Simple, nostalgic image editor offering intuitive basic tools for quick drawings and easy photo touch-ups
Simple, nostalgic image editor offering intuitive basic tools for quick drawings and easy photo touch-ups
Pros
- Provides basic editing tools
- Supports the most popular file formats
- Extremely intuitive design
- Many will find it nostalgic
Cons
- Lacks many features found in more robust image editors
- No new features will be added in the future
- Lacks support for more modern file formats like webp
MS Paint is a straightforward image editor that can perform simple tasks like cropping, text insertion, and digital painting. MS Paint, also known as Ms-Paint, is an extremely bare-bones option when compared to complete suites centered around digital artistry. But that simplicity also earned it a place in many people's hearts. Paint has shipped with Windows since the operating system's humble beginnings. People were blown away by what Windows 1.0 and MS Paint had to offer. Or at least that was the case back in 1985. Microsoft kept updating Paint for a considerable amount of time. But MS Paint eventually reached a point where new features stopped showing up.
For a long time, people tended to focus on what MS Paint lacked. But over time that sentiment has shifted more toward an appreciation of what it can do than disappointment over what it can't. Microsoft eventually announced MS Paint's discontinuation in 2019. The Internet responded with an eruption of support for the often-neglected program. It became clear that a generation who grew up on MS Paint had become extremely attached to it.
Today MS Paint stands as a testament to the fact that less is sometimes more. It's a very simple image editing program. But it does a surprisingly good job with the basics. You'll find that it supports the major file formats - bmp, jpg, png, and gif. And many of the fundamental image editing tools are there as well. For example, you can crop your pictures in MS Paint to remove unwanted elements. And you can even resize them to accommodate various size requirements.
MS Paint's simplicity can seem like a detriment to some people. But it has a legion of fans who love it for that exact same reason. Image editing suites often require huge tomes to guide people through the learning process. But with MS Paint you get what you see. Anyone can master MS Paint's basics in a matter of minutes. The simple GUI is lined with tools on the left and colors at the bottom. All you need to get started is a choice of one or both of these options.
If you pick the color red and a pencil then you'll be drawing red pencil lines on the canvas. If you pick green and the brush then you'll see green brushstrokes instead. And similar simplicity is found in the selection tools. If you use the square selection tool you'll select a square from the image. The same goes for the elliptical shape and all of the other selector elements.
MS Paint probably won't fit your needs if you're looking for a digital design suite. But it's been a popular choice for simple graphic and image editing since the mid-1980s for good reason. It doesn't have a huge amount of features. But MS Paint does a superb job of making it easy to use the features it does possess.
Pros
- Provides basic editing tools
- Supports the most popular file formats
- Extremely intuitive design
- Many will find it nostalgic
Cons
- Lacks many features found in more robust image editors
- No new features will be added in the future
- Lacks support for more modern file formats like webp
A Review of MS Paint
Windows PCs are such a staple of modern computing that almost everyone who's ever used a computer knows about the famous programs developed by Microsoft, such as Microsoft Paint (MS Paint). However, there are still quite a few out there who have never used a Windows PC and thus do not know about these standard programs. MS Paint might just be a great program for those who are building their own PCs or just have never used the program and may find it beneficial.
MS Paint is a free program that comes standard on every version of a Windows operating system. While the program is a bit updated for Windows 10 and 11, the program is still similar enough that the features and tools and options remain the same across the board, more or less. It's an art program that allows you to use a variety of digital pens, pencils, shapes and other tools to create digital art. It can also operate like a photo editor and do much more. It's one of the most famous programs ever created by Microsoft.
How MS Paint Works
One of the highlights of MS Paint is just how easy it is to use. If you have a Windows PC, then the program is already pre-installed on your computer. If you do not, or you have had to re-download the program, it opens with a simple double-click and operates very smoothly because it's lightweight and was designed to run in the background or while multitasking. Once it's opened up, you can adjust the size of the window and start working.
MS Paint works like any other art or image editor program, only with a few different features and generally smoother functionality due to it having such a small footprint. You'll notice a blank white page when it's loaded. From there, you can either use the tools to start drawing and painting, or you can load picture files into it and start editing the photos. It doesn't have tools like Photoshop, but you can cut, paste, and render backgrounds of different colors.
Features of MS Paint
MS Paint is loaded down with a whole lot of features for a free, lightweight program. You have around half a dozen different pencil and pen tools, and you can adjust their size. There are also over a dozen main colors, and a color wheel that allows you to create an infinite range of colors to make art with. There are also features that allow you to crop, cut and scale your own images or added images. You can paste different images into the program, but it doesn't create typical layers.
Among the many features that are available to you on MS Paint, one of the first you're going to notice is likely the color array. This is because this feature stands out on top of the program. You can simply point and click at the color you want, and there are two options from which to choose, for main and background layer colors. If you don't like the main primary colors you have at your disposal, it's very easy to click onto the color wheel (on the bottom-right of the color range) and create your own custom colors. The cool thing about this is that any custom color you create will be saved on your main page while your session is running, so you can switch back and forth using your custom colors or the main colors.
Your pens and pencils are the next big feature here that will probably be used the most. In the top-right corner, hover over these various tools or click the drop menu, and you will see digital versions of a basic pencil, a pen, a marker, paint brushes, and various other writing utensils. Each one has a very specific line that it draws with, and there's even a spray paint can for much more of a graffiti style of art. After choosing which utensil you want to use, you can look to the right of the utensils and find a drop menu for the size of the line you're drawing with.
There is also an eraser tool to use. The cool thing about the eraser is that you can really play around with the size here, so you can fine-tune the tool to just erase different individual pixels and rough edges, or you can greatly expand the area and delete large areas of pictures with a single swipe. To better fine-tune the eraser, you can always make the image much larger to see what you're doing. You can do this by pushing the "plus" symbol in the bottom right.
Magnification is definitely one of MS Paint's most underrated features. A lot of people use this program in order to create green-screen images for video editors and overlays, and thus this sort of action requires precision. By magnifying the picture you're working with, and by ensuring that you're using the right sized lines in your Paint tools, you can cut out very intricate details and make really clean image overlays. A lot of users prefer this over Photoshop because you're in complete control of which parts of the background get removed, compared to Photoshop's tool that just erases everything of a similar shade.
Other features include the ability to paste images into an existing image, and the ability to save your files in multiple extensions like JPEG, PNG, and more.
Pros and Cons of MS Paint
Pros of MS Paint
- Free program to download and use
- Lightweight and runs very easily
- Features a lot of unique tools and editing options
- Simple to learn and use
- Can save files in multiple extension types
Cons of MS Paint
- Doesn't contain cloning and transparent tools
- Cannot create independent layers
- Will not save transparent backgrounds
