Paint

Paint (or Paintbrush in Windows 3.x and Windows NT 3.x) is a simple bitmap graphics editor included with Microsoft Windows.

History
Paint was introduced in Windows 1.0 Alpha Release as. At the time, it only supported monochrome graphics in a custom MSP format. In Windows 2.x, the MSP format was changed. While the new version of Paint supported both formats, images in the new format had to be converted to the old one using the new  conversion tool if they were to be used in Windows 1.0 applications.

For Windows 3.0, Microsoft decided to license Z-Soft's PC Paintbrush product, which supported true color graphics as opposed to the existing Paint tool, as a base for its Paintbrush. This version introduced support for the BMP format. With the release of Windows NT 3.1, Paintbrush was also ported to Win32.

In Windows 95, Paintbrush received a redesign and was renamed to Paint. This version was also included with Windows NT 4.0.

In Windows XP, images in BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and PNG formats were supported. The Windows XP version of Paint also uses GDI+.

In Windows Vista build 5337, Paint was slightly overhauled, with new icons and new standard colors.

In Windows 7, Paint got a major overhaul. A new Ribbon user interface was introduced and a few realistic brushes were also added. It also supports viewing transparent PNG and ICO files but not saving them.

Deprecation
Microsoft has vowed to remove Paint from Windows on several ocassions. In Windows 10 Creators Update build 14971, Paint was hidden in the base Windows install in order to try to encourage users to use the new Paint 3D application. Paint shortcuts were removed from the Start Menu, and logic to bootstrap the new app based on a registry value was added to. The classic Paint was still usable by downloading it from the Store, or by using  with certain workarounds.

This change was soon reverted in build 14997, however, a year later, starting with Windows 10 April 2018 Update build 17063, a Product Alert button was added to Paint, which displayed a message about the application being soon replaced by Paint 3D and informed users that it would still be available from the Store. The button and message box were present for two feature updates until getting removed in Windows 10 May 2019 Update build 18334, with Microsoft confirming that Paint would be included with Windows 10 "for now".