Automated background removal was also added recently.

Automated background removal was also added recently.

        • angstylittlecatboy@reddthat.comEnglish
          84·
          11 months ago

          For how relatively well known it is (it’s probably like the next most well known piece of FOSS after Linux and Blender) I can’t believe how bad a piece of software GIMP is.

          • Phen@lemmy.eco.brEnglish
            6·
            11 months ago

            I use Gimp a lot.

            It does its job very well, but that job is not to be an alternative to photoshop.

          • aksdb@feddit.deEnglish
            5·
            11 months ago

            I hope you mean the UX. I think attacking it’s functionality would be unfair. It does everything good and right … technically.

            If the UX is objectively bad or “just” subjectively might be hard to find out. I would assume if there are objective UX mistakes, some contributor might have been able to deal with that by now. But of course it doesn’t change anything if a majority doesn’t like it for subjectice reasons. It’s part of UX design to deal with subjective aspects.

                • Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
                  2·
                  11 months ago

                  Or color spasecs other than sRGB (8 bits/channel). I’ve a camera that takes 10 bits/channel photos, a monitor that displays 10 bits/channel, etc. But GIMP will just distort the colors because they hard-coded the color space! Can’t edit for print either, no CMYK. GIMP is an image editor for the noughties, not the 2020s.

                  Then again, we’re talking about MS Paint here. If Paint fills your needs, GIMP will be fine.

            • Crul@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              I’ve been waiting for years for “non-destructive edition” (AKA smart objects). It’s a fundamental feature that I use (almost?) always as a first step. IMHO a lof of professional work is not practical without it.

              They had it on the roadmap (see 2020 archive) for years marked as “No[t started]”. The current roadmap looks more promising with “link layers” marked as WIP and saying it could be available on GIMP 3.0.2.

  • AngryHumanoid@reddthat.comEnglish
    352·
    11 months ago

    Screw you Microsoft, I switched to Paint.net forever ago and I’ll be long dead in the cold, cold grave before I recognize Missourah, I mean switch back to Paint.

    • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.worldEnglish
      141·
      11 months ago

      https://getpaint.net/

      Some other random company got the url “paint.net”, so confusingly you need https://getpaint.net/ to download the product paint.net

      For those unfamiliar, it’s a free art program that’s… idk 80% of what photoshop is? But you can install community-made plugins to add features (shoutout to Grim Color Reaper).

      Also on their download page, you want this one:

      If you do the microsoft link, you’ll have to pay microsoft. For a free product. That microsoft doesn’t own. Dafuq.

      • insomniac@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        The developer of paint.net sells it on the Microsoft store to support the product. Not any different than buying an app through the App Store or Google play store.

        It’s created by a Microsoft Engineer, not super surprising they leverage Microsoft tools to get paid.

      • N1cknamed@feddit.nlEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Paint.net is great but it doesn’t even come close to 80% the functionality of photoshop. It’s more like 10%. The plugins are interesting but fairly limited in what they can do.

        I like to use paint.net for simple edits like cropping because of how lightweight it is, but as soon as I need to do any substantial image manipulation or drawing I’m opening photoshop. Paint.net will just hold you back. It doesn’t support some of the most common and basic features like masks, brushes, the pen tool and gradients.

    • galloog1@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      The single most historically aware yet still funny to the unaware joke that the Simpsons ever put out.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.devEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        Shouldn’t be too hard, I expect it to be a single executable stored in C:\Windows\System32 , much like the current mspaint.exe. Copy it over, run, have fun

        • EeeDawg101@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Wouldn’t surprise me if they lock it to the windows store. I hope I’m wrong!

      • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
        132·
        11 months ago

        It’s still missing a handful of features from Windows10, which might keep some people from upgrading

      • HidingCat@kbin.social
        1·
        11 months ago

        Eh, I don’t hate Windows (unlike a lot in the Fediverse), but I wouldn’t say Win11 is awesome. It probably just works. From what I see it’s just a mildly-improved 10, which is nice, but missing a few things (no grouped task bar button option in my case), which is why I’m holding out for now.

  • Nepenthe@kbin.social
    132·
    11 months ago

    But today Microsoft announced that it is finally adding two features that could make the app a bit more useful for power users: support for Photoshop-esque image layers and the ability to open and save transparent PNGs.

    What kind of person is an MS Paint power user. I just use it to paste screenshots into if I’m not intending fine editing, otherwise it might as well not exist as a program.

    The only person who seriously uses MS Paint for artwork is that one guy who recreated the Mona Lisa out of hundreds of pieces of variously burnt toast. Real, usable art tools would destroy the purpose and make that guy sad.

    Really, if they kept this kind of momentum up for the next 20 years, it might put it on par with Fire Alpaca. It’s an interesting move, they’re just so incredibly late to the game that even other free programs are still leagues better than they are and no one will ever take them seriously again.

    • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      11 months ago

      What kind of person is an MS Paint power user.

      Some older folks that aren’t as tech savvy have made some impressive pieces with it if memory serves. There’s also those that use it unironically for its constraints to produce pieces with a classic MS Paint style produced from those limitations. In a way this update kind of flies in the face of that a little, maybe, but eh.

    • Deceptichum@kbin.social
      13·
      11 months ago

      I use Paint almost daily.

      Especially when I can’t be arsed opening Steam/Aseprite. Paint is a pixel art work horse.

      • Nepenthe@kbin.social
        61·
        11 months ago

        I forgot about people who do pixel art, and I’m terrible. People like you are invaluable to the gaming industry and the ornate ones are their own skillset I’m kind of always awed by

    • rockSlayer@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      I’d consider myself a paint power user. My job (QA) gives us a NUC and wants us to edit screenshots and videos on said NUC. It’s not going to be a fun time with Photoshop, online tools are expressly forbidden, and alternative software needs manual approval by GIS.

    • Lyrl@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      11 months ago

      They did. I guess the community outcry was so loud even Microsoft had to heed it and reverse course.

    • Piers@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      11 months ago

      No. Wordpad is the one being discontinued. Paint is one of several programs that can now be uninstalled from Windows by end users without any special tricks.

      • jadegear@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        11 months ago

        If you remove mspaint.exe then Windows will refuse to boot. It’s true, I knew a guy!

        • Aux@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          11 months ago

          Jokes aside you can boot Windows without Windows at all. By that I mean you can boot Windows NT without Win32.

  • Aielman15@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    11 months ago

    Very cool.

    I like Paint for its simplicity, and since I don’t need all the extra bells and whistles most of the time, I’ve never bothered with learning how to use Photoshop or GIMP.

    I’ve been using Paint.net for the last few years, but I’ll try the new Paint features as well and compare them to see which one I find better.

  • asteriskeverything@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    So many artists started with paint. I am really glad it is adding some features that are significant improvements that will help today’s young artists even more.

    I’m talking about kids, like an age before you’re likely to become aware of other free tools… Wait. Fuck, do kids even use windows computers anymore or is the closest a chromebook?

  • randon31415@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    11 months ago

    Didn’t they say they were retiring ms paint in 2017 for some other program no one had heard of?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    51·
    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    The venerable, equally derided and beloved MS Paint app has been on a roll lately, picking up a major redesign, dark-mode support, better zoom controls, and other fit-and-finish updates all within the last couple of years.

    But today Microsoft announced that it is finally adding two features that could make the app a bit more useful for power users: support for Photoshop-esque image layers and the ability to open and save transparent PNGs.

    In an image program without support for layers, adding new elements to an image like this is always destructive—you lose the ability to see and edit the part of the sky that is covered by the plane and the cloud, and the part of the plane that is covered by the cloud.

    Support for creating, editing, and saving transparent PNG images goes hand in hand with support for layers, since it’s useful to be able to pull a single object out of an existing image so you can put it in a new one.

    Transparent PNG support goes well with the automated background removal button that Microsoft added to Paint builds earlier this month.

    The redesigned Paint is rolling out to Windows Insider testers in both the Dev and Canary channels, the two bleeding-edge and less-stable versions of Windows 11.

    The original article contains 388 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 45%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • ares35@kbin.social
    41·
    11 months ago

    meanwhile, wordpad… probably used by more people over the age of seven than paint is, getting axed.

    microsoft has office subs to sell, but they do not have a photoshop or gimp or even a paint.net alternative to sell.

    • kaesaecracker@leminal.spaceEnglish
      4·
      11 months ago

      They created WordPad because of antitrust issues and never changed it. Try opening a Word document created by a recent version, it’s pretty useless today.

      Notepad rules though, it even got UTF8 support recently-ish! /s

    • Classy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      21·
      11 months ago

      I’ve been using Notepad++ for a good while now and it’s proven to be a great alternative to MS WordPad.

      • private_account@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Can you format at all in Notepad++? I tend to use it for notes jot down in a rush or editing tiny scripts. For stuff that needs to look prettier, I tend to use Google Docs.

        • stringere@reddthat.comEnglish
          11·
          11 months ago

          Yes and then some. It has built in support for a lot of programming languages plus allows you to add more. It also support extended and regex find/replace.

  • Plap plap 𓁑𓂸 @lemmyf.ukEnglish
    31·
    11 months ago

    I’m a hobbyist digital artist and have had to do a handful of graphic design projects for my mundane, non-art-in-anyway job.

    As our computers are locked down Windows PCs, I’ve had to manage with MSPaint. It’s always taken me double the time as on any other program or app, and I have been wishing it had layers for years.

    Since this update is Windows 11 only, I’ll have to for my company to upgrade, so I can look forward to layers in maybe 5 years.