10 ms·
Paint on Windows is getting layers and transparency support
- nullbyte 3y agoIt brings me so much joy to know that Paint is still under active development.
- enonimal 3y agoGearing up to integrate image generation, I'd guess
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- codetrotter 3y agoProbably yes. The video in the article shows background removal with a single click of the mouse after all – i.e subject isolation using AI. It would be a logical next step at some point to integrate AI image generation as well, using OpenAI Dall-E.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- speedgoose 3y agoIt’s perhaps going to be the Bing version of OpenAI Dall-E, which is some kind of version 2.5
- ilyt 3y agoJust preinstall Krita at that point...
- alexmolas 3y agoI didn't know Pain was still updated. I guess they are preparing it to be another player in the generative AI race.
- distract8901 3y agoThey added Bing to goddamn Notepad
- artursapek 3y agolol
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoWhere? I don't see it and I'm up to date.
- soupfordummies 3y agoYeah I really hope they're joking!
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoI think he's just spreading FUD.
- distract8901 3y agoI don't think you understand what FUD means. Hint: it does not mean "things I disagree with or don't understand"
- thefifthsetpin 3y agoJust hit F1.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoHow is that "Bing in Notepad"?
- MikusR 3y agoRight click on text.
- xp84 3y agoNice. Basically this gets it to parity with the feature-set I actually used 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. (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.)
- gus_massa 3y agoI use Gimp most of the times. But when I have to edit a few isolated pixels of a geometric black image over a plain white background I prefer to use Paint. I can't find how to make Gimp modify only one pixel without blurring all the neighbors.
- tyingq 3y agoPaint.Net is a nice middle ground between the two.
- knome 3y agoAre you using the paintbrush tool instead of the pencil tool? A pencil with the brush size turned down to one shouldn't bother any of the other pixels.
- forgotpwd16 3y ago
- michaelhoffman 3y agoI 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.
- harles 3y agoI was just reflecting on why I fire up Paint more often than GIMP, and this is the reason. Especially when all I want to do is paste an image, add a small annotation, and copy it back out, there’s no tool as fast.
- dingnuts 3y agoYou can do all this in the snipping tool without opening a separate app, which is in fact a little faster
- cfiggers 3y agoYes, except (unless I'm mistaken) the snipping tool can't add text and it can't draw boxes, which are two of the core use cases of screenshot annotation.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoi use monosnap for this reason (free version) The number of times it crashes vs snipping tool, its like night and day. yet i keep coming back for monosnap.... it made my snippets look somewhat professional (gone handwritten arrows lol)
- jve 3y agohttps://getgreenshot.org/ https://getgreenshot.org/ Fast, doesn't crash, does what you say and more.
- badsectoracula 3y agoIt is basically why i have KolourPaint installed on Linux and ready on a launch button despite having a bunch of other 2D image editing apps: it starts (almost[0]) instantly and is perfectly fine for cropping images, adding annotations, etc and then pasting it to imgur, discord, or whatever. The only thing missing is having a tool to draw shapes like arrows (not something the Win9x era MS Paint, which is what KolourPaint replicates, had, but it would be a useful feature IMO). [0] it takes somewhere between half to a second, there is a visible delay between double click and the window appearing but i can live with that. I'm not using KDE as my DE, it is possible it'd start instantly if i already had the KDE libs in memory.
- masfuerte 3y agoRead the headline and thought... they did this in Windows 2000. But they are not talking about UpdateLayeredWindow.
- hackermatic 3y agoPaint'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.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoConsidering how slow the new calculator app is, I am terrified of Microsoft updating the classics. These things used to open instantly and provide value. Now it is a visible pause and gigantic white space heavy interfaces.
- naikrovek 3y agothe new calculator app is open source, you can see what's making it so slow if you want, and contribute fixes if you have the skills to do the fixing. MIT license. https://github.com/microsoft/calculator/ https://github.com/microsoft/calculator/
- codetrotter 3y agoWhy would anyone want to do free work for Microsoft?
- dingnuts 3y agoThis is the correct response. Telling community members that they can fix bugs in libre, community-supported software is one thing. Telling /users/ who are NOT community members to make changes to some corporation's application that happens to have source available, in their free time, and then donate that labor to some billion dollar corporation? fuck THAT. Fix it your own damn self, Microsoft. I have better shit to do.
- MikusR 3y ago
- tombert 3y agoI 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. 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.
- toyg 3y agoOn one hand, yes; but on the other: people underestimate the value of consistency. Not changing is a feature for so many people who are already content with the existing program. Change for change's sake is not always good.
- tombert 3y agoI'm not suggesting that they just add a million new features every release, but I feel like adding transparent backgrounds, even in 2002 or so, would not have interrupted any existing workflows or anything. I feel like there was a lot of low hanging fruit that they could have added that left the interface largely untouched; they could also have had a "basic" and "advanced" layout, where the "basic" keeps things more or less how they were in Windows 95, and advanced is for integrating new features.
- cout 3y agoI wonder what file format they will use to save layers. Does the PNG format support layers?
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoPNG does support layers. Yes. I remember using it in Macromedia Fireworks which had a native format PNG which functioned like Photoshop's PSD and saved layers and its styles and stuff.
- Macha 3y agoPNG doesn't. What it does support are application defined ancillary chunks, which fireworks used for custom extensions such as layers
- gigglesupstairs 3y agoAha. Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that.
- Explore3003 3y agoJPEG XL support would be great!
- jrflowers 3y agoTake that, Adobe
- footlose_3815 3y agoGiven 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.
- charles_f 3y agoAt some level I feel like they should just drop paint and install paint.net as a default. But then, that would probably get paint.net on a downward spiral, so maybe it's for the best?
- haunter 3y agoPaint.NET was open source (MIT) until 2009, alas nothing happened from the forks after they changed the license. Code is still available, not sure worth building though in 2023 when there are other options https://code.google.com/archive/p/openpdn/ https://code.google.com/archive/p/openpdn/ https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN/ https://github.com/rivy/OpenPDN/
- sbjs 3y agoWhat's the best alternative?
- haunter 3y agoThe current Paint.NET is really good and obviously has much more features compared to since the version from 2009. But it's not FOSS which can be a deal breaker for some. If FOSS then Pinta [0] is the best option imo. GIMP is not bad either but feels very janky and all over the place sometimes (lacking some elementary features while overblown in other departments) Krita [1] is the other one I'd recommend though it's a digital painting app, not a image editing one. But you can do edit images with it 0, https://www.pinta-project.com/ https://www.pinta-project.com/ 1, https://krita.org/en/ https://krita.org/en/
- jmkni 3y agoI think Paint.net is largely worked on and maintained by one guy, so I don’t really blame him from wanting to make some money out of his work tbh It’s a great tool.
- charles_f 3y agoI mean, give him a million, get the product, rename it paint, and suddenly paint on windows supports much more than just layers and transparency.
- andrewstuart 3y agoMicrosoft should just buy paint.net
- pipeline_peak 3y agoMicrosoft could whip up paint.net in 1 day. There's a component in WPF called InkCanvas, it pretty much is Paint.
- andrewstuart 3y ago>> could whip up paint.net in 1 day. You realise this is basically an HN meme?
- pipeline_peak 3y ago> You realise this is basically an HN meme? No, not really. It’s a simple program and Microsoft would literally just need to glue together their own existing components. I did it for a job interview project in 4 days using C# and WPF. And I am by no means a talented developer. I could see when people think creating something like Uber in a day as an arrogant HN meme. But there’s no moving parts here.
- andrewstuart 3y agoSure thing buddy - you go build paint.net in a day. lol. Post a reply to this tomorrow and I'll check it out.
- pipeline_peak 3y agoCan you not read, buddy? I said Microsoft, that means a lot more people with a lot more experience. What’s even funnier is thinking that MS buying a mediocre old paint editor is a good business move. Paint.Net is practically an undergrad’s project.
- 3y ago
- imiric 3y agoI 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. That said, I'm grateful that Paint.NET has managed to remain independent, as MS might've ruined it. 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?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoI like MS paint because I know exactly what it is. Starts instantly and can be used to quickly crop a photo or hastily circle a call out. No UI redesigns to make a developer feel useful. If we were talking acquisitions, they should also buy up the Notepad++ guy.
- IYasha 3y agoNooooooo, hands off np++! X'( They'll make it worse the next day, bloating it to hell!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- itisit 3y ago> 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. Not sure where the infringement would be. In any case, Paint.NET won second place last year in the "Creativity – Graphics and 3D" category of the Microsoft Store App Awards. [0] [0] https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2022/05/27/announcing-the-microsoft-store-app-awards-winners/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2022/05/27/announ...
- nashashmi 3y agoTransparency has been the longest missing feature in mspaint. Quite frustrating it took so long.
- ajdude 3y agoOne 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". If anyone is heavy into pixel art, you may also be interested in Aseprite[2]. [1] http://www.kolourpaint.org/ http://www.kolourpaint.org/ [2] https://www.aseprite.org/ https://www.aseprite.org/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- owlstuffing 3y agoMicrosoft 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.
- k12sosse 3y agoYou 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.
- smegsicle 3y agouh oh mtpaint starting to feel real competition
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoSeems like a lot to add to such a simple program. I bet they didn't do that. Years ago I re-released an old and honored tool. A strange path. It was the simple code editor used on an early office computer. The programmers all used it daily. 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." Moving to the document editor wouldn't do. Can't have programmers confused by formatting and mail-merge features on a C source file. 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. 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. Anyway I had my own personal useful tool after that. Even if I was the only one that knew how to use it.
- issafram 3y agoPaint.net will still be the best free alternative to Photoshop
- thot_experiment 3y agoand 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 (modern paint seems fine, and it does launch quickly, but the vibes are off)
- IYasha 3y agoLast 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$! (no, I didn't move to paint.net. LodePaint, Wally and pure old PS (before CS))