One of the smaller pain points on the Mac is that there’s no built in paint tool. I want to use it just often enough that I miss it, but not enough that I want to learn what’s out there and/or pay money for a sophisticated tool.
I realize there’s some subjectivity to this, but I think a simple paint tool ought to be part of what’s comes included with every “normal” machine.
I’m using Acorn for MacOS, after seeing a recommendation or two. It’s light, fast and easy (for me) to understand. It was also cheap. I don’t do much - just cropping, copying, pasting, drawing an arrow, etc.
I also endorse Acorn, it’s a great tool. One under appreciated aspect of it- you can open an image, modify it, command + s and it saves it over the original file. No “export as” or “save for web” nonsense.
Looks great, but not free to use (15-day free trial is available though). Restricted version is available for free on Linux, but only snap (which I don’t want to use)
there’s definitely money in it! after trying a bunch of paint alternatives I settled on (not even joking ) renting a $5/mo Windows compute server from Azure for the sole purpose of using MS Paint…
If your goal is to draw over a screenshot or an existing picture, you can use Preview for this. It’s not exactly a “dumb” image editor like MS Paint but it has a couple of additional features like recognizing the shapes you draw by hand. It’s very convenient for annotating screenshots if you use “File > New from Clipboard”. Otherwise you can use Pages or Keynote as a vector graphics editor.
I’ve used Preview for existing screenshots, but I’d also like to be able to start from scratch and scribble.
I didn’t realize that Pages and Keynote were free until just now, but they’re not built-in, so they still fail one test. I’d also suggest that using a document editor to do scribbling/painting is a little surprising and not the thing that comes to mind so easily.
I’m with you on this. Both macOS and Linux need a good Paint clone. The other way I battled for hours with Inkscape to do a basic image manipulation with cutting and pasting, something that would take seconds on Paint. Not because Inkscape is a bad application, but rather because I haven’t learned it and don’t have the need to do it for my daily tasks.
I wouldn’t use inkscape, it’s more of a vector thing, I use GIMP for images. It doesn’t matter though because I think your point still stands, the learning curve is steep.
The closest I have come to something simpler out of the box is Krita.
Entertaining article, and whether the author intended it or not I definitely feel there is some truth to it! We can all use a “complexity check” every once in a while. A bit sad with the proliferation of paywalls on Medium, but what can you do :)
Yeah, it’s easy enough to get around; it’s more about what it represents. I’m curious to what degree the authors who post on Medium have a choice in the matter? If it’s entirely up to the article I’m perfectly fine with it, but I’ve been under the assumption that it’s Medium deciding and not the blog authors?
I think one of the 37signals books has some unironic reasons to use crude tools, and it’s about the perception of the cost and mutability of the mock-up. If you show someone something in pen & ink (or they watch you whiteboard it), you make the structure of the thing more obviously up for debate.
I used to do everything that way, until I got a thorough talking-to because the boss asked for wireframes (and got wireframes, complete with comic sans) but actually wanted “ready-to-develop full-quality designs”
lol, and I’m over here still using legal pads for everything I do. Ruled paper is really easy to wireframe on. If you need more than just straight lines across the page, you can tear a page out, turn it 90 degrees and stuff it behind the page your designing on and bam! perfect wireframing grid!
One of the smaller pain points on the Mac is that there’s no built in paint tool. I want to use it just often enough that I miss it, but not enough that I want to learn what’s out there and/or pay money for a sophisticated tool.
I realize there’s some subjectivity to this, but I think a simple paint tool ought to be part of what’s comes included with every “normal” machine.
I’m using Acorn for MacOS, after seeing a recommendation or two. It’s light, fast and easy (for me) to understand. It was also cheap. I don’t do much - just cropping, copying, pasting, drawing an arrow, etc.
I also endorse Acorn, it’s a great tool. One under appreciated aspect of it- you can open an image, modify it, command + s and it saves it over the original file. No “export as” or “save for web” nonsense.
Boxy SVG is really nice and free.
This one? https://boxy-svg.com/
Looks great, but not free to use (15-day free trial is available though). Restricted version is available for free on Linux, but only snap (which I don’t want to use)
That’s the one. I guess I’ve just been so used to using it that I completely forgot it wasn’t free.
I’m using the Mac version. I guess since I got it from the MAS and didn’t have to go through the license activation rigamarole, it was easy to forget.
Sorry about that.
sure no problem, the suggestion is still a good one :)
No worries. I’ll definitely be more careful about double checking things from a while back or qualifying them.
I second Acorn recommendation, although it’s not really a Paint clone. It’s more like a “subset of Photoshop that a Paint user would recognize”.
there’s definitely money in it! after trying a bunch of paint alternatives I settled on (not even joking ) renting a $5/mo Windows compute server from Azure for the sole purpose of using MS Paint…
You can run MS Paint using Wine. Super easy to install with WineBottler too.
If your goal is to draw over a screenshot or an existing picture, you can use Preview for this. It’s not exactly a “dumb” image editor like MS Paint but it has a couple of additional features like recognizing the shapes you draw by hand. It’s very convenient for annotating screenshots if you use “File > New from Clipboard”. Otherwise you can use Pages or Keynote as a vector graphics editor.
I’ve used Preview for existing screenshots, but I’d also like to be able to start from scratch and scribble.
I didn’t realize that Pages and Keynote were free until just now, but they’re not built-in, so they still fail one test. I’d also suggest that using a document editor to do scribbling/painting is a little surprising and not the thing that comes to mind so easily.
Mmm, I don’t think they have a mac flavor, but the best thing for screenshots is flameshot.
I’m with you on this. Both macOS and Linux need a good Paint clone. The other way I battled for hours with Inkscape to do a basic image manipulation with cutting and pasting, something that would take seconds on Paint. Not because Inkscape is a bad application, but rather because I haven’t learned it and don’t have the need to do it for my daily tasks.
Pinta? https://www.pinta-project.com/
kolourpaint.
I wouldn’t use inkscape, it’s more of a vector thing, I use GIMP for images. It doesn’t matter though because I think your point still stands, the learning curve is steep.
The closest I have come to something simpler out of the box is Krita.
I had the same complaint, and apparently I installed this: https://paintbrush.sourceforge.io/. Although I can’t remember when I last used it.
Entertaining article, and whether the author intended it or not I definitely feel there is some truth to it! We can all use a “complexity check” every once in a while. A bit sad with the proliferation of paywalls on Medium, but what can you do :)
ignore their cookies :)
Yeah, it’s easy enough to get around; it’s more about what it represents. I’m curious to what degree the authors who post on Medium have a choice in the matter? If it’s entirely up to the article I’m perfectly fine with it, but I’ve been under the assumption that it’s Medium deciding and not the blog authors?
The author can decline the paywall, but then medium won’t make it findable except by direct link.
Ctrl-shift-n ftw
I think one of the 37signals books has some unironic reasons to use crude tools, and it’s about the perception of the cost and mutability of the mock-up. If you show someone something in pen & ink (or they watch you whiteboard it), you make the structure of the thing more obviously up for debate.
I used to do everything that way, until I got a thorough talking-to because the boss asked for wireframes (and got wireframes, complete with comic sans) but actually wanted “ready-to-develop full-quality designs”
Ironically considering my usual views, Paint and Notepad are my two favourite pieces if software because of the simplicity they bring.
I don’t do a lot of design, but I used to use Paint for everything. The only catch was the lack of transparency.
lol, and I’m over here still using legal pads for everything I do. Ruled paper is really easy to wireframe on. If you need more than just straight lines across the page, you can tear a page out, turn it 90 degrees and stuff it behind the page your designing on and bam! perfect wireframing grid!