Computer

Microsoft wanted to kill it, but Paint just got two big news

painting It is the typical example of a program of a lifetime. This drawing software came to the operating system with the release of Windows 1.0, more than 37 years ago, and has been installed by default on it ever since. After Microsoft considered eliminating it in 2017, and seeing the affection that the community has for this program, it not only pardoned it, but also began to give this drawing software a complete facelift. And, today, we continue to see the evolution of this program.

Surely we all know Paint, Microsoft’s freehand drawing program with which, if we have been using Windows for years, we have spent more than a few hours with it. It is not editing software, nor design, nor photographic retouching. It’s also not an artistic drawing program like Krita can be, and it lacks basic functions such as the use of layers. But it is a program that has the affection of many users. And, for this reason, Microsoft is improving it little by little.

painting
painting

Microsoft turned Paint into a universal application (UWP) that we can download from the Microsoft Store with the launch of Windows 11. And, in addition, little by little it has been improving its drawing program, including interesting functions and features so that this program can continue to live. on all computers.

new features

In this way, Microsoft has just released a new Insider version (in the Canary and Dev channels) of Windows 11, which comes with a large number of changes and improvements to the operating system. And, among all these changes, we find several improvements in this drawing program.

The first of these is that, finally, Paint has a dark mode. Microsoft’s drawing program now adjusts its color palette automatically based on system colors depending on whether we use a light or dark mode. But it also offers us the possibility of changing the theme by hand to adjust it to our tastes.

Paint Windows 11 - Dark Mode

But this is not the only novelty that we can find in the new Paint. And it is that Microsoft has begun to implement a new zoom system that will allow us to enlarge the size of the image much more precisely. We can find the classic slider to give it more or less zoom, or introduce the value we want by hand, with several intermediate points. And also a button that will allow us adjust the size of the canvas to the size of the window of the program.

New Zoom levels in Paint

Finally, Microsoft has also updated the image properties dialogs to better match the look and feel of Windows 11 and work with the major accessibility wizards. And the keyboard shortcuts have also been improved to offer better accessibility to the program.

When is the new Paint coming?

At the moment, Microsoft only allows users signed up to its Insider program to try these new features. Specifically, those who are within the Dev and Canary branches of the same, that is, the most unstable. For now we do not know when all these news will reach ordinary users, although everything indicates that it will be for the 23H2 update of the operating system, which should reach all users after the summer.

For the moment, we can only wait, and repeat: «We Still ♥ MS Paint«.

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