MS Paint

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