
MS Paint is here to stay - richardboegli
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay/
======
opdahl
What is, and has been great about MS Paint is that no matter what Windows
machine I have been on, I know that I have had it available. No matter if it's
my old grandma's computer, if I have needed to quickly do something simple
with an image, MS Paint has always been there for me. Now that will no longer
be the case. If I have to download and install it on the computer before I use
it, then what is the point? It will be faster to just google "MS paint online
free" and click the first link.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Additionally you can't download apps off the windows store unless you sign up
for /into a Microsoft account, which is a much bigger pain than simply
downloading the first app you find searching on Google. Also my corporate
windows 10 laptop has the entire window store and modern app infrastructure
disabled, meaning I would not be able to access MS Paint.

~~~
skrebbel
> _Also my corporate windows 10 laptop has the entire window store and modern
> app infrastructure disabled_

Wow that's... What?

For all its warts, the Windows Store is a secure app delivery platform.
Doesn't disabling it merely encourage downloading zipped executables from
sleazy unencrypted websites?

~~~
morrbo
I don't understand the shock here? Large corporations don't want users
installing random apps. I don't see why an NHS laptop, for example, should
have Bejewelled installed, or some dodgy app which gives permissions to the
user's drives, and uploads files.

Similarly, though admittedly not a problem in the same way with Windows store
apps, to Chrome extensions. Those working in secretive environments with naive
users shouldn't have something like "Youtube auto-hd" installed, which will
feedback every single website they visit to some shady third party analytics
company. IMO this is why having even the concept of these apps inside a
"secure" (re. enterprise) version of Windows is a massive oversight. I will
admit that this is not a problem in the LTSB branch of Windows 10 Enterprise;
I had the disabled apps magically re-enable themselves 3 times after "updates"
on non-LTSB before switching back over.

Sorry to rant, but in summation, don't be shocked when corporate users want
their laptops to be as restricted and purely for work as possible.

~~~
skrebbel
I understand, but what happens is that people will unzip programs from their
Downloads folder and just run them from there.

~~~
simonh
I work in finance. Most web sites you could download an exe from are blocked,
downloading exes is disabled and running installers is restricted to admin
accounts by group policy. If you do get round all that and do it anyway and
you're caught, theres a good chance you'll be fired.

One issue is that some classes of users and locations (e.g. Trading floors)
are restricted by law concerning the communications systems they can use for
work because all communications regarding financial transactions has to be
auditable.

On the other hand most of the banks have their own internal software libraries
you can install stuff from and you get a bunch of useful utilities by default
such as Irfanview, notepad++, Greenshot or similar. Machines for devs are
often less locked down.

~~~
jussij
> running installers is restricted to admin accounts by group policy.

Hence the popularity of portable apps which don't use installers. The just
unzip to any folder and run.

~~~
cbraz
Any company can install a reporting agent on their desktops and that will
collect basic information like what .exe files have been executed.

Once a portable app shows up in the reports you are simply fired by blatant
disregard for the rules and procedures you agreed to when signing your
contract.

Finance is a heavily regulated environment and you can't get away with things
that would be excusable in other places.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
> Once a portable app shows up in the reports you are simply fired by blatant
> disregard for the rules and procedures you agreed to when signing your
> contract.

That seems to be a rather extreme clause; I doubt that a bank would care if a
developer installed something that was not whitelisted. It would be a
different story if the developer _linked_ against code whose source was not
easily attributable.

~~~
5ilv3r
Why do you doubt that? Is it unreasonable? Students are subject to the same
restrictions now.

------
carlosrg
This thread shows clearly the negativity around everything Microsoft does,
especially if you compare to other technology companies. Apple deprecates some
API or removes a feature? "It's the future, you have to adapt, etc" Microsoft
deprecates a toy program made 25 years ago, but still offers the option of
downloading it for free? "How dare they, I want it in the base install, etc"

~~~
etatoby
One of the (many, many) reasons I ditched OS X after more than 10 years and
went back to Linux and Windows, depending on the task at hand, is the removal
of the colored Finder labels.

What an inane reason, you may say.

But IMHO it was one of the best features ever introduced into desktop
computing. Simple, easy to see colored backgrounds that you could assign to
files to organize or tag them as you saw fit. (seen/not seen, reviewed/not
reviewed, good/bad/meh, and so on)

Maybe Mac users are less vocal about the removal of features (or they are
simply fewer) but this kind of blatant disregard for the needs and established
workflows of your customers has a long term effect on a company's image.

~~~
oneplusone
Wasn't removed, just tweaked. It shows a colored dot now instead of a
background.

------
piyush_soni
I find the title very contradictory to the article. It's going to "stay", but
in the Windows Store (so you have to download), and with very subtle words
they say that it's not going to get any updates. So, no Microsoft, you're
saying it's going to go more than you're saying it's going to stay.

~~~
adtac
What updates do you want to see in MS Paint? It's feature complete. Bug fixes?

~~~
grecy
At a minimum, an assurance it works in Windows 20+

~~~
dingo_bat
Windows 10 is the last version of windows.

~~~
Illniyar
I thought the next version is going to be the last

------
SwellJoe
I just want to take a moment to rant about what an awful user experience Paint
3D was for me. I was using Windows for a short while because graphics under
Linux weren't working well (GPU was new at the time, it took a couple of
months for it to become reliable enough to use as a daily driver under Linux),
and installed the Creator's update, which setup Paint 3D as the default
program for every image file it could recognize. Paint 3D is a joke for all
the image stuff I want to do; cropping, resizing, highlighting, mostly, and
the user interface was pretty confusing all around.

And, I couldn't figure out how to uninstall it! It wasn't uninstallable in the
normal ways, and I don't think I ever figured out how to do so.

I won't miss Paint, and I never used it, but I definitely don't consider Paint
3D an upgrade or improvement. And, I really hate Microsoft's standard practice
of replacing file associations even if I've already setup my own before one of
their apps gets installed (I had a couple of other tools setup for images, and
they got replaced in the defaults for like 30 file types). They do it with
pretty much every app they distribute. It's presumptuous.

~~~
keithnz
lots of people raging..... about resizing and cropping.... So I figure I'd
have a go

I haven't used Paint 3d before until a few moments ago, and very quickly
worked out how to resize and crop an image. Seemed simple enough. The image
resizing is actually better than most I've seen.

~~~
SwellJoe
It's not so much that I couldn't have figured it out (though I seem to recall
it was not immediately obvious how to do anything, to me), rather it changed
my selected applications. I'd set it up the way I liked it, with software I
was familiar with and happy with...and an OS update removed that configuration
and pointed to Paint 3D instead, an application I hadn't asked for, and
seemingly could not uninstall (at least, I couldn't figure out how to
uninstall it using the normal process for uninstalling applications).

I should be clear: I don't know Windows. I've used it very rarely over the
past couple of decades. I keep a Windows partition around for gaming and audio
work (though even that no longer really requires Windows these days, as my
favorite games are on Linux and even audio isn't _awful_ under Linux anymore).
So, if someone knows their way around Windows, my complaints might seem sort
of stupid. Maybe it's trivial to fix all of the annoyances I had; but they
were frustrating for me. For me, there was just mysterious stuff happening on
my machine and I didn't know how to fix it and I didn't like it.

------
roselan
That's a clickbait title if I ever saw one. It seems Microsoft is trying to
force uwp apps down our throats. It is sad because classic programs
systematically feels snappier and are more efficient. They show their age, but
are definitely less annoying than their sexier windows 10 version.

I don't know how many time I tried =really tried= to use the photo app or the
new remote desktop app, but I always come back very frustrated to the classic
version.

~~~
ntauthority
In case you didn't know, the Windows Store can also be used to distribute
classical desktop apps, which in this case is likely the way Paint is going as
well.

------
foxfired
> The original art app isn’t going anywhere – except to the Windows Store for
> free!

Does it mean that from now on we would have to download it?

~~~
peterburkimsher
I think so. That also means that for shared or strictly managed computers, it
won't be installed or installable.

No more screenshots on the hospital PC, then.

~~~
hougaard
Shift-WindowsKey+S is the new screen snipping tool. Built right into the OS.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Huh. I just tried it. A snipping interface came up and let me select a
rectangle of the screen. Then, none of the following things happened:

\- A message telling me where the picture went.

\- The picture showing up on the desktop.

\- The picture showing up in "Documents".

\- The picture showing up in "Pictures".

But, I was able to recover the screenshot by... opening Paint, and pasting
from the clipboard! That's not a solution that will be available on a machine
without Paint.

~~~
Jaruzel
You can also open up MS Word (almost guaranteed to be installed on a locked
down corporate Windows machine), and paste the image into a blank document.
For bonus points you can then right click the pasted image, and select 'Save
As PNG'.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Customers frequently send me screen shots pasted into a Word document, sigh
...

~~~
Sleeep
I frequently get screenshots pasted into PowerPoint "presentations". Couple
times I even got a photo of the monitor taken with a cellphone camera.

I don't fault them for this in the least because they did what they knew how
to do to accomplish the task and the task was accomplished effectively, I was
able to see their screen.

------
Waterluvian
One more thing pushing me to interface with an online store. One less reason
for picking Windows for my "toolbench" computer.

The paranoid in me is expecting there to be a catch to this new paint
application. Ads? DLC?

~~~
madez
If you don't trust Microsoft and it's Store, then you shouldn't use Windows in
the first place.

~~~
flatline
It's a perfectly good OS with a bunch of junk installed, whether by Microsoft,
a OEM, or both. Working around the crap has been the norm for as long as I can
remember.

~~~
beagle3
Some of us consider the telemetry and forced updates "junk" that disqualifies
it from being a "perfectly good OS" since you cannot uninstall them and need
to keep fighting the OS to keep them off.

------
partiallypro
They never said it was going away, they said it was deprecated. The media spun
it, either out of ignorance or headline porn/clickbait.

------
faeyanpiraat
Okay so when I first heard this, I was kind of enraged, because I use paint
daily for screenshots, ad-hoc cropping and stuff.

And when I tried Paint3D in the past it was garbage. Someone in this thread
said that it is actually easy to crop with it, and I tried again, and yes it
is actually a bearable experience, but scaling the image gives a crappy
quality, so it is a no-go.

Then I got the Win+Shift+S screen clipping tool, which is awesome, it only
gets the clipped screenshot into the clipboard, which is a half-assed
solution, but then I remembered I got evernote, and made Win+Shift+D save the
clipboard into a new note.

This way I can instantly take a screenshot in an already cropped way, and save
it for future use, and Evernote can easily Annotate the image with text, or
arrows, which is sufficient.

Awesomeness!

~~~
dingo_bat
Snipping tool is not UWP. So someday some dev in Microsoft will convert it to
UWP and you'll have Snip 3D. And snipping tool will become a download from the
store. It's fucking sad because the UWP apps are almost always garbage.

------
nsxwolf
Not having it installed by default will kill off MS Paint.

~~~
simplyinfinity
just because it's in the store doesn't mean it wont be pre installed :)

~~~
qarioz
Doesn't indicate that it will be preinstalled either. If I know my Corporation
Language 101, it will not be preinstalled.

~~~
badprose
Not by Microsoft.

"Dell is proud to announce their new line of laptops, with classic Paint
built-in!

------
jagermo
An excellent example on how to generate media buzz. You would have to pay a
decent amount of money if you wanted to achieve something similar with ads.

------
malekpour
There are much better free [web based] alternatives for WordPad, Paint and
Notepad these days and I prefer to use those over these obsolete applications.
These are not useful applications, we just like them because of nostalgia.

I doubt if Microsoft is removing Paint because of OS base image size. It
should be more about source code maintenance and UI consistency. Both WordPad
and Paint got ribbon user interface for Windows 7 and calc.exe has been
replace by a modern Windows Store app in Windows 10.

Why should Microsoft spend time and resource to keep these applications up to
date while majority of users are using better free alternatives?

~~~
mavrc
> These are not useful applications, we just like them because of nostalgia.

On the contrary; I have Paint.net and GIMP installed, I've experimented with
both of them, and I still don't have a tool as quick and easy for marking up a
screenshot as Paint is. At that singular task it is superb.

I create a lot of training material, so marking up screenshots is a
significant component of my job. This will make my job harder for no good
reason.

~~~
malekpour
GIMP is not a good alternative for Paint. Have you ever used
[[https://sketch.io/sketchpad/](https://sketch.io/sketchpad/)] ?

Windows Snipping Tool is a very good tool for taking screen shots.

7Zip and VLC are good examples. The community accepted to download and use
many community driven projects over Microsoft provided tools.

------
Dolores12
If i had to download something anyway why would i download MS Paint and not a
better alternative? So they are killing it.

------
comeonnowreally
Disappointing comments in this thread. Lots of worthless complaining, and
scant technical talk on solutions to this barely significant 'problem'.

If you want to keep the original mspaint.exe and don't want to use the Store
for some reason, you can literally just copy it from any Windows 10 install
media prior to RS3. Or from a running system. It's not difficult.

~~~
skrebbel
It has a lot of dependencies actually. No idea which of those also get
removed.

~~~
comeonnowreally
I think they're all dependencies shared by many other Windows components, and
will probably mostly be the versioned API Sets rather than specifically named
DLLs. But if there is anything Paint-specific it could just be copied over
too.

------
fiatjaf
Is there an alternative to MS Paint that can be easily installed and used?

Not GIMP or other complicated things, I want my 4-year-old son to use it.

~~~
bradenb
I have found Paint.NET to be my go-to middle-ground image editor. I think it
is more than simple enough for your 4-year-old son.

------
Overtonwindow
For many it seems Paint is their first experience with Windows, since my first
was an Apple II GS, I remember Mouse Paint.

------
eco
And here I was defending Microsoft in the other thread... This is much worse
(for all the reasons people have already listed) than deprecating and
eventually removing it which is what the original article implied was
happening.

------
vxNsr
Honestly the biggest takeaway from this was that they were still developing
mspaint.

~~~
pvdebbe
I wonder why it needs development. Any security holes would very likely to be
in image format parsers, which are hopefully dynamically linked and maintained
elsewhere.

------
kazinator
You absolutely need MS Paint on Windows.

For one thing, it provides workarounds for horrible stability and
functionality issues with image printing out of the Windows Shell (Windows
Explorer).

I think it provides the only way to print an image 1:1 (original scale)
without installing third party software. I.e. 600 pixels of a 600 dpi image
actually measure one inch. Not all images are photographs that can be scaled;
sometimes they are patterns for some real-world object.

How would a Windows user, say, crop an image without MS Paint, using only a
vanilla Windows install with no 3rd party anything?

~~~
freeone3000
Using Paint3D, the bundled replacement.

~~~
kazinator
Not finding it in Windows 7. Is the search term just "paint3d"?

~~~
mod50ack
It's part of Windows 10. Windows 7 still has Paint.

------
cardiffspaceman
The article really says,

 _We thought MS Paint was so great, we decided to list all the features that
Paint 3D has that are similar to what MS Paint has. And we want to mention
that Paint 3D is FREE!_

These are the results for searching "MS Paint" on windows.com:

[https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/search/result.aspx?q=MS+Pain...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/search/result.aspx?q=MS+Paint&search=&flt=AllSearch)

------
laythea
Summary:

We are taking paint away from you and allowing you to come and get it through
our funnel, erm... store.

------
radicalbyte
If they want to cut the bloat they can better look at fixing their installers.
I don't need a copy of every installer ever used in my windows and program
directories. Those folders are almost always the largest folders on my PC.

------
Oras
I quite like the way Microsoft is listening back to users, welcome back
Microsoft!

------
nmeofthestate
One reason for this is surely Microsoft trying to get people to use their
store.

------
cjsuk
Im beginning to think that Microsoft's new strategy is to optimistically break
all their products by adding the store front and telemetry to them. Neither of
which are needed or wanted in the majority of cases.

~~~
frik
True, I am beginning to think their CEO drives the company against the wall.
One PR disaster and hostile behavior after another.

~~~
cjsuk
Just like the last CEO :)

------
WalterBright
I miss EDLIN.COM

~~~
criddell
Get it from the Windows Store! It needs camera and microphone access though.
And it isn't actually a line editor, but it does install a browser helper and
toolbar in IE.

------
the_wheel
I'd bet this was the plan all along. People are talking about Paint 3D.

------
snissn
If they really want to make their core / long time users happy they would
release the "Old MSPaint" from windows 95 as a stand alone app

------
boobsbr
Well, I'll just install Paint.NET then.

------
FlashGit
Yay, at minimum 7 Mb freed up going forward. People will remember this joyous
occasion, would rate 10/10 again.

------
mnyxn
they should have found better way to go viral. I am not motivated to use
paint3D. people using MSpaint are also be able to use MSexcel to paint. It's
been used not because microsoft produced minimal tool made huge impact!
actually the other way around!

------
LyalinDotCom
253 comments here as of the time when i am seeing the post... really folks? :)

------
talmand
I'm sensing a PR ploy on the level of Coke and New Coke shenanigans.

------
blocker_chain
Nice! Can't remove a classic and glad they listened to the people

------
gwbas1c
Where's the link? Specifically, how come this blog page doesn't link to the
app in the app store?

Anyway, I agree that MS Paint needs to be built-in to Windows. It's like
Notepad for images. Something that's reliable that we know that works and how
to use.

------
mycat
Will users' revolt stop this advancement? I'm serious.

------
baalimago
but now it's probably going to be bundled up with all kinds of crap, such as
ms pain(t) 3d

------
Piccollo
You boobs, just use Photoshop.

------
eklavyaa
well now I can always have a place to paste print screen :)

------
hasenj
So .. what? It always struck my as a toy program (kind of like how Notepad
seems like a toy text editor).

When was the last time you could get anything done with MS Paint?

~~~
aerovistae
Uh, every single time I wanted to quickly circle something in a screenshot?
Every time I wanted to quickly crop an image? Every time I wanted to draw a
diagram?

MS Paint has been there for me through thick and thin.

Yeah, I'm not about to become a graphic artist with it, but what does that
have to do with anything?

And what's more, I don't know what you're on about with Notepad. I've taken
more notes in Notepad than any other program, no contest. "Toy"? Is a
butterknife a toy because all it does is spread butter?

~~~
lou1306
Snipping Tool is way better at any screenshot-related task.

And, er, you draw diagrams in Paint? Where you cannot even _edit_ a damn text-
box? [^1] Really?

[^1]: [https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/paint-in-windows-10-editing-text-
boxes/11501082-cc59-44ad-a456-cb2e33f27fda)

------
gchokov
Microsoft doesn't have any taste. No, it's should not be on the store.
Tasteless company..

~~~
nindalf
Your comment is vague and unconstructive. I'd ask you to substantiate your
claim, but its not even clear what that claim is.

~~~
mrkrabo
"Having taste" is not a fact, but an opinion, so of course he can't
"substantiate it"

~~~
chungy
It is a fact that I cannot taste a company. Therefore, tasteless.

------
unabridged
With GPU passthrough becoming quite usable I don't think I'll ever put windows
on bare metal again. And in my VMs I'll just be using evaluation copies.

I left MS office for open/libreoffice a few years ago and haven't looked back.
The idea of having a store built into my operating system makes me ill, I
already have enough of that with android. I can't really imagine giving MS any
more money (except possibly when buying a laptop), and I'm not sure what they
can do to change it.

