History of Microsoft Paint 1985-2017: An LGR Retrospective

As of July 2017, Microsoft is halting development on the venerable MS Paint. What better time to take a look back at the history and legacy of Paint, Windows 3.1 Paintbrush, and ZSoft PC Paintbrush!

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● Music used in order of appearance:
Smooth Groove, Werewolfdance, Streetlight Conundrum

[LGR]

If you're still confused about what Microsoft is doing with Paint: _it is not being removed from Windows, yet._ Development was halted in favor of Paint 3D, original Paint is no longer considered a core part of Windows for the future, original Paint will be on the Windows Store later on but will not be updated or supported.

[cooperbeats]

Can we please just give him some props for how much research and how professional his videos are ?

[honkhonkler]

Everyone's up in arms about Paint, but I'm still getting over the loss of 3D Pinball.

[abettersideofme]

My Grandpa used to print my drawings on Paint and hang them up in his office. I completely forgot about that until this moment.

[travosk]

I remember being 5 years old, we lived in the countryside so we had no internet, no gaming consols, just that one old computer my father bought ages ago, and every day i would turn it on go on paint a draw stuff. That was the only form of tech i had access to.
But the best part was when i moved to the city and saw the newly released windows vista, that thing looked so good i couldn't even believe such a thing was even possible (i was so used to windows 95 and it's green background) and video games!! oh man. It was like seeing all the things i saw on TV in real life.
I hope i didn't wast your time

[kluna]

who else when bored made a bunch of overlapping circles and colored every section differently?

[jippalippa]

Open Paint for windows 95
Do a bunch of random scribbles
Use the fill tool to colour the shapes.
MIND BLOWN!

Loved doing that around 1997-98

[pushinguproses]

I still use paint all the time for very basic image editing. Really great to see older iterations of Paint; my first experience with it was with Windows 3.1. Didn't have the internet or a lot of games so I would open up Paintbrush and draw crappy things with my mouse. Even as an adult I like seeing what kind of art I can come up with using the program. Thanks for the great coverage on something so nostalgic.

[OSW]

I don't think many people notice it, but the amount of footage presented here (emulated I imagine?) of old programs running is really impressive! Showing what it's like to doodle on every version and competitor, such a quick turnaround making this video too. It's really very cool. Well done!

[acearchives]

I will never forget how I started as a digital artist. When I was twelve, I didn't know about free paint software that was better than MS Paint. I always envied those on YouTube who had better programs than me, and I always blamed that for my lack of talent back in the day. I then slowly started to figure paint out more though, learning the tricks like make your tools bigger with the mouse, and as well as the copy clean trick. It seems like it was only yesterday when I found out that you could basically create layers by copying and pasting the image with the dominant color in the background. I also was mind blown when I found the invert to monocrome trick. It's going to be sad to see it go, seeing as I learned from my two years I spent drawing with the program. I learned that the tools do not make you the artist. You make you the artist. :)

[refraggedbean]

"Sometimes you just want to draw a big dong in the sky" -LGR 2017

[thomasg]

Man, those videos from Paintbrush in 3.1... so nostalgic! Played with that so much as a kid.

[MarkyShaw]

FUCK this is my primary graphic design tool.

[Bucketus.Lord.of.Buckets]

Was not aware of paint 3D until you showed it. Gonna download it asap. Thanks.

Also dat woodgrain model. Never change

[jesuszamora]

So Paint is being replaced by a 3D successor. I don't see the issue, so long as Paint 3D still has 2D capability, MS is right to assume the two programs would be redundant.

[HaydenX]

"Hello, this is filler"
I laughed pretty hard at this.

[ashknoecklein]

I did a degree in Latin and Greek, and "wildly complex things with arbitrarily limited resources...but then again sometimes you just want to draw a big dong in the sky" is basically how I would describe archaic lyric poetry. Probably lots of art tbh.

[GlitchGameplay]

Paint 3D looks nice,
But can it paint Crysis?

[JennyverseLive]

"The History of Microsoft Pain"...oh wait, PAINT. I did wonder why this video was only seven minutes long.

[AspirationHD]

Microsoft Paint is now joining Outlook Express and Windows Movie Maker. The list of programmes Microsoft is killing now is a bit alarming. Everything looks like it is heading for the cloud.