8 ms·

If there is such a thing as a software hall of fame, MSPaint deserves to be in the inaugural class. Microsoft has written some real crap over the years, but MSP

If there is such a thing as a software hall of fame, MSPaint deserves to be in the inaugural class. Microsoft has written some real crap over the years, but MSPaint is no one of them. Its a shame that Microsoft seems to have left MSPaint behind after XP. I've tried all the open source MSPaint alternatives, and none of them even come close to being as good as MSPaint. Its like the "Super Mario Bros" of desktop software.

edlinfan 13y ago
I have copied mspaint.exe from a WinXP machine. It doesn't seem to have any prerequisites, and still works fine!
yuhong 13y ago
Win8 still have it.
- GuiA 13y ago
  It does have the ribbon interface though, right? Sure, it's still mostly there- but what made the original so great was its straightforward interface. I find the ribbon interface takes that away.
  - recursive 13y ago
    You find the ribbon in Paint confusing? HN: Git is intuitive and Windows Paint is not straightforward.
jussij 13y ago
It's there on Windows 7. Just select the Windows Start button, type in paint and hit return.
- deepblueq 13y ago
  It's not nearly as nice an interface, though.
  - 38leinad 13y ago
    have you tried paint.net? i really like it for doing pixel art.
oacgnol 13y ago
Growing up before I knew anything about computers I always asked my parents if I could play on the home PC, which really equated to MSPaint time. Others might have started off with tinkering with BASIC and whatnot but I think I'm fortunate enough that it turned out to be my gateway drug into computers anyways.
- ultimoo 13y ago
  Back in 1995 when I was about 9 my parents paid a princely sum of Rs. 500 to enroll me for 4 classes of MSPaint spread out over 1 month at a local school that had secured two personal computers with color monitors back in India. So, I guess MSPaint was my gateway drug too :-) [For comparison, I think a loaf of bread in India that time used to cost about Rs. 5.]
mgurlitz 13y ago
The original mspaint.exe has survived all these years by running hassle-free on Wine and on new editions of Windows. But I wouldn't say MS abandoned Paint: Win8's "Fresh Paint" is one of the coolest touch-based apps out there: http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/15/behind-the-scenes-of-fresh-paint-on-windows-8.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/15/behind-th...
kerbs 13y ago
Nothing gives me more rage than opening "other" drawing software, selecting the "paint bucket", and clicking anywhere inside an enclosed shape and not seeing it fill with the color I selected. Layers, vectors. Give me break. MS Paint was more intuitive in the 90's than any software to date.
- nickpinkston 13y ago
  Hear, hear! I'm not sure why it wasn't copied more widely. Hell, I'm using screenshots / PDFs of my Keynote presentations instead of heavy-weight vector graphics programs.
- w0utert 13y ago
  You could argue MS Paint was about as intuitive as the geoPaint application in GEOS on the C64 [1], which has an almost identical feature set and user interface as MS Paint. I don't really understand why anyone in their right mind would have anything positive to say about MS Paint except that it is ubiquitous, and they remember having fun with it when they were still a kid. It's really a pretty lousy program, more like what you expect from a code sample shipped with a compiler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%288-bit_operating_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%288-bit_operating_system%...
  - vidarh 13y ago
    "Every" 8-bit home computer had similar applications, and much earlier than GEOS too, though GEOS is a good counter-example because its windowed and so much more directly comparable.
stiff 13y ago
You must be kidding. It's a solid step back from Sketchpad developed in 1963: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint There were tens of better drawing programs meanwhile, for example I remember being able to do animations as a 5 year old kid using the fantastic Fanta Vision program under MS DOS (pity the editing isn't shown in the video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision Unfortunately the leading open source painting programs are remarkably uninspired, interfaces of Gimp and Inkscape are truly a mess, but then artists are hardly Linux users. On OSX there are a lot of great painting programs, for example: http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html
- Sprint 13y ago
  Try Mypaint or Krita as alternatives to Gimp and please do not bad-mouth FOSS painting tools if you do not know them.
  - stiff 13y ago
    I have been using Gimp easily for 10 years now and Inkscape for at least 5, I know them decently well, and I appreciate they at all exist and the hard work that went into at all implementing the individual features. But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. The open source "bazaar" model of software development in general isn't the best at coming up with good interfaces, you need a coherent vision of a single person with some authority for that.
    - philh 13y ago
      > But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. This is not the only objective measure of UX.
iuguy 13y ago
Deluxe Paint II was lightyears ahead of MS Paint, back in the 80s.
- mda 13y ago
  Absolutely, for this type of work Deluxe paint would make him more productive because of much better zoom tools and palette management.
keithpeter 13y ago
When Windows 95 first came out, it came with a little tutorial booklet by Microsoft with some activities based on Paint, Wordpad &c to show off the desktop tools. I used that booklet to walk students through the new UI, and we always had a lot of fun with Paint, especially when the College obtained a colour printer. Oddly enough, I used the structure of that tutorial - the idea of a walk-through demonstrating features of a default install - when I knocked up a bit of a tutorial for Ubuntu Unity 2d[1] This splendid gentleman's work appears to be constructed from geometrical shapes plus some pixel level editing. His professional background would have required a very good eye and patience (my partner Ruth can remember pre-computer typography, layout and film-setting having trained as a graphic artist). I suspect that his use case could be met using mtPaint, a free/libre painting program which allows pixel level editing without palette dithering &c. and which has the geometrical shape tool along with the ability to change what happens when you overlap the shapes. mtPaint can work with 8 bit palettes. Jason Rohrer uses mtPaint for his screens in the 8 bit games he produces [2]. I think the point of this gentleman's work is precisely its pixellated nature and use of primary-ish flat colours. My takeaway from this thread on HN is that high quality work can come from very simple tools. [1] http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/files/unity2dguide.pdf http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/files/unity2dguide.pdf [2] http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/
Tmmrn 13y ago
> I've tried all the open source MSPaint alternatives, and none of them even come close to being as good as MSPaint. KDE's kolourpaint is basically a clone with more features: http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html Pinta has this layer idea more prominent, but it can still be used as simple as you want: http://pinta-project.com/ http://pinta-project.com/ mtpaint has a lot more features than ms paint. The gui is unintuitive, but if you get used to it I'm sure it's just as easy: http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/ http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/
Tloewald 13y ago
This is hilarious. Not only is MSPaint awful by today's standards, it was awful when it shipped. It was grossly inferior to paint software written for the Mac, Amiga, and DOS.
nutmeg 13y ago
My daughter actually asked me to install the XP version of MSPaint when she got a new laptop with Windows 7.
runjake 13y ago
Paint.NET seems like it should come close to being as good as MSPaint and it was originally developed to be its (spiritual) successor by interns at Microsoft. http://getpaint.net http://getpaint.net
- devindotcom 13y ago
  Fantastic app. Routinely a reference point for me when I am talking about excellent free software. Wish there was something nearly as good for OS X but almost everything on Mac is terrible and costs good money.
mey 13y ago
If you are looking for a current good alternative to MSPaint that is easy to use, I suggest http://www.getpaint.net/ http://www.getpaint.net/. Free, but not OSS.

edlinfan 13y ago

I have copied mspaint.exe from a WinXP machine. It doesn't seem to have any prerequisites, and still works fine!

yuhong 13y ago

Win8 still have it.

GuiA 13y ago
It does have the ribbon interface though, right? Sure, it's still mostly there- but what made the original so great was its straightforward interface. I find the ribbon interface takes that away.
- recursive 13y ago
  You find the ribbon in Paint confusing? HN: Git is intuitive and Windows Paint is not straightforward.

jussij 13y ago

It's there on Windows 7. Just select the Windows Start button, type in paint and hit return.

deepblueq 13y ago
It's not nearly as nice an interface, though.
- 38leinad 13y ago
  have you tried paint.net? i really like it for doing pixel art.

oacgnol 13y ago

Growing up before I knew anything about computers I always asked my parents if I could play on the home PC, which really equated to MSPaint time. Others might have started off with tinkering with BASIC and whatnot but I think I'm fortunate enough that it turned out to be my gateway drug into computers anyways.

ultimoo 13y ago
Back in 1995 when I was about 9 my parents paid a princely sum of Rs. 500 to enroll me for 4 classes of MSPaint spread out over 1 month at a local school that had secured two personal computers with color monitors back in India. So, I guess MSPaint was my gateway drug too :-) [For comparison, I think a loaf of bread in India that time used to cost about Rs. 5.]

mgurlitz 13y ago

The original mspaint.exe has survived all these years by running hassle-free on Wine and on new editions of Windows. But I wouldn't say MS abandoned Paint: Win8's "Fresh Paint" is one of the coolest touch-based apps out there: http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/15/behind-the-scenes-of-fresh-paint-on-windows-8.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/next/archive/2012/11/15/behind-th...

kerbs 13y ago

Nothing gives me more rage than opening "other" drawing software, selecting the "paint bucket", and clicking anywhere inside an enclosed shape and not seeing it fill with the color I selected. Layers, vectors. Give me break. MS Paint was more intuitive in the 90's than any software to date.

nickpinkston 13y ago
Hear, hear! I'm not sure why it wasn't copied more widely. Hell, I'm using screenshots / PDFs of my Keynote presentations instead of heavy-weight vector graphics programs.
w0utert 13y ago
You could argue MS Paint was about as intuitive as the geoPaint application in GEOS on the C64 [1], which has an almost identical feature set and user interface as MS Paint. I don't really understand why anyone in their right mind would have anything positive to say about MS Paint except that it is ubiquitous, and they remember having fun with it when they were still a kid. It's really a pretty lousy program, more like what you expect from a code sample shipped with a compiler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%288-bit_operating_system%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_%288-bit_operating_system%...
- vidarh 13y ago
  "Every" 8-bit home computer had similar applications, and much earlier than GEOS too, though GEOS is a good counter-example because its windowed and so much more directly comparable.

stiff 13y ago

You must be kidding. It's a solid step back from Sketchpad developed in 1963: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuKREmsiD9o Apple had an almost identical drawing program in the early MacOS version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacPaint There were tens of better drawing programs meanwhile, for example I remember being able to do animations as a 5 year old kid using the fantastic Fanta Vision program under MS DOS (pity the editing isn't shown in the video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj7Yf3JRvE http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision http://www.old-games.com/download/5732/fanta-vision Unfortunately the leading open source painting programs are remarkably uninspired, interfaces of Gimp and Inkscape are truly a mess, but then artists are hardly Linux users. On OSX there are a lot of great painting programs, for example: http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html http://www.artrage.com/artrage-4-samples.html

Sprint 13y ago
Try Mypaint or Krita as alternatives to Gimp and please do not bad-mouth FOSS painting tools if you do not know them.
- stiff 13y ago
  I have been using Gimp easily for 10 years now and Inkscape for at least 5, I know them decently well, and I appreciate they at all exist and the hard work that went into at all implementing the individual features. But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. The open source "bazaar" model of software development in general isn't the best at coming up with good interfaces, you need a coherent vision of a single person with some authority for that.
  - philh 13y ago
    > But the UX is terrible and this is objectively so, just sit a new computer user in front of Gimp and watch his agony when trying to use it. This is not the only objective measure of UX.

iuguy 13y ago

Deluxe Paint II was lightyears ahead of MS Paint, back in the 80s.

mda 13y ago
Absolutely, for this type of work Deluxe paint would make him more productive because of much better zoom tools and palette management.

keithpeter 13y ago

When Windows 95 first came out, it came with a little tutorial booklet by Microsoft with some activities based on Paint, Wordpad &c to show off the desktop tools. I used that booklet to walk students through the new UI, and we always had a lot of fun with Paint, especially when the College obtained a colour printer. Oddly enough, I used the structure of that tutorial - the idea of a walk-through demonstrating features of a default install - when I knocked up a bit of a tutorial for Ubuntu Unity 2d[1] This splendid gentleman's work appears to be constructed from geometrical shapes plus some pixel level editing. His professional background would have required a very good eye and patience (my partner Ruth can remember pre-computer typography, layout and film-setting having trained as a graphic artist). I suspect that his use case could be met using mtPaint, a free/libre painting program which allows pixel level editing without palette dithering &c. and which has the geometrical shape tool along with the ability to change what happens when you overlap the shapes. mtPaint can work with 8 bit palettes. Jason Rohrer uses mtPaint for his screens in the 8 bit games he produces [2]. I think the point of this gentleman's work is precisely its pixellated nature and use of primary-ish flat colours. My takeaway from this thread on HN is that high quality work can come from very simple tools. [1] http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/files/unity2dguide.pdf http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/files/unity2dguide.pdf [2] http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/ http://jason.rohrer.usesthis.com/

Tmmrn 13y ago

> I've tried all the open source MSPaint alternatives, and none of them even come close to being as good as MSPaint. KDE's kolourpaint is basically a clone with more features: http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html Pinta has this layer idea more prominent, but it can still be used as simple as you want: http://pinta-project.com/ http://pinta-project.com/ mtpaint has a lot more features than ms paint. The gui is unintuitive, but if you get used to it I'm sure it's just as easy: http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/ http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/

Tloewald 13y ago

This is hilarious. Not only is MSPaint awful by today's standards, it was awful when it shipped. It was grossly inferior to paint software written for the Mac, Amiga, and DOS.

nutmeg 13y ago

My daughter actually asked me to install the XP version of MSPaint when she got a new laptop with Windows 7.

runjake 13y ago

Paint.NET seems like it should come close to being as good as MSPaint and it was originally developed to be its (spiritual) successor by interns at Microsoft. http://getpaint.net http://getpaint.net

devindotcom 13y ago
Fantastic app. Routinely a reference point for me when I am talking about excellent free software. Wish there was something nearly as good for OS X but almost everything on Mac is terrible and costs good money.

mey 13y ago

If you are looking for a current good alternative to MSPaint that is easy to use, I suggest http://www.getpaint.net/ http://www.getpaint.net/. Free, but not OSS.