I remember that when Paint started being funky I found a Windows XP exe and used that. I want Paint to be the graphical equivalent of hexedit.

Now that I'm on Linux, I use jspaint.app.

Windows 11 26H2 w/ MSPaint is 10.26100.1. It's just right.

I still use the Paint from Windows XP, running in Wine.

I would use kolourpaint but for whatever reason overlaid GUI elements like the selection box and brush cursors leave trails on the canvas.

Fun anecdote, paint.exe crashed the other day just as I was finishing up my drawing of the tower of Babel.

Just like any text editor is doomed to become either Emacs or Word, so any image editor is doomed to become Photoshop.

Too true. I gave up trying to fight it years ago and now write all my documents in Emacs and edit my code with Microsoft Word.

Did you miss the chance to edit your code with MS Paint as your IDE?

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=mspaint+ide

Reminds me of Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment[^1,2]: "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."

[^1]: https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/zawinskis-law/

[^2]: https://www.jwz.org/hacks/

Except Vim of course.

Well, there's vile for you.

Honestly I like layers in Paint. Even pixel art programs have layers.

I remember when I was doing pixel art, there were some purists that insisted that using layers and transparency/opacity to create windows for your buildings is more or less cheating. According to them, one should manually figure out what the color palette should be for things seen through a window.

Anyway, I continued using layers and transparency/opacity. Pixel art was hard enough already for me, so I didn’t feel that it made sense to artificially make it even more difficult for myself at the time. I had enough other aspects of pixel art to work out already in order to try to get better at it.

But is Windows 11 paint capable of pixel art? I'm reading that it antialiases everything.

You can draw single pixels. I'm not sure where whoever told you that got it from.

But can you resize without antialiasing, and does pasting trigger antialiasing?

There's this https://www.windowsphoneinfo.com/threads/why-does-resizing-m... (made confusing by the next person talking about Paint 3D, a different application) and this https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/3991946/... (made confusing by the person being an artist and talking in peanut butter metaphors).

I can't reproduce any of those issues. When drawing the indicator snaps to a pixel, so it's perfectly clear where it's going. When I draw a line, it's pixel-perfect when moving the control points, likewise after it finalises. And when I copy a section of the image and paste it back in, it's pixel-perfect as I move and when I finalise. There doesn't seem to be a true resize; all I seem to be able to do is change the size of the canvas, which doesn't add any kind of aliasing.

But I've only used the program for less than 5 minutes, so maybe it's configured differently?

Yes, resizing within Paint preserves pixel-level color. I just resized a single pixel dot to about 14x25 without aliasing.

I don't know why you are so concerned, but it's incredibly easy to test these questions if you really want to know.

And create single-pixel images. My most used application of Paint by far is creating single-pixel PNG files to work around the fact that "solid color" is not an option for lock/login screen backgrounds.

XP era mspaint with layers is really all I want. Rudimentary image editing and drawing but with layers.

Add threshold select (magic wand), and I'll agree 100%.

They should have just hired the paint.net guy and rolled it in.

The point of paint is a tiny pixel editor. If you want layers there are better programs.

I hope MS is not getting exclusive right for manufacturing spoons because I want mine to scoop up stuff like soup or ice-cream without smart features activated by elegant touch UI on the handle like cutting down trees being in the way to the grocery store to 'elevate user experience', or others. This stuffing more and more into everything and anything for the sake of shock and awe is a stupid (and dangerous) thing.