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.
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.
There will still be a Paint on every Windows machine, it's just Paint 3D instead of MS Paint from now on. And yes, Paint 3D allows to manipulate 2D images as MS Paint did.
They could do what Apple does with Java: provide a stub tool that, when run, asks permission to download and install the real thing. That streamlines the "download and install" process.
For Paint, I'm not sure that would be a big win, disk space-wise. mspaint.exe is around 6.5 MB on my system, but it may need additional files. However, they could do the same for Notepad (which probably isn't on the firing line yet because quite a few installers and updaters launch it by hard-coded path if users want to read release notes) and a few other tools and share the code for asking permission between those.
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"
Microsoft has a serious and ongoing PR crisis, and not just for historical reasons (90s antitrust, etc).
There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company.
As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.
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.
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?
The reason a lot of people, including me, chose MS instead of Apple (or now, Google) is because of their reputation for backwards compatibility.
You know the rule, Apple ALWAYS gets a pass. No matter what they do, no matter how bad they treat their customers, no matter how awful their "upgrades" are, no matter how non-configurable and locked-in their products get over time, no matter the lack of innovation for the past 5 years, they always get a pass. Deal with it, that Jobs residue works its magic for a loooooong time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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:
[+] [-] opdahl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OkGoDoIt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|8 years ago|reply
It definitely does, however, feel like the end of a era.
[+] [-] Schlaefer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aphextron|8 years ago|reply
Completely agreed. This is basically Microsoft officially confirming that yes, MSPaint will be gone from Windows. Seems kind of senseless.
[+] [-] Someone|8 years ago|reply
For Paint, I'm not sure that would be a big win, disk space-wise. mspaint.exe is around 6.5 MB on my system, but it may need additional files. However, they could do the same for Notepad (which probably isn't on the firing line yet because quite a few installers and updaters launch it by hard-coded path if users want to read release notes) and a few other tools and share the code for asking permission between those.
[+] [-] carlosrg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rphlx|8 years ago|reply
There are undoubtedly many highly intelligent, well-meaning people working there, but the ongoing occurrence of highly-publicized customer screwage - such as the aggressive telemetry in W10 - and the ongoing security negligence (e.g. in failing to properly audit & fully close SMB RCEs) seems to totally undermine any goodwill created by specific products or teams within the company.
As a result the press cuts them little to no slack, and they do get hammered for things that AAPL/GOOG/FB/... could probably quietly get away with.
[+] [-] etatoby|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] userbinator|8 years ago|reply
The reason a lot of people, including me, chose MS instead of Apple (or now, Google) is because of their reputation for backwards compatibility.
[+] [-] VeejayRampay|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lou1306|8 years ago|reply
Really, if you dig deep enough you might find people decrying the demise of f'ing Clippy. Well maybe that's hyperbole, but you get my point.
[+] [-] vermontdevil|8 years ago|reply
There should be a type of law like Poes Law to describe this behavior.
[+] [-] marricks|8 years ago|reply
Also, everyone generally liked paint's simplicity, no we have stuff like candy crush default installed on Windows.
Sure, maybe not a huge deal for most people but I can see how some would be disappointed.
[+] [-] hacker_9|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixothree|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] piyush_soni|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adtac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SwellJoe|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] JoBrad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] roselan|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foxfired|8 years ago|reply
Does it mean that from now on we would have to download it?
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|8 years ago|reply
No more screenshots on the hospital PC, then.
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simplyinfinity|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] voltagex_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|8 years ago|reply
The paranoid in me is expecting there to be a catch to this new paint application. Ads? DLC?
[+] [-] partiallypro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] faeyanpiraat|8 years ago|reply
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!
[+] [-] nsxwolf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagermo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malekpour|8 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] Dolores12|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] comeonnowreally|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fiatjaf|8 years ago|reply
Not GIMP or other complicated things, I want my 4-year-old son to use it.
[+] [-] Overtonwindow|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eco|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vxNsr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kazinator|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cardiffspaceman|8 years ago|reply
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...