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Microsoft Paint has been marked for death:
The era of Microsoft Paint appears to be coming to an end with the upcoming release of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The image-editing application is officially being classified by Microsoft as a "deprecated feature," as noted by The Guardian. That means that, come this fall, Paint will "not be in active development and might be removed in future releases."
I go hard in the paint.
Also at PCWorld and Smithsonian.
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After 32 Years, the Death of Microsoft Paint
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Tuesday July 25 2017, @07:08AM (11 children)
Haven't used paint in years.
You can't screenshot in it. (Snipping tool is pretty rubbish too).
You can't save in nice formats.
You can't resize easily.
You can't do a lot of things.
But a tiny bit of freeware (Irfanview) does it all and even does things like break out the individual icons from a .ico file, make proper transparent PNG/GIF with options, and has a capture tool that's hotkey-activated and capable of plucking a region or active window.
Certainly haven't loaded MS Paint since... god knows. Windows 98?
Other than that, Paintshop Pro 7 Anniversary Edition.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday July 25 2017, @07:58AM (1 child)
Yeehawwww! Found another fan IrfanView - high 5!!!!!!!!!! That is like the most essential software unavailable on Linux (but runs using wine).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25 2017, @08:11AM
XnView is largely identical and has a linux version. I've used both in windows and went with XnView in the end because it provides a library I can compile custom tools against.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday July 25 2017, @08:27AM
I like Irfanview for some things but have mostly used the Faststone Image Viewer for several years now when any simple editing and image manipulation is required (and sometimes some not so simple editing). It can even handle raw image files.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25 2017, @08:52AM (3 children)
That's the point! It's simple and very basic with an extremely fast learning curve. None of the features you list are needed in a basic image editing tool.
To capture an active window, use the print screen combo button. No need for a piece of software to bloat itself with features the OS already provides.
(Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday July 25 2017, @10:40AM (2 children)
To capture an active window, use the print screen combo button. No need for a piece of software to bloat itself with features the OS already provides.
It's been well over a decade since I used windows on a regular or frequent basis, however paint's sole purpose was
On linux I use shift-printscreen, this selects a region and allows save, copy, or host on imgur, very easy
On mac it's apple-shift-4 and dumps into a 'screenshots' directory, not quite as handy
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25 2017, @01:20PM (1 child)
This.
I don't think I've used paint for anything else for the past 15-20 years. It's also mind boggling how impressed Windows users, who often don't know how to screen-shot, are when they see me do this without touching a mouse.
(Score: 2, Informative) by toddestan on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:26AM
A few more tricks:
Alt-Printscreen will just capture the active window, which is typically what I'm actually interested in.
In MS Paint, right after launching it, go into resize and set the image size to be 1x1 pixel. It will remember this setting. Then whenever you paste something into MS Paint, it will always and very conveniently set the image size to be the size of whatever you just pasted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 25 2017, @01:09PM
Screenshots are provided by the OS. In Windows, you use Printscreen (optionally with Ctrl, Alt, or some such to grab only the current window) to take a screenshot and put it on the clipboard. Then paste it in Paint, and save.
Since XP, you have PNG and JPEG options; don't know if you're looking for more, but that's a big improvement.
In fact, taking screenshots and saving them as PNGs is about the only thing I use paint for.
(Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Tuesday July 25 2017, @02:32PM (1 child)
That's because screenshot is built into the OS. Try pressing "prtscn" then going to edit -> paste in paint. The screenshot goes to the paste buffer.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday July 25 2017, @03:31PM
Try it in a remote terminal. You take a screenshot of YOUR screen, not the remote one. If you were, for example, screenshoting a problem on a remote system.
You then have to manually crop out anything that might in your screenshot that you don't want others to see.
Additionally, PrtScrn can be remapped by programs.
Also, some keyboards don't even HAVE a PrtScrn button any more.
But apart from that, yeah, grand. Even SnippingTool is better than PrtScrn and is part of the OS - since what? Vista/XP? - too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 28 2017, @02:16AM
> You can't screenshot in it.
Ctrl+PrtSC, open Paint, Ctrl+V used to work in Windows 7. Has that changed?