The long enamored digital canvas once used to scribble down your ideas, the virtual platform to draw your train of imagination is nearing its end as Microsoft Paint is being banished to the history books.
Tech giant Microsoft recently announced that the popular graphic program will be discontinued with the release of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, triggering a cathartic reaction from all of its users (past and current).
Started as a rudimental program with Windows 1.0 in November 1985, MS Paint rose to prominence by the drop of a hat. The younger users back then were equipped with a tool which gave them a medium to sketch all their ideas and fantasies down on a virtual canvas, a technology that caught everyone’s imagination.
With the advancements that happened in the coming years, Paint’s popularity and use, plunged progressively as newer tools and softwares with more attractive features made way.
Yet, the news of MS Paint getting obsolete is met with some degree of sorrow. We spoke to some of the comic founders from Indian comic industry who poured their heart out about their nostalgia and love for MS Paint.
Chariot Comics Founder Aniruddho Chakraborty shares some of his nostalgia of Paint. He says,”MS Paint used to be a part of our computer classes. How we tried to be a Picasso within that little environment! Also more than anything else, it just taught you all the basics. For me even much later on, I preferred MS Paint for smaller editing or cropping over Photoshop. So I think it was a very handy tool and it still is.”
“I don’t know why they are getting rid of it. It won’t make much difference in terms of space or memory. But I do hope they replace with something better” he adds.
Shutting it down completely wouldn’t bring about any substantial change as Aniruddho further states, “They can always advance it as the modern version of paint is very different from what we use. So they could keep it advancing unless they have something completely new to introduce.”
Fenil Sherdiwala of Fenil Comics too, had his say. He states, ”Microsoft may bring in a new, more advanced technology by discarding MS Paint. Just as we witnessed the change in trends with mobile phones, Microsoft may too be planning to come up with something new. Software like Flash is now equipped with new tools which helps people finish their work within a deadline. That’s something not available in Paint.”
Certain section of the user base though, remains unperturbed with the news. MS Paint didn’t offer anything innovative despite the newer technologies and so discontinuing it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Or so they say, like Fanboy Comics creator Abhijeet Kini here. He says,”I am not overtly sad about it as we now have things which gone beyond MS Paint. Today we draw illustrations digitally on tablets, but it does hold a special place in our career as artists. I even remember I had drawn a tree for the first time that I used MS Paint! So the thrill we got about digital drawing for the very first time is memorable and will be missed.”
“However, not to the extent that people will be sad about it. They will move on within two days. In today’s date with so much technology and gadgetry, something as simple as MS Paint is already outdated. And now that it’s use has severely dropped, it’s an out of sight out of mind thing.”
Out of mind it may be, but those old, treasured memories of the fun and frolic we experienced in colouring the white on-screen canvas with a miniature paintbrush, or those aimless pencil scribbling, all of this through just a click of a mouse button, will remain etched until the cows come home.