Microsoft is constantly adding new features and capabilities to Windows 11, whether that's through the operating system itself or through updates for the included apps. It's not always a guarantee that the new features are actually good, but there is one aspect where Microsoft has been hitting it out of the park during the Windows 11 generation: the Paint app.

You've probably been using paint all your life (I know I have), and it looked pretty much the same from the launch of Windows 7all through Windows 10's life. Microsoft even wanted to replace it with Paint 3D when Windows 10 launched, but that effort failed monumentally, so for Windows 11, the company came back and started making all these improvements to Paint, to the point where it's a totally different app now. What used to be an absolutely barebones app for super basic edits has become a proper image editing tool that lets you do a lot. If you haven't touched this app in a while, here's why you should give it a look again.

4 Dark mode

And a lot of UI improvements

One of the big things Microsoft announced for the Paint app on Windows 11 really early on was support for dark mode. It took many months to actually become available, but it did eventually release, and that alone is a big upgrade. When iot comes to editing images, it's good to be able to focus more on the image itself, so a dark UI is generally better (Photoshop and Lightroom also have a darker UI).

But even aside from dark mode, the entire UI of Paint has been improved massively on Windows 11. It's all been modernized to align with the design principles of Windows 11 (which Windows 8 or 10 never really got), but more importantly, it's easier and more natural to use now. By default, the canvas is now centered in the UI, rather than aligning to the top left corner. You also have full granular control over the zoom level, instead of jumping from 100% straight to 200% or 50%. Paint has even added an option to fit the available space, so you can automatically get the best view for any given image.

Similarly, brush sizes can also be adjusted granularly using the UI, and you can even preview them as you resize them, so you don't have to keep going for trial and error to get the right size. These little improvements make the app so much easier to use right off the bat.

3 Image Creator and Cocreator

Get some help making new images

I'm not typically much of a fan of AI, but for personal use, it can come in handy. One of the big new features in Paint on Windows 11 is called Image Creator, and what this does is use artificial intelligence to turn your words into a image, which can help you create the art you're looking for even if you don't have the technical ability to do it.

Sure, you have platforms like Stable Diffusion that can do image generation already, but the big selling point here is having it all integrated in a UI where you can also make your own edits, add other layers, and more. It's kind of like using generative fill in Photoshop to add a background to an image, and I can see it being very useful.

What's even cooler is that if you have a Copilot+ PC, there's a Cocreator feature, where you can convert something you've drawn into a version of that image with a different art style. For example, as you can see above, my crudely drawn house and trees can become beautiful pixel art I could never do by myself. AI is a big part of Paint in Windows 11 version 24H2, and it will be interesting to see what else it might be able to do.

2 Proper PNG support and background removal

How has it taken this long?

A huge problem with Paint before Windows 11 is that while the app could open PNGs, you couldn't really do anything with them without ruining them. Paint did not support transparency, meaning that if you opened a transparent image, you'd automatically add a blank background to it, which made it entirely pointless.

But with Windows 11, Microsoft has finally added proper transparency support to Paint. You can finally open transparent PNGs and edit them without having to worry about ruining them.

Heck, you can even remove the background of an image and export it with a transparent background. The background removal process could be better, since you don't have any control over it, but it's still great to have for quick and dirty edits.

1 Layers

You read that right

This one is actually a little mind-blowing and not something I ever expected to see in Paint, but indeed, Microsoft has gone ahead and even added layer support to Paint. While it's not visible right away, you can use the Layers button to see all the layers in your image, and from there, you can create additional layers to add more objects to.

Importantly, you can import additional files to open them in a different layer, and if you want to remove the background from an imported image, you can do that too, all without affecting other layers in the image. It's actually a fairly solid implementation.

It is missing some capabilities, like just being able to move a layer around in its entirety but thankfully, the selection tool will only select items in the layer you're interacting with, so you can kind of work around it. I also do wish that when you import something into the canvas, it goes into a new layer automatically, but right now, you have to create a new layer beforehand.

There's still work to do

Paint has become a totally different tool since Windows 11 came around, and it's truly great to see this classic tool evolve and take center stage after Microsoft almost tried to kill it off. It's not perfect, but hopefully Microsoft will keep investing in it.

One thing I'd like to see in the future is a way to easily crop the canvas of an image to a specific size. This is a tool I use a lot in Photoshop, and even free tools have it, so I don't think that's too outlandish to ask for. Plus, the improvements I mentioned to layers, and some additional control (and hopefully better edge detection) for background removal would definitely be welcome, too.

As much as Paint has improved, it won't replace Photoshop anytime soon, but if you're just making simple images at home, it's come a long way.