
- landr0id 9y agoSnipping tool doesn't exist on hospital PCs?
- Jaruzel 9y agoCentralised Group Policy Objects (GPOs) on the Windows Domain, can block any EXE that's on the machine, or a customised deployment image of Windows 10 can even be configured to not installed any of the built in applications. So yes, no snipping tool on a deployed installation of Windows 10 is a real scenario. Also, GPOs can (and do) disable the Windows Store. So moving MSPaint to the Windows Store does not make as available as having it pre-installed.
- mrkrabo 9y agoIf no Snipping Tool because of GPO is a real scenario, no Paint because of GPO is a real scenario too
- praseodym 9y agoIf a machine is blocking built-in applications, why would it have MSPaint available? Or is it an application that cannot be blocked, which would be a security vulnerability?
- Jaruzel 9y agoI spent 10 years doing corporate desktop deployments of Windows. You'd be surprised at the crazy requests from the business regarding what they did and didn't want pre-installed.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- jmkni 9y agoContext menus close when you use the snipping tool.
- ralish 9y agoHence the Delay option.
- kyberias 9y agoThanks. I've always struggled with this and only now realized that Delay-option in Snipping tool.
- jmkni 9y agoHad no idea this existed. Still, there are times when you have a weird error you need to screenshot, and you know that if you move the mouse or hit anything other than the print screen button, it will go away. Paint made this scenario very easy to deal with.
- robmiller 9y agoPress PrtScn for desktop, Alt+PrtScn for active window
- voltagex_ 9y agoWindows+PrintScrn now dumps a PNG to your Pictures folder.
- kalleboo 9y agoAt the same time they're removing Paint they're bundling Paint 3D which does the same and more.
- hougaard 9y agoShift-WindowsKey+S is the new screen snipping tool. Built right into the OS.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoHuh. I just tried it. A snipping interface came up and let me select a rectangle of the screen. Then, none of the following things happened: - A message telling me where the picture went. - The picture showing up on the desktop. - The picture showing up in "Documents". - The picture showing up in "Pictures". But, I was able to recover the screenshot by... opening Paint, and pasting from the clipboard! That's not a solution that will be available on a machine without Paint.
- jccalhoun 9y agoThere is also the version of the snipping tool with a gui. you can hit the windows key and type snip to find it. I don't know if there is a quick keyboard shortcut to bring up that version. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-s...
- Jaruzel 9y agoYou can also open up MS Word (almost guaranteed to be installed on a locked down corporate Windows machine), and paste the image into a blank document. For bonus points you can then right click the pasted image, and select 'Save As PNG'.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoCustomers frequently send me screen shots pasted into a Word document, sigh ...
- Sleeep 9y agoI frequently get screenshots pasted into PowerPoint "presentations". Couple times I even got a photo of the monitor taken with a cellphone camera. I don't fault them for this in the least because they did what they knew how to do to accomplish the task and the task was accomplished effectively, I was able to see their screen.
- voltagex_ 9y agoYes, it'll be a wrapped UWP app.
- simplyinfinity 9y agomost likely not. It will come pre-installed with windows but the updates will be managed trough the store.
- criddell 9y agoThe cynic in me thinks they did this to try to get people to check out the store. I don't think I've ever even opened the store.
- Waterluvian 9y agoOne more thing pushing me to interface with an online store. One less reason for picking Windows for my "toolbench" computer. The paranoid in me is expecting there to be a catch to this new paint application. Ads? DLC?
- madez 9y agoIf you don't trust Microsoft and it's Store, then you shouldn't use Windows in the first place.
- flatline 9y agoIt's a perfectly good OS with a bunch of junk installed, whether by Microsoft, a OEM, or both. Working around the crap has been the norm for as long as I can remember.
- beagle3 9y agoSome of us consider the telemetry and forced updates "junk" that disqualifies it from being a "perfectly good OS" since you cannot uninstall them and need to keep fighting the OS to keep them off.
- khedoros1 9y agoOne can have cynical thoughts about their future plans but still have a certain degree of trust in more important aspects of the OS.
- monochromatic 9y agoIt'll probably be worse in every way, like calc.exe in Windows 10.
- Jaruzel 9y agoNot just me then. I hated Windows 10 Calc so much, that I copied over calc.exe from Windows 7 and made the following registry change: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\CALC.EXE (Default) C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC>\calc.exe Path C:\<PATH-TO-WINDOWS7-CALC> Presto! Whenever you Win+R, Calc.exe - you get the Windows 7 one instead. This would work for any of the other apps listed in 'App Paths' too (or you can add your own).
- Overtonwindow 9y agoFor many it seems Paint is their first experience with Windows, since my first was an Apple II GS, I remember Mouse Paint.
- gchokov 9y agoMicrosoft doesn't have any taste. No, it's should not be on the store. Tasteless company..
- nindalf 9y agoYour comment is vague and unconstructive. I'd ask you to substantiate your claim, but its not even clear what that claim is.
- mrkrabo 9y ago"Having taste" is not a fact, but an opinion, so of course he can't "substantiate it"
- chrisper 9y agoIf you look at his submissions, then you can see he appears to be an Anti-MS Troll / Fanboy. So maybe this comment is just a troll attempt.
- youhaveto 9y agoGosh, that pretentious tone of language. "I'd ask to substantiate your claim". What the heck does that mean? Are you like the holy guard of "rationality" you dumb fuck? You have to go back, Pajeet.
- nsxwolf 9y agoNot having it installed by default will kill off MS Paint.
- simplyinfinity 9y agojust because it's in the store doesn't mean it wont be pre installed :)
- opdahl 9y agoWhat is, and has been great about MS Paint is that no matter what Windows machine I have been on, I know that I have had it available. No matter if it's my old grandma's computer, if I have needed to quickly do something simple with an image, MS Paint has always been there for me. Now that will no longer be the case. If I have to download and install it on the computer before I use it, then what is the point? It will be faster to just google "MS paint online free" and click the first link.
- ryan-allen 9y agoSure, if you want an adware addled version from one of the nefarious software downloads sites. Windows store is pretty simple, I'll just go there.
- opdahl 9y agoI mean something like [1]. That was literally the first result when I googled for mspaint online. I agree that if you are already downloading something you might as well download the real version from the Windows Store. [1]: http://www.jswidget.com/index-ipaint.html http://www.jswidget.com/index-ipaint.html
- otempomores 9y agoThats nice for you. Ever been to a sit where the store and the inet are no option? What then?
- sliken 9y agoThus yet reason for windows users to do Google searches and follow the instructions for what they find. Which if it's malware will be "download and run ...."
- wvenable 9y agoI think it's a good thing that Microsoft is reducing the size of their base OS and decoupling many of the apps from the Windows release cycle. It definitely does, however, feel like the end of a era.
- roselan 9y agoThat's a clickbait title if I ever saw one. It seems Microsoft is trying to force uwp apps down our throats. It is sad because classic programs systematically feels snappier and are more efficient. They show their age, but are definitely less annoying than their sexier windows 10 version. I don't know how many time I tried =really tried= to use the photo app or the new remote desktop app, but I always come back very frustrated to the classic version.
- ntauthority 9y agoIn case you didn't know, the Windows Store can also be used to distribute classical desktop apps, which in this case is likely the way Paint is going as well.
- eco 9y agoAnd here I was defending Microsoft in the other thread... This is much worse (for all the reasons people have already listed) than deprecating and eventually removing it which is what the original article implied was happening.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- itsqjkhan 9y agoRIP ms.paint... you were my photosop
- hasenj 9y agoSo .. what? It always struck my as a toy program (kind of like how Notepad seems like a toy text editor). When was the last time you could get anything done with MS Paint?
- maruhan2 9y agoI think most people have at least once used MS paint. If that's not an indication that it's a useful program, then I don't know what is.
- aerovistae 9y agoUh, every single time I wanted to quickly circle something in a screenshot? Every time I wanted to quickly crop an image? Every time I wanted to draw a diagram? MS Paint has been there for me through thick and thin. Yeah, I'm not about to become a graphic artist with it, but what does that have to do with anything? And what's more, I don't know what you're on about with Notepad. I've taken more notes in Notepad than any other program, no contest. "Toy"? Is a butterknife a toy because all it does is spread butter?
- lou1306 9y agoSnipping Tool is way better at any screenshot-related task. And, er, you draw diagrams in Paint? Where you cannot even edit a damn text-box? [^1] Really? [^1]: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/paint-in-windows-10-editing-text-boxes/11501082-cc59-44ad-a456-cb2e33f27fda https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
- bitwize 9y agoIndeed. Why isn't Microsoft thinking of its enterprise Paint users?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- vxNsr 9y agoHonestly the biggest takeaway from this was that they were still developing mspaint.
- pvdebbe 9y agoI wonder why it needs development. Any security holes would very likely to be in image format parsers, which are hopefully dynamically linked and maintained elsewhere.
- SwellJoe 9y agoI just want to take a moment to rant about what an awful user experience Paint 3D was for me. I was using Windows for a short while because graphics under Linux weren't working well (GPU was new at the time, it took a couple of months for it to become reliable enough to use as a daily driver under Linux), and installed the Creator's update, which setup Paint 3D as the default program for every image file it could recognize. Paint 3D is a joke for all the image stuff I want to do; cropping, resizing, highlighting, mostly, and the user interface was pretty confusing all around. And, I couldn't figure out how to uninstall it! It wasn't uninstallable in the normal ways, and I don't think I ever figured out how to do so. I won't miss Paint, and I never used it, but I definitely don't consider Paint 3D an upgrade or improvement. And, I really hate Microsoft's standard practice of replacing file associations even if I've already setup my own before one of their apps gets installed (I had a couple of other tools setup for images, and they got replaced in the defaults for like 30 file types). They do it with pretty much every app they distribute. It's presumptuous.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JoBrad 9y agoI think most people would say the same for MSPaint, too. It's why I use Paint.NET, which is simple to use but also has a lot of great features.
- keithnz 9y agolots of people raging..... about resizing and cropping.... So I figure I'd have a go I haven't used Paint 3d before until a few moments ago, and very quickly worked out how to resize and crop an image. Seemed simple enough. The image resizing is actually better than most I've seen.
- SwellJoe 9y agoIt's not so much that I couldn't have figured it out (though I seem to recall it was not immediately obvious how to do anything, to me), rather it changed my selected applications. I'd set it up the way I liked it, with software I was familiar with and happy with...and an OS update removed that configuration and pointed to Paint 3D instead, an application I hadn't asked for, and seemingly could not uninstall (at least, I couldn't figure out how to uninstall it using the normal process for uninstalling applications). I should be clear: I don't know Windows. I've used it very rarely over the past couple of decades. I keep a Windows partition around for gaming and audio work (though even that no longer really requires Windows these days, as my favorite games are on Linux and even audio isn't awful under Linux anymore). So, if someone knows their way around Windows, my complaints might seem sort of stupid. Maybe it's trivial to fix all of the annoyances I had; but they were frustrating for me. For me, there was just mysterious stuff happening on my machine and I didn't know how to fix it and I didn't like it.
- baalimago 9y agobut now it's probably going to be bundled up with all kinds of crap, such as ms pain(t) 3d
- radicalbyte 9y agoIf they want to cut the bloat they can better look at fixing their installers. I don't need a copy of every installer ever used in my windows and program directories. Those folders are almost always the largest folders on my PC.
- piyush_soni 9y agoI find the title very contradictory to the article. It's going to "stay", but in the Windows Store (so you have to download), and with very subtle words they say that it's not going to get any updates. So, no Microsoft, you're saying it's going to go more than you're saying it's going to stay.
- adtac 9y agoWhat updates do you want to see in MS Paint? It's feature complete. Bug fixes?
- grecy 9y agoAt a minimum, an assurance it works in Windows 20+
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoWebP support would be nice - but that's because Paint is a GUI around GDI/GDI+, so if GDI gets WebP support then Paint gets it for free.
- unabridged 9y agoWith GPU passthrough becoming quite usable I don't think I'll ever put windows on bare metal again. And in my VMs I'll just be using evaluation copies. I left MS office for open/libreoffice a few years ago and haven't looked back. The idea of having a store built into my operating system makes me ill, I already have enough of that with android. I can't really imagine giving MS any more money (except possibly when buying a laptop), and I'm not sure what they can do to change it.
- boobsbr 9y agoWell, I'll just install Paint.NET then.
- cjsuk 9y agoIm beginning to think that Microsoft's new strategy is to optimistically break all their products by adding the store front and telemetry to them. Neither of which are needed or wanted in the majority of cases.
- WalterBright 9y agoI miss EDLIN.COM
- criddell 9y agoGet it from the Windows Store! It needs camera and microphone access though. And it isn't actually a line editor, but it does install a browser helper and toolbar in IE.
- comeonnowreally 9y agoDisappointing comments in this thread. Lots of worthless complaining, and scant technical talk on solutions to this barely significant 'problem'. If you want to keep the original mspaint.exe and don't want to use the Store for some reason, you can literally just copy it from any Windows 10 install media prior to RS3. Or from a running system. It's not difficult.
- skrebbel 9y agoIt has a lot of dependencies actually. No idea which of those also get removed.
- comeonnowreally 9y agoI think they're all dependencies shared by many other Windows components, and will probably mostly be the versioned API Sets rather than specifically named DLLs. But if there is anything Paint-specific it could just be copied over too.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Dolores12 9y agoIf i had to download something anyway why would i download MS Paint and not a better alternative? So they are killing it.
- Oras 9y agoI quite like the way Microsoft is listening back to users, welcome back Microsoft!
- carlosrg 9y agoThis thread shows clearly the negativity around everything Microsoft does, especially if you compare to other technology companies. Apple deprecates some API or removes a feature? "It's the future, you have to adapt, etc" Microsoft deprecates a toy program made 25 years ago, but still offers the option of downloading it for free? "How dare they, I want it in the base install, etc"
- vermontdevil 9y agoI've seen Apple and Google get plenty of criticism for whatever actions they do. There should be a type of law like Poes Law to describe this behavior.
- Alexis66 9y agoI make up to $90 an hour working from my home. My story is that I quit working at Walmart to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around $40h to $86h… Someone was good to me by sharing this link with me, so now i am hoping i could help someone else out there by sharing this link... Try it, you wOn't regret it!...http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682 http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682
- rphlx 9y agoMicrosoft has a serious and ongoing PR crisis, and not just for historical reasons (90s antitrust, etc). There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company. As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.
- sjellis 9y agoAt some point, it stops being isolated incidents and starts being a pattern of decision-making. IMO, Microsoft has a crisis in the way that Windows is managed, and part of that is that the C-Level level of the company either no longer cares about Windows, or actually supports the decisions that are made. You may have thought that at some point the reputational damage caused by the way that telemetry was handled, or the fall-out from the unethical Windows 10 upgrade process, would have triggered action by the CEO. In both cases, nothing.
- jagermo 9y agoAn excellent example on how to generate media buzz. You would have to pay a decent amount of money if you wanted to achieve something similar with ads.
- faeyanpiraat 9y agoOkay so when I first heard this, I was kind of enraged, because I use paint daily for screenshots, ad-hoc cropping and stuff. And when I tried Paint3D in the past it was garbage. Someone in this thread said that it is actually easy to crop with it, and I tried again, and yes it is actually a bearable experience, but scaling the image gives a crappy quality, so it is a no-go. Then I got the Win+Shift+S screen clipping tool, which is awesome, it only gets the clipped screenshot into the clipboard, which is a half-assed solution, but then I remembered I got evernote, and made Win+Shift+D save the clipboard into a new note. This way I can instantly take a screenshot in an already cropped way, and save it for future use, and Evernote can easily Annotate the image with text, or arrows, which is sufficient. Awesomeness!
- jccalhoun 9y agothere is also a version of the snipping tool with a gui https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-snipping-tool-to-capture-screenshots https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13776/windows-use-s...
- dsfyu404ed 9y agoThe best how to guides I've written have all been MS paint on top of screen-shots. I do it that way because the best how to guides I've seen have been written that way. It's fast and easy.
- dingo_bat 9y agoSnipping tool is not UWP. So someday some dev in Microsoft will convert it to UWP and you'll have Snip 3D. And snipping tool will become a download from the store. It's fucking sad because the UWP apps are almost always garbage.
- the_wheel 9y agoI'd bet this was the plan all along. People are talking about Paint 3D.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eklavyaa 9y agowell now I can always have a place to paste print screen :)
- mnyxn 9y agothey should have found better way to go viral. I am not motivated to use paint3D. people using MSpaint are also be able to use MSexcel to paint. It's been used not because microsoft produced minimal tool made huge impact! actually the other way around!
- malekpour 9y agoThere are much better free [web based] alternatives for WordPad, Paint and Notepad these days and I prefer to use those over these obsolete applications. These are not useful applications, we just like them because of nostalgia. I doubt if Microsoft is removing Paint because of OS base image size. It should be more about source code maintenance and UI consistency. Both WordPad and Paint got ribbon user interface for Windows 7 and calc.exe has been replace by a modern Windows Store app in Windows 10. Why should Microsoft spend time and resource to keep these applications up to date while majority of users are using better free alternatives?
- ciupicri 9y agoWhy should I waste time installing those apps? Or Internet traffic and even some CPU with web based apps?
- alok-g 9y agoMicrosoft should take those apps and put them into Windows by default. It's a trivial thing for us in the tech community to install these ourselves. However, a significant population remains unaware.
- e12e 9y agoIn general, Web based apps aren't useful when taking notes or screeenshots trying to figure out/document why/that networking isn't working...
- mavrc 9y ago> These are not useful applications, we just like them because of nostalgia. On the contrary; I have Paint.net and GIMP installed, I've experimented with both of them, and I still don't have a tool as quick and easy for marking up a screenshot as Paint is. At that singular task it is superb. I create a lot of training material, so marking up screenshots is a significant component of my job. This will make my job harder for no good reason.
- praneshp 9y agoAsking because I'm unclear: While you have to go to the Windows Store for getting the app, it is still local after installation, right? In that case, how does it make your job harder? Installation time will be a trivial fraction of the use time, no?
- gwbas1c 9y agoWhere's the link? Specifically, how come this blog page doesn't link to the app in the app store? Anyway, I agree that MS Paint needs to be built-in to Windows. It's like Notepad for images. Something that's reliable that we know that works and how to use.
- FlashGit 9y agoYay, at minimum 7 Mb freed up going forward. People will remember this joyous occasion, would rate 10/10 again.
- mycat 9y agoWill users' revolt stop this advancement? I'm serious.
- nmeofthestate 9y agoOne reason for this is surely Microsoft trying to get people to use their store.
- partiallypro 9y agoThey never said it was going away, they said it was deprecated. The media spun it, either out of ignorance or headline porn/clickbait.
- auserperson 9y agodes pa ci to
- snissn 9y agoIf they really want to make their core / long time users happy they would release the "Old MSPaint" from windows 95 as a stand alone app
- cardiffspaceman 9y agoThe article really says, We thought MS Paint was so great, we decided to list all the features that Paint 3D has that are similar to what MS Paint has. And we want to mention that Paint 3D is FREE! These are the results for searching "MS Paint" on windows.com: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=MS+Paint&search=&flt=AllSearch https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/search/result.aspx?q=MS+Pain...
- kazinator 9y agoYou absolutely need MS Paint on Windows. For one thing, it provides workarounds for horrible stability and functionality issues with image printing out of the Windows Shell (Windows Explorer). I think it provides the only way to print an image 1:1 (original scale) without installing third party software. I.e. 600 pixels of a 600 dpi image actually measure one inch. Not all images are photographs that can be scaled; sometimes they are patterns for some real-world object. How would a Windows user, say, crop an image without MS Paint, using only a vanilla Windows install with no 3rd party anything?
- freeone3000 9y agoUsing Paint3D, the bundled replacement.
- LyalinDotCom 9y ago253 comments here as of the time when i am seeing the post... really folks? :)
- laythea 9y agoSummary: We are taking paint away from you and allowing you to come and get it through our funnel, erm... store.
- talmand 9y agoI'm sensing a PR ploy on the level of Coke and New Coke shenanigans.
- blocker_chain 9y agoNice! Can't remove a classic and glad they listened to the people
- Piccollo 9y agoYou boobs, just use Photoshop.
- cartyboi29 9y agoGod blessing all the trap niggas