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.

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.

In Windows 10 Creators Update builds 14971 and 14986, Paint was briefly removed from the base Windows install and replaced with the Paint 3D application, however, it was still possible to download the old Paint from the Store. After receiving complaints about the user interface and missing features, it has been decided to keep the old Paint in the base install.