The end of an era is looming. With the upcoming Windows 10 Creators Update, that’s expected to go into broad release in a few weeks, Microsoft has listed a bunch of programs that are either being removed or deprecated. Paint will be deprecated, with development ceasing on a piece of software that’s been a part of Windows since 1985.
Paint is an application that fills a need when you need a tool to quickly do a simple editing or image creation task. I still use it today for cropping and resizing images even though Windows 10 has Paint 3D which can do the same things. But the familiarity of the Paint interface is comfortable and I’m used to it.
Microsoft has released a support document listing the removed and deprecated applications and services. While most are good changes (dropping the “nonsecure security feature” syskey.exe for example) the decisions to end development of Paint severs a link between the most recent Windows build and the very first one.
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22 responses to “Microsoft Is Killing Off Paint”
I just opened Paint 3D to see how it is… UGH!! Terrible. I know it’s meant to be the new age paint that can do more, but like Anthony I mainly use Paint to do simple resizes and pasting screenshots. I don’t see why Microsoft is wanting to remove the program except if they are moving it to a paid app or forcing people to use that Paint 3D crap.
Windows key + S.
With you on that, great for simple resizing with zero footprint. RIP paint!
Paint.net (getPaint.net) is your friend 🙂
They’re not removing the program, just deprecating it – development on it will cease but for now it’s still in the operating system.
Boooo, hisssss. The only way to get clients to take actually usable screenshots is dying whyeeee.
Snipping tool?
Mine can’t generally even use Paint. They just paste their screenshots into Word documents and send those to me.
Yup, phave had a few that do that, too. Huh… is this was it feels like to be desensitised to something horrific? Video games ain’t got nothing on tech support.
Yeah, Paint was my easy alternative to clients doing exactly that by default. It takes a little coaching, but then I get a file in .png that I can actually scale, and instructing them to ALT+PrtScn meant I’d get the window I wanted without them missing anything or showing too much. @camm just introduced me to the snipping tool, which is amazing, though I’m concerned the users won’t capture enough with it.
You could rollout Greenshot, which by default captures the entire desktop. Also, Winkey+shift+s is a systemwide snipping shortcut.
Paint.Net FTW!
Devastating. What program will I use to make a big scribble and then fill each space with a different colour now?
When I was a wee lad, I spent many hours drawing my little heart out in MSPaint. This news makes me sad – it’s still my go to for a quick screenshot copy/paste/save job.
The irony of removing Paint in an update called the “Creator’s” Update.
Paint 3D still does everything Paint did, it’s just the interface is different and it has more features. You can still use it as a quick screenshot paste, select specific area, copy. You can still scribble lines all over and flood fill in the spaces. It’s still just as easy to do all the things Paint does.
It does take a minute or two to get used to where things are now, but it’s a much better improvement over the original Paint.
Is it? I messed around with it today and a bunch of things from paint seemed to be missing. Then a lot of things I would like in any 3D graphics program were not there.
What did you notice was missing? I’ll see if I can find it.
Honestly, looking now and I can’t find anything that isn’t there when I go searching. I guess that’s my issues.The UI is not intuitive. There’s no need for everything to be hidden away.
If you want to make a thick line in MS Paint. You have a toolbar with everything on it. You can select thickness and then the line tool and make it.
In this, you have to press “stickers” it then pops open a side tab. It has to be selected to “Line and Curve.” You then draw the line, shape or whatever. After you draw it, you then can select the thickness.
While there’s more options and I can see how it allows one to do a little bit more. I’m not a fan of this UI design because it has you needlessly clicking away behind menus. Yes I’m sure any short length of time spent using Paint 3D will get people used to it. However, isn’t it meant to just be for people who don’t know how to do anything? They aren’t the people who will go hunting around.
In my limited opinion of using it, I wish it had a more classic interface. Instead of hiding it all away so you have to go hunting. It’s not jam packed with much new to require this, and it’s just kind of annoying.
The sort of person who would open up MS Paint to do something, is probably going to shut this down before they figure out where everything is. It seems like minimalistic tablet design on a desktop.
Also I made a 3D scene messing around. Saved a few versions and now none of them open. “Something went wrong”
Some things it needs, or I can’t find. It needs a separate painter for objects and a way to group and combine objects. So you can edit them out of the scene.
You don’t have to do that. Line thickness is a slider under the brush selection in the Art Tools tab (the first one): http://i.imgur.com/hxqJFfs.png
I haven’t really messed with the 3D part much except for a quick look at how it handled rotation. You can group 3D objects (I have the dog and person selected here and the Group option appears: http://i.imgur.com/90tqT8z.png), and you can paint them independently of the rest of the scene as long as your first click of the brush is on them and not the other parts.
I’m talking line thickness for straight lines, curves, objects etc under “Stickers” not paint brushes.
Oh cool, I had been selecting a bunch, but now I see there’s a group option. At this stage I can only really see this being good for 3D with much larger libraries and more control.
I used to have a vector image program when I was young called Arts & Letters. Literally had tens of thousands of vector images all organised well across many categories. You could literally find anything you wanted to make pictures. Best thing was, many were able to be articulated. Arms, legs and more. This the 90s and so you couldn’t google things or get much online.
If they could try and get that functionality into a 3D painting program, then it’d be something. I loaded in an Astronaut, he’s in a useless pose for making a scene. If it was rigged so arms & legs could be moved, then it’d be really cool. The 3D building is too simplistic to then make an astronaut.
Needs to be more advanced, at this stage I can see a few people with time and talent could do a lot of cool 3D stuff to see if they could. However they’d have the skill and talent to use better programs.
Also the Remix 3D? Most of that stuff was clearly not built in paint 3D. I can appreciate what they’re doing but the 3D is too simplistic and the merging of concepts has weakened both. Is there another 3D modelling program out there? 3D building doesn’t seem geared for this.
Grouping is definitely for the 3D stuff only. Paint rasterises pretty much everything 2D either the moment it hits the canvas or the moment it’s deselected, in the case of text.
I think the 3D stuff is very primitive right now, mostly just good for manipulating things in the 3D space rather than posing meshes and all that. I don’t expect advanced stuff like rigging though, I doubt Paint 3D is trying to be a free alternative to 3DS/Maya/Blender/etc.
I don’t think Paint 3D’s strengths are in 3D, despite the name. I’m taking it as an improved version of Paint. Things like brush opacity, a proper zoom slider and very simple 3D transformations (rotate on all three axes) with super-basic 3D lighting are pretty nice features. But for me, 90% of my time in Paint is spent cropping a smaller area out of a larger image so I can send it to a boss or client to review, and Paint 3D still does that just as easily as the original.