Paint (software)

Microsoft Paint ( MSPaint.exe, also known as Paint ) is a built- in Microsoft Windows graphics software that allows for easy creation and editing raster graphics.

Strictly speaking, there was Paint in Windows 95, before that it was called " Paintbrush ", but had only minor differences. Paintbrush is not to be confused with the separate program PC Paintbrush ZSoft the company, which was 3.1 available for MS- DOS and Windows (see also PCX graphics format ).

Versions

  • Paint for Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.x was black and white and could only store in MSP format.
  • Paintbrush for Windows 3.x Compatible color and the BMP format. A major criticism of this version was that when inserting an image that is larger than the character array, the residual supernatant was cut off without asking.
  • Paint for Windows 95 got a new design and some additional options. An inquiry has now been inserted, if one tries to insert an image that is larger than the drawing field. The opportunity to provide written text with 3 -D effect or border, has been removed. A bug in the black and white mode results when using the spray can to drawings without that the mouse button is pressed.
  • Paint for Windows 98 can simultaneously stretch and tug in height and width.
  • In Paint for Windows ME was the demand to enlarge the drawing area if a larger image is inserted, removed; the drawing area is now becoming enlarged. It can be saved in JPEG format images for the first time.
  • Paint for Windows XP supports standard JPEG, GIF, TIFF and PNG, which were previously only supported by installing Office graphics converters. A bug of this version is that land can not be filled with a raster fill pattern from the color palette in monochrome bitmaps.
  • Paint for Windows Vista got a redesign and some new features, such as zoom factors below 100%.
  • In Windows 7 Paint has received the 2010 well-known Microsoft Office Ribbon interface and some new features and form templates.
  • In the current Windows 8 version was externally to Paint nothing changed.

Formats

The program controls the loading and saving bitmap graphics formats (. Bmp), JPG, PNG, GIF and TIFF. The old formats MSP, PCX and RLE are no longer supported in newer versions of Paint.

Bitmaps can be monochrome with 16 or 256 colors or 24 - bit color and saved as a JPG, GIF or PNG.

Tools

On drawing tools is a pen, a paint bucket tool, an eraser, a line function, a curve with two-time curve ( cubic Bezier curve ), a cutting tool (rectangular or freehand ), a pipette for recording color values ​​, a magnifying glass to enlarge or reduce the display (since Windows Vista in addition in the form of a slider, before using selectable magnification factors ), a brush with multiple options for line design, a spray, a text input tool and various geometrical shapes (rectangle, ellipse, arrows, stars) available.

The determination of the width of lines and outlines, by a separate pick the line thickness is set before applying a tool.

It can be selected whether surfaces generated with geometric tools outlined and provided with fill color or not. The edges and fillings can be equipped with different textures ( colored pencil, highlighter, oil paint, pencil, water color). Moreover, a color palette from which the mouse the foreground and background color (1st and 2nd color) can be determined for the tool. When moving and inserting snippets, the second color can be used as the transparent color.

Paint allows you to run the tools with the right mouse button to make the second color is used as the foreground and the first color as the background color. Prior to Windows 7, the background color could be selected even with the right mouse button from the palette.

It can be set image attributes ( number of horizontal and vertical pixels) specified in the color palette colors can be changed, marked image sections are rotated (90 degree angle, no free rotation ). Squash and stretch marked areas is possible, and will be lost during the compression of pixel graphics details, while at distances not only the selected details, but also the systemic surrounding representation errors are magnified - it 's apparent jaggies.

When saving you can choose between different color depth bitmap formats. The saving in a lower color depth often leads to unwanted loss of color, as when converting to 16 - will be converted only in standard colors and 256 color format, regardless of the actual colors used. Alternatively defined color palettes are preserved when you save, but can not be defined in Paint. When saving in GIF format, even from existing graphics, just turn other standard colors will be in later versions, monochrome surfaces in other colors ( including all information as specified by Paint colors) bitmap are converted into (not editable with the paint bucket tool ), which also leads to significantly larger files leads. The PNG format does not have this problem.

In early versions ( Paintbrush ), it was possible objects with the keyboard arrow keys to move one pixel at a without this possibility a pixel accurate control is achieved only with a correspondingly sensitive mouse.

Corrections

Paint structures not covered in the image located as individual objects (circles, rectangles or texts) but - similar to a mosaic - a collection of dots to form an overall (raster ) graphics. Once created, details, therefore, can not be marked separately and subsequently changed - it must be removed with tools like the eraser or by covering it with new layers of paint - as is more familiar from working with paper and pencil. Every time you use a tool Paint stores should stop the previous state of the graphic internally. If an operation by the user undone ("undo " ), the program discards the change and uses the backup in the memory. The backup took place before the launch of Windows Vista in the form of the entire image. This method differs from the modern methods, which only record changes and reset if necessary, and is very memory-intensive, so that a maximum of three consecutive undo steps were possible. In newer versions of the program, many are different versions available depending on the tool used.

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