Paint didn’t have the ability to crop to a selection until the Windows 7 redesign of the app with its ribbon UI (not sure about the Vista version of Paint, which is halfway between the XP and the 7 versions); JS Paint has copied the XP and earlier design, not the newer. You can still crop, but only from the bottom or right, because you’re using the canvas resize handles instead.

Concerning your specific task: I’d say the Snipping Tool (built-in from at least Windows 7 onwards) is generally superior for that sort of thing anyway. Its biggest problem is slow start-up.

You could do cropping in Paint since at least the Win95 version. The method was the same I use with Paint to this very day: a combination of canvas resize handles and moving the image contents. Basically, after pasting the picture, I would use the selection that is automatically activated (if you lose it, CTRL+A to select all) to crop out top and left parts of the image, by positioning the top-left corner of what I care about at the top-left corner of the canvas. I would then use the bottom-right "resize canvas" handle to crop out the rest.

"That's how Dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far."

I'd select the section I'd want to crop, copy it, create a new image, resize it to 1x1 or something else small, then paste. The canvas would automatically resize to fit the pasted selection. It sounds a bit more involved than your version, but for me it worked.

Yeah, I noticed this mechanism (probably even used it a few times), but I eventually gravitated towards something with less clicking.

I do that in Paint.NET a lot, though. I select the part of the image I'm interested in, and then in two keyboard presses (CTRL+C, ALT+CTRL+V, AFAIR) I copy it and "paste into new image".

Agreed on Snipping Tool - win + shift + s is a daily driver for me. I really want to find the person who made it a shortcut and thank them.

For what it's worth, Irfanview's generally a better solution for quick cropping:

http://www.irfanview.com

It's where it has always been - use the resize handlers at the edges of the canvas.

This does a lot: https://getsharex.com/ The workflow is based around print screen, crop, and then add any optional processing you want.

I made it crop the image if you make a selection while holding Ctrl. It's not how it's done in any version of mspaint, but I considered it useful enough.

Try monosnap: http://monosnap.com

Something like lightscreen or snipping tool might be what you’re looking for.