Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Paint To Be Killed Off After 32 Years (theguardian.com)
Microsoft's next Windows 10 update, called the Fall Creators Update, will bring a variety of new features. But one long-standing stalwart of the Windows experience has been put on the chopping block: Microsoft Paint. From a report: First released with the very first version of Windows 1.0 in 1985, Paint in its various guises would be one of the first graphics editors used by many and became a core part of Windows. Starting life as a 1-bit monochrome licensed version of ZSoft's PC Paintbrush, it wasn't until Windows 98 that Paint could save in JPEG. With the Windows 10 Creators Update, released in April, Microsoft introduced the new Paint 3D, which is installed alongside traditional Paint and features 3D image making tools as well as some basic 2D image editing. But it is not an update to original Paint and doesn't behave like it. Now Microsoft has announced that, alongside Outlook Express, Reader app and Reading list, Microsoft Paint has been signalled for death having been added to the "features that are removed or deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update" list.
I still use it in a professional setting!
YES, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.
It's been too primitive to be very useful for much more than cropping screencaps for some time.
If it doesn't also soften, scale (without artifact generation), remove noise, adjust contrast, saturation, tint, and brightness, handle at least text as a separate, editable layer, and do blending colour replacement along with handling transparency... meh. It's also handy if it can directly handle multi-frame GIFs and ICO files.
Still, to this very day I use MSPaint for cropping screencaps because most of the workstations I end up on don't have any graphics software at all.
Not only is Paint.NET better than Microsoft Paint, I think it is better than the entry level paint alternatives on linux and MacOS.
The snipping tool.
Wait, Clippy is dead? Why didn't Clippy warn m... oh wait.
#DeleteFacebook
...to have a watered down version of Photoshop Elements included as a gateway to the more expensive Photoshop proper. Done correctly it would be a win for both companies and consumers.
Next they can get rid of mail, photos, cortana, skype, the xbox crap, onedive, word, notepad, edge, windows app store, 3DBuilder, Appconnector, BingFinance, BingNews, 3dpaint, BingSports, BingWeather, Getstarted, MicrosoftOfficeHub, Solitaire, OneNote, Alarms, Calculator, Camera, Maps, Phone, Reader, SoundRecorder, ZuneMusic, ZuneVideo, windowscommunicationsapps, CloudExperienceHost, WindowsReadingList, Twitter, Flipboard, Shazam, Candy Crush, iHeart Radio, NAVER, tripadvisor, groovemusic, BioEnrollment, WindowsFeedback and ContactSupport from the default install!!
All of which are crap or a better open source alternative exists. Choosing windows to run programs shouldnt have to force you into all their bloatware and ads too.
What does mspaint.exe need to run? Are there any DLL files needed? Can I just copy the EXE from my Windows 7 box to Win10?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You'd think with all the evil metrics Win10 collects, they'd have some idea about how heavily used this tool is.
Paint 3D is a "modern" app. That means they can collect more evil metrics more easily. The only thing they care about is that it's not packaged as an .exe
What am I supposed to use for screenshots on base installs?
Your phone, of course.
Paint.NET is free and has a few useful tools rolled in - Its also a bit easier for low clue user to pickup than GIMP in my experiences.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
They should be adding these features into the Snipping Tool. It shouldn't be a 2-step process to grab a screen image with the snipping tool, and then paint it into MS Paint to add an arrow or circle something. Snipping Tool only has free draw tools. How hard would it be to add the shapes template to snipping tool (or better yet, just add the screen shot capability to MSPaint and call it a day.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
GIMP just takes forever to load.
Today at work, I tested this claim by starting GIMP on two PCs, one with Xubuntu 16.04 and the other with Windows 10, neither with an SSD. From choosing the app from the start menu to GIMP's main window appearing took four seconds on each. I also tested it a few days ago on a compact laptop with an SSD and an Atom CPU, and it took five seconds. But I concede that these tests weren't fresh after a PC restart, and it didn't have to rescan fonts and plug-ins. Or are you often triggering something that requires rescanning fonts and plug-ins?
GIMP has both the paintbrush tool, which antialiases strokes "with additional pixels on either side in a lighter colour", and the pencil tool, which "does operate on a pixel basis".
Clippy is still there. He had a sex change and prefers to be called Cortana now
That's what would happen. But it might take a month. I don't want to backburner a task while waiting for stuff to be installed just because of the whims of Microsoft.
Seriously, the sheer lack of incremental development on Paint is a bit of a head scratcher. I suspect that the ignoring of Paint was the result of it being orphaned in the Microsoft-Adobe pact of the early 2000s that resembled the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement. MS killed their graphics products and Adobe killed Persuasion and their other office products.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
MS Paint ranks third on my list of "most frequently used MS tools", behind Visual Studio and Notepad. For many use cases, the simple spartan tools are the best tools.
Ah well, I'm sure there's a third-party equivalent somewhere.
I have Windows.
Some of us have Actual Work to do that doesn't involve tilting at IT windmills.
Not arguing with IT about installing some random bit of software on the locked down images is a real plus. Especially when all you need it to crop a bitmapped picture and put a red border around it.
Horses for courses. Hammers for nails. Remember, when things look as bad as they possibly can, they usually get considerably worse (RAH).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You got it backwards: Microsoft knows what people likes and dislikes but they will put politics first. They know people like Paint the same way they know people would rather have no ads on a freaking OS (hello start menu full of publicity and stupid ads on a clean install of Windows 10) but they want to turn Windows into Android (with regards to spying, publicity and pushing the creator's services) and that requires removing some things users want