Longtime Windows users, especially those in the creative field, are well aware that Microsoft’s first-party image editing software Paint (or better known as MS Paint) has been on the receiving end of various jokes. For context, the 38-year-old app only offers bare basic drawing and editing tools – all of which are a far cry when compared to those offered by most free-to-use third party software that’s downloadable from the internet. But now, it looks like the company is going to change this once and for all through an upcoming update.
In a recent blog post, principal product manager for Windows Inbox apps Dave Grochocki has revealed that MS Paint has received two new features which are now available to Windows Insider testers in the Canary and Dev Channels (version 11.2308.18.0) for now. The first of which is the Photoshop-like Layers tool that lets you add multiple, well, layers on a canvas in order for you to add graphics or text over and/or under your artwork.
“You can now add, remove, and manage layers on the canvas to create richer and more complex digital art,” Grochocki wrote. “With layers, you can stack shapes, text, and other image elements on top of each other.”
The second addition is something that most users would agree is a long time coming for MS Paint, which is the ability to finally support image file formats with transparent elements such as PNGs and GIFs. Moreover, erasing content from an artwork will now leave that part of the canvas transparent, greatly complementing the newly introduced Layer feature as well as the upcoming Background Removal tool. For those who missed it, the latter was introduced to the app in the previous beta build, which lets users remove the background of any image automatically in a single click.
For Windows Insider testers, you can find the new Layers button in the MS Paint toolbar. Clicking it will open a panel on the side of the canvas where you can add new layers and rearrange them. Much like its counterpart in Photoshop, you can also choose to show, hide, duplicate and merge the added layers.
As mentioned earlier, the updated MS Paint app is only available in the beta build of Windows at this time. But as with most features that are introduced during testing, a public rollout is likely to happen in the coming weeks or months. With that, hopefully these new additions will finally make Microsoft’s first-party image editing software relevant, unlike its Wordpad app which is going to be permanently removed from future versions of Windows.
(Source: Microsoft [official blog])
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