Microsoft Paint — a formative creative outlet for those who grew up without access to acrylics and brushes — is soon to be erased.
In the next Windows 10 update, Paint will shuffle onto Microsoft’s deprecated features list — departing like other former favourites such as Solitaire and Minesweeper.
As the company continues to develop its new operating system, Windows 10, and streamline the applications and programs within it, it is only natural for the older lines of code to be pruned from the herd.
There will remain a computer graphics program on Windows 10, of course — the new generation Paint3, which is, without question, a far more fulfilling image-editing app.
But many will mourn the loss of Paint because of its simplicity, rather than despite it, and soon, Paint’s low-resolution. JPEG images will truly become artefacts of the digital past.
For those who didn’t have access to acrylics and brushes growing up, who never cut apart potatoes as children to make stamps, Microsoft Paint was a formative creative outlet.
The oeuvre of MS Painters is a recognisable artistic moment.
Beautiful tapestries of crudely deployed fills, awkward shape placement and a violent clash of colours will be seen by electronic archaeologists as the definitive features of the early digital age.
