Lazarus

Programming => Graphics and Multimedia => Graphics => Topic started by: User137 on July 25, 2017, 08:50:42 am

Title: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: User137 on July 25, 2017, 08:50:42 am
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/24/microsoft-paint-kill-off-after-32-years-graphics-editing-program?CMP=twt_gu

Looks like we're going to need a replacement software for simple cropping, pixel perfect editing and format changing, because Microsoft doesn't seem to have a clue on what users want. I know for a fact Gimp is not suitable for those simple tasks (i mean it can but not as simply as with Paint), it however has other features that make it irreplaceable. I haven't tried things like Paint.net or stuff i've heard before, are they up to the task? Quick and efficient?
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 25, 2017, 09:05:55 am
how about http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint? (http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint?)
I think it can be converted to portable easily.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: User137 on July 25, 2017, 09:28:54 am
Seems like they changed their mind https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay/#yb1guwQUEu3iKIl3.97

Anyway, i think something like alpha-channel support for PNG's would be welcome addition. Also the latest changes in Paint for Win7 and 10 went backwards, that the mouse sticks to line drawing... and in general the mouse isn't always accurately aligned with pixels  ::)

LazPaint seems like aiming to compete with Gimp, instead of being a simple editor.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 25, 2017, 09:53:42 am
Seems like they changed their mind https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay/#yb1guwQUEu3iKIl3.97 (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay/#yb1guwQUEu3iKIl3.97)
as good as dead. I do not do stores personally, if something requires me to create an account give out an email address etc I just drop it right there I'm not interesting in tracking any more accounts I have approximately 350 active accounts on around 25 different spam email accounts, that is more than enough for me.
Anyway, i think something like alpha-channel support for PNG's would be welcome addition. Also the latest changes in Paint for Win7 and 10 went backwards, that the mouse sticks to line drawing... and in general the mouse isn't always accurately aligned with pixels  ::)

LazPaint seems like aiming to compete with Gimp, instead of being a simple editor.
I do not know what lazpaint aims for, it sure is not gimp though.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: circular on July 25, 2017, 11:37:16 am
Indeed LazPaint is far from Gimp. Competing with Gimp has not been the aim as it was a more modest development. However I do not know the future, it depends if we can get together to improve it. Also people do not always have much spare time.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Thaddy on July 25, 2017, 11:49:30 am
Indeed LazPaint is far from Gimp. Competing with Gimp has not been the aim as it was a more modest development. However I do not know the future, it depends if we can get together to improve it. Also people do not always have much spare time.

But lazpaint is still superior to paint! It just need a proper plugin interface, which paint didn't have anyway.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Leledumbo on July 25, 2017, 11:51:44 am
LazPaint is as simple as MS Paint, just more advanced. It's like in between MS Paint and GIMP. I actually endup using KolourPaint more often :-[ (sorry circular) but I keep my LazPaint up to date and check its updates from time to time.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Thaddy on July 25, 2017, 12:00:18 pm
LazPaint is as simple as MS Paint, just more advanced. It's like in between MS Paint and GIMP. I actually endup using KolourPaint more often :-[ (sorry circular) but I keep my LazPaint up to date and check its updates from time to time.
Yup. That's what I said. But it can easily be expanded to paint.net or something... We can do that.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: circular on July 26, 2017, 09:58:26 pm
A plugin system indeed could help.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 26, 2017, 09:59:54 pm
A plugin system indeed could help.
and a pair of scrollbars couldn't hurt either :P
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: lainz on July 29, 2017, 08:29:35 pm
Take a screenshot and crop it with paint, is faster than any other software.

And I read that they will put it in the Store, so it will be another outdated download.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 30, 2017, 01:08:30 am
Take a screenshot and crop it with paint, is faster than any other software.
Actually this can be even faster with lazpaint screengrab open lazpaint press ctrl+alt+v, select the region to crop (select\select rectangle) and press image\crop to selection. Its even faster because the selection has a life as an object on the image it does not resize the selection after you release the mouse.
And I read that they will put it in the Store, so it will be another outdated download.
Yeah not going to bother creating an account let alone download it.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: lainz on July 30, 2017, 02:28:37 am
Of course. It's a matter of habit. I'm used to search for paint first than opening real graphic design tools. Like notepad++ to open quickly any text file, even if I can not do too much with it.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 30, 2017, 02:36:08 am
Of course. It's a matter of habit. I'm used to search for paint first than opening real graphic design tools. Like notepad++ to open quickly any text file, even if I can not do too much with it.
I'm using mspaint exclusively for fast little crops and resizes but only because its easier to start it up ee win+r mspaint and you are in. No need to look around for an icon to click or a mouse. I fully agree that habbit is the stronger reason of still using mspaint that and the fact that I dislike GTK+ application.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: RAW on July 30, 2017, 08:42:52 am
Do we really need MSPaint ???  :)
I found in approx. 5 minutes a lot of alternatives... sometimes it's hard to get the OS requirements though, don't know if this is all correct.

Unfortunately I cannot test these versions in 5 minutes...  :'(
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. SOME PHOTO EDITING FREEWARE:
  2.  
  3. GIMP                  [WIN, MAC, LINUX, BSD] PS-Filter: Possible
  4. REAL WORLD PAINT      [WIN] PS-Filter: Possible
  5. PAINT DOT NET         [WIN] +PlugIns
  6. PINTA                 [WIN, MAC, LINUX, BSD]
  7. LAZ PAINT             [WIN, LINUX]
  8. PHOTOSCAPE            [WIN, MAC]       
  9. SHEASHORE             [MAC]
  10. POS FREE PHOTO EDITOR [WIN]
  11. HORNIL STYLE PIX      [WIN]
  12. CINEPAINT             [WIN, MAC, LINUX, BSD]
  13. FOTOGRAFIX            [WIN]
  14. PAINTSTAR             [WIN]
  15. FOTOWALL              [WIN, MAC, LINUX]  
  16. IMAGE ANALYZER        [WIN] +PlugIns
  17. FOTOR                 [WIN]
  18. PIXLR (Desktop)       [WIN]
  19. PIXIA                 [WIN]
  20. XARA XTREME           [WIN, LINUX, BSD]
  21. CHOCO FLOP            [MAC]
  22. PHOTODEMON            [WIN, MAC]
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Handoko on July 30, 2017, 09:35:37 am
Usually people stick with a certain program not because the features it offers but because he/she already feel convenient with it. MsPaint simplicity make it very easy to use.

I personally always use GIMP for whatever graphics work from complex graphics editing to simple image resizing. I know using GIMP just for cropping or resizing is overkill, but it has "Save for Web", which is very useful to optimize image size especially when the image needed to publish to the web. I admit that the startup time of GIMP is not fast, it may take more than 1 minute on Windows. Luckily I am a Linux user, GIMP just needs seconds to load.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: RAW on July 30, 2017, 09:53:13 am
GIMP needs approx. 4 seconds if I use -D -S...

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. "C:\Program Files\GIMP 2.8\bin\gimp-2.8.exe" -d -s

Without this it's  §#*³%&^ grrrrrr.... or something like that...  :D
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: JD on July 30, 2017, 10:24:03 am
as good as dead. I do not do stores personally, if something requires me to create an account give out an email address etc I just drop it right there I'm not interesting in tracking any more accounts I have approximately 350 active accounts on around 25 different spam email accounts, that is more than enough for me.

My sentiments exactly.  ;D
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: jc99 on July 30, 2017, 03:27:00 pm
how about http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint? (http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint?)
I think it can be converted to portable easily.
Latest sources on sourceforge are 6.4.1 from 2016
I failed to compile them with trunk & 1.8rc3 are there some actual sources out there ?
(without those deprecated UTF8 - functions ?)
[edit]
github-trunk seems ok.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on July 30, 2017, 04:59:40 pm
how about http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint? (http://wiki.freepascal.org/LazPaint?)
I think it can be converted to portable easily.
Latest sources on sourceforge are 6.4.1 from 2016
I failed to compile them with trunk & 1.8rc3 are there some actual sources out there ?
(without those deprecated UTF8 - functions ?)
[edit]
github-trunk seems ok.
Seems like circular is moving everything to github. I don't blame him it is far easier to manage than sf.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Akira1364 on August 06, 2017, 02:57:10 am
Uh, this is non-news. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/07/24/ms-paint-stay)
It's going to be available in the Windows Store as a free download (presumably indefinitely). No need to look for a replacement...
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: Handoko on August 06, 2017, 04:29:54 am
GIMP needs approx. 4 seconds if I use -D -S...

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. "C:\Program Files\GIMP 2.8\bin\gimp-2.8.exe" -d -s

Without this it's  §#*³%&^ grrrrrr.... or something like that...  :D

I wonder why GIMP needs so long to start on Windows. On my Linux Core2 Quad CPU, it only takes 7-8 seconds. GIMP long startup time (1 - 3 minutes) really is a turn off for Windows users to use GIMP. How about Photoshop, people always compare GIMP with Photoshop. How long does it need to start? I haven't use Photoshop for a very long time.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: J-G on August 06, 2017, 01:25:09 pm
I wonder why GIMP needs so long to start on Windows. On my Linux Core2 Quad CPU, it only takes 7-8 seconds. GIMP long startup time (1 - 3 minutes) really is a turn off for Windows users to use GIMP. How about Photoshop, people always compare GIMP with Photoshop. How long does it need to start? I haven't use Photoshop for a very long time.
That depends  -  when was that not the case? !!  -  on occasion I fume at the 2+ minutes (or more) Photoshop takes to do it's initialization and housekeeping but I've just timed it re-starting after closing it down and it was less than 4 seconds. Presumably that was because it left certain parameters in memory on close down and found them 'OK' when restarting.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: RAW on August 06, 2017, 05:53:37 pm
On my system...

GIMP needs for the first start approx. 4 seconds and once started 3 - 4 seconds.
PHOTOSHOP 15.2.2.: first start: 5 - 6 seconds and once started 3 seconds.

LAZARUS not even 1 second...
DELPHI 7 a little bit more than LAZARUS...  :)

not that bad...
The problem with GIMP is from time to time takes it really long without (-D -S)...
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: lainz on October 11, 2017, 07:38:33 pm
Of course. It's a matter of habit. I'm used to search for paint first than opening real graphic design tools. Like notepad++ to open quickly any text file, even if I can not do too much with it.
I'm using mspaint exclusively for fast little crops and resizes but only because its easier to start it up ee win+r mspaint and you are in. No need to look around for an icon to click or a mouse. I fully agree that habbit is the stronger reason of still using mspaint that and the fact that I dislike GTK+ application.

Sorry that I post in this old thread. Just I remembered that's possible to add a shortcut like "win+r mspaint" to any software, and don't adding them to the PATH. Is just a registry entry:

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. ; App Paths (ShellExecuteEx)
  2. Root: HKLM; Subkey: "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\{#MyAppExeName}"; ValueType: String; ValueData: """{app}\{#MyAppExeName}"""; Flags: uninsdeletekey
  3. Root: HKLM; Subkey: "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\{#MyAppExeName}"; ValueType: String; ValueName: Path; ValueData: """{app}"""; Flags: uninsdeletekey

Is that easy with Inno Setup, so you can (for example) do "win+r lazpaint".
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: RAW on October 16, 2017, 10:16:55 pm
Thanks for sharing...  :)
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: soerensen3 on October 16, 2017, 11:52:53 pm
I'm really surprised Krita wasn't mentioned already. It's open source, cross platform and actively developed. It's interface is not as simple as Paint's interface but it's also very intuitive, I think. It is mainly used for sketching, drawing and painting and has a lot of natural brushes, but it can also do simple stuff like cropping or resizing.
If you start Krita cropping can be done by opening your file through dragging or through the dialog. Then you press C or click the crop tool in the toolbar and select the area. Then press enter or make a double click to confirm.

It has also support for transparency, layers, filters, a lot of file formats (including raw) and is a real alternative to photoshop (with maybe some of the newer features missing).
I don't know if I can convince a ms paint enthusiast with that but why bother about the support for paint anyway. Is it really updated that much. For all i know it's just an exe in the system folder which can be backed up to any location, even a usb, but I might be wrong about that.
Title: Re: MsPaint coming to end of the road
Post by: taazz on October 17, 2017, 02:14:33 am
I'm really surprised Krita wasn't mentioned already.
1). Thank you for that I did not know krita I'll have to evaluate it.
2). it is not about features, it is about speed and simplicity. for example mspaint is the perfect tool to drop a screenshot and add a couple of lines, arrows with some text for clarification. I wouldn't fire up photoshop, gimp, or any other heavy image processing application to do that, the time they take to load I will have finished in mspaint. Mspaint has a lot of shortcoming, a very limited colour palette for example, but it was perfect for some one just starting to explore the digital paint world to understand what a pixel is, what a colour is etc, and that is what is going to be missed.
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