Microsoft Paint

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Microsoft Paint (formerly known as Paintbrush for Windows) is a simple graphics "painting" program that comes bundled with all modern versions of Microsoft Windows. Its original copyright dates to 1981.

The program opens and saves files as Windows bitmap (24-bit, 256 color, 16 color, and monochrome, all with the .bmp extension), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and TIFF. Older versions cannot open or edit GIF, PNG, or TIFF files, and can only open JPEG files with a JPEG filter. Also, for some reason, newer versions no longer support the PCX format, or some older special formats like DIB or RLE. Also the newer versions don't support the older MSP file format, used in Windows 3.1 and older versions of Paint.

The program can be in color mode and in monochrome mode (in the sense of having no shades of grey). Thus for shades of grey the color mode is used. Alternatively, in monochrome mode, shades of grey simulated by patterns of black dots, in various densities, can be painted.

However, there is no option to convert real grey to this simulated grey. When loading an image with shades of grey, the program automatically goes into color mode.

Contents

Tools and functions

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Microsoft Paint screenshot

New versions of Microsoft Paint allow the user to pick up to three colors at a time: the primary color (left mouse click), secondary color (right mouse click), and tertiary color (control key + any mouse click). The tertiary color function seems to be present, but deactivated or left undeveloped, in the older versions.

The program comes with the following options in its Tool Box: Free-Form Select, Select, Eraser/Color Eraser, Fill With Color, Pick Color, Magnifier, Pencil, Brush, Airbrush, Text, Line, Curve, Rectangle, Polygon, Ellipse, and Rounded Rectangle. MS Paint does not have the ability to automatically create color gradients.

The "Image" menu offers the following options: Flip/Rotate, Stretch/Skew, Invert Colors, Image Attributes, Clear Image, and Draw Opaque. (The "Rotate" option, unfortunately, only rotates images in increments of 90 degrees.) The "Colors" menu allows the user to Edit Colors (only menu option under Colors). The Edit Colors dialog box shows a 48-color palette and 12 custom color slots that can be edited. Clicking "Define Custom Colors" displays a square version of the color wheel that can select a custom color either with a crosshair cursor (like a "+"), by Hue/Saturation/Luminance, or by Red/Green/Blue values.

The default colors in the Color Box could be described as the following colors: Black, White, Gray, Silver, Garnet red, Red, Gold, Yellow, Dark Green, Green, Dark Teal, Cyan, Indigo, Blue, Purple (violet), Magenta, Old Gold, Lemon Yellow, Slate grey, Kelly green, Dark Carolina blue, Aquamarine, Midnight blue, Periwinkle, Violet-blue, Coral, and Pumpkin orange.

MS Paint also has a few hidden functions not mentioned in the help file: a "stamp mode" and a "trail mode".

For the stamp mode, the user can select part of the image, hold the control key, and move it to another part of the canvas. This, insted of cutting the piece out, creates a copy of it. The process can be repeated any number of times desired, as long as the control key is held pressed. The trail mode works exactly the same, but with the shift key instead of the control key.

Uses

Despite its simplicity, Microsoft Paint is still widely used, especially for oekaki and pixel artists since both forms of art require minimal resources.

Negative implications

Because of its simplicity and the fact that it comes bundled with every version of Windows up to date, Microsoft Paint is usually associated with the concept of a newbie or otherwise inexperienced or clueless user, and images and drawings of poor quality are usually labelled as "made with Paint" in a somewhat derogatory manner. In the past, there have even been shareware Windows programs featuring graphics drawn with MS Paint, which were easy to tell away because of their rough outlines and flat colouring with no gradients, typical of Microsoft Paint-made drawings.

This sort of judgment is, of course, flawed. As mentioned before, MS Paint is frequently used by pixel and oekaki artists, and experienced artists can indeed create high quality images with the program.

See also

External links

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