Microsoft’s newest Paint replace makes me need to ditch Photoshop totally

Microsoft has introduced a significant new replace to its default Paint app for Windows 11. Along with a brand new opacity slider, which grants quick access to Pencil and Brush stroke transparency ranges, the corporate is lastly introducing a devoted .paint undertaking file format into the combo.

Just like different portray functions with their very own bespoke file codecs, .paint unlocks the much-appreciated means to avoid wasting a canvas in undertaking type, making it straightforward to hop again in and choose up the place you left off in your photograph modifying or inking journey at a later date.

“When you’re prepared to avoid wasting your art work, go to the File menu and choose Save as undertaking. The File Explorer will open, permitting you to decide on a location and save your work as a .paint file. Once you’re able to return, merely open the file to launch it in Paint, proper the place you left off,” writes Dave Grochocki, Microsoft Principal Group Product Supervisor, in a Windows Insider Blog post.

These new Paint updates are rolling out now within the Home windows Insider Program Canary and Dev channels, the place they will be out there for early testing. A steady launch to the general public is anticipated within the coming weeks, although Microsoft hasn’t dedicated to a selected timeline as of but.

Microsoft’s Paint app has a storied previous

Paint went from abandonware to state-of-the-art seemingly in a single day

Within the Home windows 11 period, Microsoft has doubled down on supporting its suite of in-box functions that ship with its flagship PC working system. Classics like Notepad and Snipping Software have obtained their fair proportion of updates lately, nevertheless it’s the glow-up of Paint that I discover to be essentially the most fascinating.

Paint has been round for so long as Microsoft Windows has existed, first serving as a tech demo for digital artwork creation through mouse and cursor. The app obtained a gradual stream of updates up till Home windows 8 in 2012, the place it was unceremoniously dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Microsoft first experimented with a modernized portray expertise within the type of a brand new app known as Fresh Paint, which continues to be out there on the corporate’s Home windows 11 storefront to this present day. Then, a couple of years later, it launched Paint 3D — yet another new painting app, however with an emphasis on three-dimensional artwork creation (this was at a time when Home windows Blended Actuality was prime of thoughts at Microsoft).

Within the wake of Paint 3D, Microsoft introduced plans to deprecate the unique Paint app in 2017, prompting a lot backlash from the tech group and past. The company eventually reversed course, declaring Paint a everlasting fixture of the Home windows expertise, and, in an ironic coincidence, Paint 3D itself was in the end canned late last year.

Microsoft Paint is lastly nice

Paint has formally put Adobe Photoshop on discover

Credit score: Microsoft / Pocket-lint

Roughly coinciding with the discharge of Home windows 11 in 2021, Microsoft gave traditional Paint a large redesign, with modernized person interface components, Fluent design language ideas, and full help for darkish mode.

Within the years since, Paint has obtained a ton of recent capabilities, together with long-requested options like help for transparency and the PNG file sort, configurable layers, an object selector instrument, smoother zooming, a extra outstanding thickness slider, and a background removing operate.

Paint has additionally benefited tremendously in at the moment’s Copilot+ PC era, with generative AI-powered features like Picture Creator, sticker technology, and extra being launched in latest months.

With the brand new additions of a devoted .paint file sort and a devoted opacity slider, I reckon Paint is now greater than adequate for the overwhelming majority of informal photograph modifying workflows. Actually, if I had been rivaling Photoshop, I would begin to get a bit nervous. Adobe’s Inventive Cloud subscription is not low cost, and whereas it is nonetheless a extra highly effective suite than Paint, it additionally introduces an undesirable quantity of bloat and heaviness into the combo.

As a free, standalone roster graphics editor, Paint is now a succesful (and visually pleasing) possibility that seamlessly integrates into the Windows 11 expertise. In 2025, Paint is lastly a robust sufficient piece of software program for general-purpose picture modifying — it is laborious to imagine that just some quick years in the past, the long-lasting app was on the point of discontinuation.