Last month’s Tech Moment highlighted technology that is quite new, but this month’s Moment is jumping way back in time to focus on a tool that is free and has been with us for a LONG time – 1985, to be exact, which is ancient in the tech world.
Wikipedia provides an excellent description of Paint’s history:
What does Microsoft Paint do?
- Crops photos and screenshots
- Allows quick edits to images
- Includes rulers and grid lines for editing
- Provides tools to create images
- Saves in multiple formats
It’s simple enough for everyone to use, but users must have Windows 11 to download the free app from the Microsoft Store.
This is a fun tool that can be used to add some color to family stories. Kids can even use it to depict their favorite events in their own family history.
Microsoft Paint is a tool I see being used more by the younger members of a family, although adults could use it in the same way – creating images that will engage the youngest generation to help them develop an interest in the stories of their ancestors.
I love Paint and have been using it for years. I mostly use it to add citations to images or convert TIFFs to JPGs when wanting to add an image to my blog. I have been slowly converting my TIFF files of plain documents collected at FamilySearch to JPGs because I don’t need such high-resolution census and deed records images. Paint is a quick way to do that.
I too love Paint, both in Win10 (home computer) and Win11 (work computer)…the latter has some added functions, which are very welcome given MS tried to get rid of it all together a few years ago!