RIP, Microsoft Paint. MS Paint, the first app you used for editing images, will probably be killed off in future updates of Windows 1. Paint 3. D. Microsoft lists the 3. Windows 1. 0’s next autumn update, a little X marking the end of an era. The app is certainly a relic, from a time when the casual computer user couldn’t crack open Photoshop or Skitch or Pixelmator or thousands of web apps.

MS Paint can’t save image components as layers or vectors; it’s for making flat static images only. It doesn’t smooth lines or guess at your best intentions. It does what you tell it and nothing more, faithfully representing the herky- jerky motion of drawing freehand with a computer mouse. It’s from a time before touch, a time before trackpads. As more sophisticated options appeared, Paint’s janky aesthetic became a conscious choice.

TV Tropes lists major limitations that came to define a certain look: the wobbly freehand lines, awkward color handling, and inappropriate export settings that give Paint its distinctive look. In 2. 01. 4, Gawker’s Sam Biddle noted Paint’s influence on conspiracy theory images, calling the form “Chart Brut.” In amateur detectives’ attempts at identifying the Boston Marathon bombers, the simplicity and jaggedness of Paint evokes the “crazy wall” aesthetic of red string and scribbled notes, apparently without irony. The same year, internet historian Patrick Davison explored Paint’s influence on the last decade of meme culture, particularly Rage Comics.

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The outsider- art aesthetic feels appropriate to the relatable everyday content, and makes the art form unthreatening. Of course, Paint offered a few features to smooth things out, like the circle and line tools and the “fill” tool, all used in the stoner comics of the early 1. Crucially, those circles still had jagged curves. The bright colors of stoner comics are flat, as MS Paint didn’t support gradients (without an elaborate hack). Contrast those pixellated lines with the slick, stylish face from this art tutorial: This slickness is built into Paint’s successor, Paint 3.

D. From the moment you start sketching, Paint 3. D smooths out your art. Paint’s sloppiness is probably why rage comics got so popular. Looking at a rage comic, you can tell exactly how it was drawn, and how you might draw one yourself. By delivering exactly what the artist draws, MS Paint forms an image that the viewer can mentally reverse- engineer and imitate.

Unless you go absolutely nuts with it. Reddit user Toweringhorizon painstakingly assembled the drawing “To a Little Radio” using MS Paint tools like the oil brush, stretching the medium while maintaining a pixelated look. It’s one of the top submissions to MS Paint subreddit, a beautiful collaborative art gallery.

Scrolling through this art feels like flipping through the sketchbook of the most artistic kid in high school. There’s an accepted roughness, a desired minimalism. For example, the exquisite raindrops in the work above are reflected in a flat, featureless tabletop. Like a transistor radio, Paint might be showing its age, but this tenacious little gadget should not be underestimated.“To a Little Radio” doesn’t even come close to testing Paint’s limits. As we say goodbye to the app that shaped an era, let us watch this bizarrely soundtracked time lapse of drawing Santa Claus in MS Paint on Windows 7 over the course of 5.

We can only believe this is real because faking it would be even harder.

Just How Dead Is Microsoft Paint? The program, which has been annotating our memes, creating our webcomics, and teaching us how to art since 1.

Microsoft’s list of Windows features to be removed or deprecated in the Windows 1. Fall Creators Update. But this doesn’t mean Paint as we know it is dead!

The list Paint was featured on very specifically says that each product will either be killed, or it will be deprecated—which merely means it will no longer be actively developed. Paint falls into the latter category. So it could be dropped in a future update, or it could hang around for the next decade—an artifact of a different time. Outlook Express, another Windows application that’s conjures memories for older users, is being killed in the same update.

It is officially supplanted by the big boy Microsoft Outlook, which is more stylistically in line with Windows 1. Outlook Express. While Outlook Express has long languished in the shadow of its hipper Outlook cousin, MS Paint has seen infrequent updates that at least allow it to look like it belongs on a 2. Microsoft is very aware of how much affection users have for Microsoft Paint. Windows 7 And 8 Themes Of Ap. The product, which many of us used as a digital doodling book when we were kids, has a cult following.

When Microsoft briefed press on the original Creators Update back in March, its representatives only had nice things to say about the application. Paint is on every Windows computer! It makes creating art easy!

It’s like Photoshop but simple and free! This is not how you talk when you’re planning to ax a product. This is definitely the kind of talk you deliver when you’re launching a new Paint product. Which was what was happening at that press briefing. Microsoft launched Paint 3. D, a 3. D rendering and printing tool intended to simplify the production of 3. D products, in March.

The name Paint 3. D was specifically used so play on people’s nostalgia for MS Paint. It’s not unreasonable to expect that the upcoming Fall Creators Update will see Paint 3. D expanded to incorporate the features we all know and love from Paint.

Either way, it is not in Microsoft’s best interest to kill an application that has been loved for more than 3. Right now Microsoft is campaigning to steal all the artists and other creators who have traditionally preferred the Mac ecosystem for creating digital art. It’s why Microsoft spent so much time talking about the Surface Pen when it updated the Surface Pro a few months ago, and it’s why it launched the Surface Studio last October. Heck, it’s why it keeps calling every new Windows OS update a “creators” update. It wants those users!

Transforming its most enduring creative application into something more robust is a clear next step. Eventually Microsoft could kill the ugly version of Paint we love in order to release shiny new version of Paint or a Paint- adjacent application. Or Microsoft could just leave MS Paint in the Deprecated column for a while, a cool app eventually destined to be forgotten as younger computer users snap up alternate tools like Photoshop Express or Autodesk Sketchbook.

Either way Microsoft Paint isn’t dead, it’s just deprecated, and Microsoft has made no comment on how long it could be deprecated. So maybe don’t go ordering funeral flowers just yet. We’ve reached out to Microsoft to learn more about the plans for Paint and will update if we hear back get back to us. Update: A Microsoft spokesperson responded with the following statement: MS Paint is not going away.

In addition to the new 3. D capabilities, many of the MS Paint features people know and love like photo editing and 2. D creation are in Paint 3. D - the new app for creativity, available for free with the Windows 1. Creators update. In the future, we will offer MS Paint in the Windows Store also for free and continue to provide new updates and experiences to Paint 3. D so people have the best creative tools all in one place. So there you have it.

MS Paint is safe..