History of Microsoft Paint 1985-2017: An LGR Retrospective 

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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!

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

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 RU-vid 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. :)

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

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.

most people would be shocked at how powerful mspaint actually is. it can do alot.

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

FUCK this is my primary graphic design tool.

Was not aware of paint 3D until you showed it. Gonna download it asap. Thanks. Also dat woodgrain model. Never change

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.

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.

When I was six or seven, I would take the largest square brush on Windows 95 and spend hours making a checkerboard pattern across the whole page. In hindsight, it was pretty obvious I had autism :P

Using 3.1's Paintbrush as a kid made me suddenly realize that computers could do anything.

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

The great thing about Paint is its simplicity. I used to doodle a lot with it back when I was a kid. Eventually I found out just how useful it is to count pixels and transport Paint's creations in a preciese manner to the phisical world and even now when I need grilled papper to make a graphic by hand and still use it for that. Simpler things share a link with our own limitations so they are rarely not useful in MULTIPLE ways and Ms. Paint was a prime example of it.

I use Paint *constantly* . It is my go-to program to crop and annotate screenshots in Windows. Thank you for clarifying its status. And the MacPaint program that it was based on was dumped by Apple *years* ago. Which is ridiculous!! You have to go to a 3rd party on a damn Macintosh to get the program that it was *known for* back in the ‘80s! Ridiculous!!

I used to draw stuff in Paint on my mums old Windows 95 laptop and then print it with a Laserjet 4p. Later on I had a Windows Vista (great OS xD) laptop and my grandpa bought me a Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet (one of the older generations, was a really cheap deal at Hofer (Aldi)) and then I drew stuff for greeting cards, also in Paint. I'll miss MS Paint :/

Oh my god that shot near the end, that Windows logo. I've spent countless hours changing it, dicking around, adding colours. This was the cherry on the delicious nostalgia-filled cake that is this video. Superb stuff Clint.

This was really well done and remarkably accurate. Wow!

I'm going to miss mspaint Back in around 4th grade I drew a fan art if this game. The game was one out of about 1000 in a collection, like one of those 1000 in 1 apps. The game was the chicken crossing the road. I remember being very proud of it, I sorta "mastered" ms paint back in that time, I was very "good at using the mouse" But recently ive drawn on a samsung tablet and I lost all of my "skills" that I had in 4th grade. Damn, so many drawings I had made! I wish I could see them again but the computer has been dead for over 4 years. Literally, and I can't remember my password for that old account so that "art" is forever lost...

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="45">0:45</a> "I still find myself going back to paint" This just proves Photoshop is overcomplicated.

Clint, Great video (as always) :D

I love Paint! If it wasn't for it, I'd never use PrintScr... ;O)

I hope Paint 3D will allow you to actually make 3D models instead of just import them. Otherwise I'll just stick to Blender and old versions of Paint.

Big dongs in the sky..

Great video as always, love your work....thanks

Thank you LGR for all the quality content. Every day I check to see if you have uploaded anything and I look forward to all of your next videos. Keep doing the great work and I hope you reach 1 million subscribers in the future. You where the one who got me into vintage computing. I also want to start a collection of classic computers, any suggestions on where to start and how to acquire such hardware? (Keep doing restoration videos, I like those)

This video is just an excuse for you to record yourself piss-farting about in Paint. Kudos. :D

Fascinating, thank you!

I Honestly love your Videos ❤️. Seriously, I love the retro style and your jokes dude!!

My first memory of Paint was in Middle School and our computer lab went from the Apple 2GS to Dells with windows 3.1 (I think). That's where I discovered that you could open more than one window at a time of the same program. So I kept clicking the paint icon and after about 15 paint windows, the PC locked up!

Windows wasn't Mac inspired, it was Xerox inspired. And unlike Apple, they had actually paid their licensing fee to Xerox and didn't end up getting sued like Apple did. Microsoft only got sued by Apple because Jobs was literally insane, and Apple lost the case anyway.

It was gone, now it's back. MISTERY!

Great video, I love how your videos are always consistent with quality :) Man, I'm really going to miss Paint.

What a great video - thank you for your time and history of Paint - my avatar has been created in Paint. Cheers buddy!

Not used MS Paint since I installed Paint.Net ages ago - a superior and free paint package with way more functionality, including layers.

Is it bad I naturallly hissed at paint 3D?

MS Paint was the first artistic software tool I ever used. I created characters with bios, comics, and so, so much more. It fueled my love of digital art. It was the perfect outlet for my creativity as a young artist. But more importantly, it taught me the basic software vocabulary and artistic tools, i.e. brushes, paint buckets, etc, I would use in my future artistic pursuits. Almost two decades later, I use Photoshop, have been paid for my art, and know enough about how to use my artistic software to channel my ideas into something viable and create work I'm really proud of. My art has to be one of the most important pieces of who I am, and being able to learn how to improve such an important piece of myself started with this very basic yet very fun little program. Thanks, Paint. I'll never forget you or those bitmap images I still have saved to a floppy. :) And thank YOU, Clint, for putting this great vid together. It's fascinating to see where this old friend came from and where it might be headed.

Wonderfully concise retrospective on MS Paint! Thank you for the great video :)

Paint will never die admit it.

To be fair to Microsoft. There is also a lot of good freeware out there that does a good job.

Thanks for this video, it was enlightening and likable!

This is why LGR's videos are so awesome. I love hearing the history and backstory of stuff that I used as a kid on my first computer. I was introduced to "Paint" with the one bundled with Windows 95. Drew a lot of road maps with it.

I used to play on paint as a kid but I remembered just utterly hating it. I believe because it WAS too simple. I always hated things that were simple. Hell I can't even draw a stick figure, not because I can't draw no far from it. I just end up adding way to many details to it afterwards. When I had gotten my drawing tablet I tried using paint because at the time I still thought that Paint was the only art program in the entire world (I was a very sheltered kid XD) but man was it impossible to use the two together. I am very happy to have found Media bang. But that doesn't mean I don't catch my mom making incredible things on paint every now and then.

It's only being deprecated, no need to worry. The Win32 API still has API calls that were deprecated 20 years ago, so I wouldn't worry about it completely disappearing or no longer working. Even if Microsoft do remove it, it's likely the Windows 10 executable will continue working well into the future. Windows backwards compatibility is generally amazing. Windows 95 apps still run fine on Windows 10, and even some Windows 3.1 apps still run fine on Windows 10 if you have a 32-bit version of Windows (16-bit apps only run on 16- and 32-bit Windows, not 64-bit).

Great stuff Clint. I'd be really interested to see your take on the history of Photoshop and how it's changed over the years. Thanks again

Love videos like this, super fun to watch

Paint... I spent my 9, 10, and the rest of my school years on paint.

Well, 4 years later and Windows 11 has ended up having both versions.

this was really interesting, thanks for making this! (:

really enjoyed this video! I spent my childhood drawing landscapes on paint and didn't know it had such a background! the new paint looks awesome in its own right too, though

Let's hope they don't come with a 3D Minesweeper next.

Man, back in the day I used a not-Microsoft paint program that had some preloaded pictures, like a birthday card, a parrot, other stuff. I tried my best to make something look as good as those did, but of course since I was a kid, no luck. I wish I could remember what that program was now.

This was a trip to memory lane! I started with Win 3.1 though but this mede me feel so nostalgic! Thanks Clint!

Good stuff man, good stuff.

Who wants a video dedicated to the rainbow brush? 🌈

I wonder what was changed from the original video

Loved this video. I remember messing around with paint back in kindergarten and being super excited about it

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="270">4:30</a> was my fave to use when i was little

Strange to think there was a time where Microsoft Paint was going to be killed off.

Microsoft just needs to remake Paint. Simply modernize the UI. Keep tools, features, tricks; keep everything and keep everything where it is. But just make it look modern by remaking it in the new Neon design language

Paint was the first art software I ever used. Thank you for sharing this video.

thank's for this great video :)

I'm not sure what the point of Paint 3D is. The average user doesn't know the first thing about 3D.

I still use MS paint from Win XP lol, was easy to use so I downloaded it

Seeing that Windows 95 Paint is such a blast from the past. I'm a freelance pixel artist nowadays but I first got started mushing Pokemon icons together on that very program. It had some nifty little tricks hidden in it, too - like using the eraser and second color to replace pixels of one hue with another - which made it really cool when you spoke with another young pixelartist and were able to share knowledge and tricks, either inherent to Paint itself or ways to get around its limitations. Sort of like a secret society. I'm also glad to know Paint lives on even if I've been using Graphicsgale for years now.

Loved this. Thank you

This aged like milk lol

why the fuck are people so upset over this? its fucking Paint. how much more could they update it? it has always been the same basically.

Impressive how quickly you did this :D.

This brought back so many memories

The Mona Lisa was re made on paint! (also mario paint used to remake memorable songs)... ahh those times when the mouse wouldnt work and it meant its time to clean the crud off the rolls and ball XD

Google paint is what i used to teach myself Arabic salami malayhim

Love the doodles. Makes me wonder what the LGR videos would be like if you could doodle on them as well!

Good Video son! May the force be with ya!

*FARTS*

XP was best paint

I have had and will always have a soft spot for MS Paint since I first used it back in the day. I've seen people do some pretty impressive stuff using MS Paint. Sure, its not as complex or advanced as something like Adobe Photoshop, but for a software that's bundled with a Microsoft operating system, its pretty darn good. I even use it at the office here and there. Its not as complex or advanced like other software as I've already mentioned. However, its proven to be a nifty and effective software that people will fondly remember years down the road. Your videos are so well done and professional. Thanks again!

Love your videos

It's 2019 and paint is still on Windows 10 😂

LGR I love you fuck the haters

I can remember well, the first PC art program I used to use in school during the 80's was called "paint spa", it was bundled on RM Nimbus PC's before 1990; it used ega and was capable of not only painting and filling single colours but it also had a preset number of textures you could use such as bricks (made with red and yellow pixels), it was an awesome program for the time, doing more than even paintbrush did with windows.

Fascinating. :) Paint is the one programme I used a PC for when I was a kid. It's nice to know it's not really going away. :P

And then you have Paint 3d, which is the worst shit I've ever seen. I can't even copy-paste

I don't like how something allways needs to be 'improved'.

I still use Paint for any screenshots that I take. It opens so quick, and saves in the quality that I like, so it's perfect! I will never stop using it.

Good info!

I still remember using something like paint sometime around 1989-90 at this guy's house. He looked exacly like an 80s computer programmer, and I didnt realize I was helping playtest his homebrew programs. That would actually be by far the most advanced computer I would use for the next 6 years, school just had Apple IIs. I also remember discovering that ms paint could open corrupt image files! super useful when my crummy computer kept crashing during saving in another image program

As an artist I've used many free and paid art programs but I still come back to mspaint every so often, it's simplicity is it's charm for me. And the nostalgia of drawing collaborative pieces with my dad on windows 98 is strong!

paint gives me so much nostalgia. Loved the grey look and cute pen.

So many great memories growing up in the library room after being bored with Word and Math Rescue; I would throw on paint to just spray on millions of stars imagining each pixel was it's own star, swirling the different colour temperatures together in an ever growing array of endlessness.

Glad this is back up. Hopefully it stays this time, but at least I got to finish it! =3