So when I first made the switch from Windows to macOS a few years back, one of the gripes I had and can imagine many other people having too is the absence of a stand-alone basic graphics or painting utility application. While Apple kind of pioneered such apps on personal computers with their Macintoshes shipping with MacPaint, the scenario has been quite different since the last 3 decades with MacPaint seeing its last release in 1988. Today we take a look at 5 different paint app for mac; whether you are someone who has been missing MS Paint on Mac OS or just looking for a basic painting app, this list is for you.

• Microsoft Paintbrush For Mac
• Download Paintbrush For Windows 10

Jun 11, 2015 Fantastic Microsoft Paint for Mac OS. Formerly known as “Paintbrush for Windows”, Paint is a simple graphics painting program pre-installed on all versions of Microsoft Windows. This nifty tool from Windows gained much popularity due to its ease of usage and simple graphics editing tools.

Aug 30, 2019 Preview — the default Mac app for opening images, PDFs, and other files — comes with a few editing tools. You can draw in a similar fashion to Microsoft’s Paint, and you can add text boxes and shapes. Most people don’t know these features exist though, because they’re hidden behind a button they never think to click. Sep 15, 2019  Paintbrush is a simple paint program for OS X, reminiscent of Microsoft Paint and Apple's own now-defunct MacPaint. It provides users with a means to make simple images quickly, something which has been noticeably absent from the Mac for years. Dec 30, 2019 How to Get Microsoft Paint for Mac. Download and install Bluestacks from its official website ( www.bluestacks.com ). Open Bluestacks app and sign in with your Gmail username and password. Open Google Play Store app which is located on the home page of Bluestacks emulator. Search Microsoft Paint. Sep 15, 2019 Paintbrush is a simple paint program for OS X, reminiscent of Microsoft Paint and Apple's own now-defunct MacPaint. It provides users with a means to make simple images quickly, something which has been noticeably absent from the Mac for years.

Read: Top 5 Free Online Image Editor Like Photoshop

Microsoft Paint for Mac

1. Preview

Before even hopping on and suggesting a bunch of third-party apps, I wanted to shine some light on one of the most underused and under-rated native apps on Mac OS: Preview. While I was on the hunt for a paint app, Preview managed to seriously surprise me with its capabilities.

To get started, open Preview and open up the image you want to edit or simply open the image with Preview directly. Next show the Markup Toolbar by the clicking the icon shown below.

Read: Use Mac’s Preview App like a Pro with These Tips & Tricks

You can now find a whole host of editing options from simple sketching and drawing to insertion of various shapes and text and even adjusting image parameters like exposure, contrast, sharpness and a lot more. You also get the ability of adding a signature or signing your PDFs from Preview itself, image size formatting and text formatting options.

Although Preview has a lot to offer, it may not be the perfect replacement for some as it does not allow you to create new image files which is its biggest setback.

Quick Tip: Be sure to first make a copy of your image before editing with Preview, as it automatically saves all your changes and it could be really hard to revert back if you have already saved the image.

2. Paint Brush

Paint Brush for Mac OS is like the perfect replica of MS paint. The app is quite bare bones and extremely easy to use, offering just the basic functions of a paint application.

Unlike Preview, in this app you can create a new document and this is the first thing you are greeted with, on opening the application and you can state the size of your canvas. It offers all the basic functionalities just as MS paint like pencil, colour fill, shapes, text, magnification and also a colour picker tool which comes in very handy. It also supports most image formats including JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF and GIF.

Paint Brush is also very fast to open and get work done with and will be perfect for doing some small editing or painting stuff in a jiffy.

Price: Free

Link: Download Paintbrush from here

3. Seashore

Seashore is a free, open-source paint application for Mac OS built entirely in Cocoa. While the UI might seem a little dated, the app has a lot of tricks up its sleeves which makes it an upgrade to Preview or Paint Brush.
SeaShore introduces the concept of layers, just like you have in Photoshop. The layers work like sheets of acetate stacked upon each other and the transparent areas allow you to see through to the underbidding layers. This allows you to create different layers for different effects and adjusting the effects separately or deleting them separately, thus providing easy management.

Seashore has a nifty gradient tool where you can specify the direction and strength of the gradient. Some other features include alpha channel editing, texts with sub pixel rendering and textures.

Read: 10 Best Ways to Open and Edit PSD files without Photoshop

Quick Tip: Another free and open source alternative is Pinta, which is also cross platform and an exact clone of Paint.NET on Windows.

Price: Free

Link: Download Seashore from here

4. MS Paint using Wine or Play On Mac

If you didn’t know, Wine is an awesome and efficient way to run native Windows applications on your Mac and the best part about it is that unlike Bootcamp or VM installations, it does not require a windows license and does not add that overhead.

The setup process can be a little tedious, but it is definitely rewarding as you can run most of your Windows apps on your Mac. Play On Mac is a third party tool built on Wine, which we recommend for installing Windows applications on Mac OS. Just download Play On Mac and all the dependencies required for Wine and then you should be able to install any Windows app of your choice. To install Paint, go to Install Apps > Graphics > Paint and hit download. MS Paint should be installed on your computer and it works just as good on any Windows PC.

Quick Tip: Although Wine is much less intensive or involving than Bootcamp or a virtual machine running Windows, it still takes up a lot of space with its dependencies and adds overhead. So we recommend this method if you are someone who is planning on using more Windows apps on your Mac or just cannot do without MS Paint.

The first thing you should always do when uninstalling any app is to quit the program. Will restoing my mac get rid of microsoft office.

Price: Free

Link: Download Play On Mac from here

5. Pixelmator

While MS Paint is mostly about simplicity, it doesn’t hurt to include a feature packed app for all the power users out there. As I said, by no means should Pixelmator be considered a basic app as it is far from that, having a boatload of options, effects and features.

Pixelmator also offers layers with the option of layer styles presets where you can either use a predefined preset or save your own custom style preset. It also has retouching tools, colour correction tools and a real-time effects machine along with all the drawing and brushing tools. It even sports iCloud support and the ability to publish your pictures directly to social media.

What makes Pixelmator stand out from all the other professional graphic utility apps, is its flexibility; while it does have a lot of features, one can also just use the brush or pencil tools to doodle anything just as they would in any other paint app. The app is not at all overwhelming even for a beginner and strikes a perfect balance between simplicity and productivity. If you do not mind spending $30, Pixelmator is a keeper.

Price: $29.99

Link: Get Pixelmator on the App Store

Wrapping Up: Microsoft Paint for Mac

Mac OS doesn’t come with any paint app but that doesn’t mean that there is a dearth of paint apps on Mac and it is quite the opposite. But before downloading any third party app, we highly recommend checking out Preview and checking whether it fulfills all your needs or not. Paint Brush is an awesome simple and easy to use paint application while Seashore is slightly more complex with the addition of layers.

Pixelmator is one heck of an app with all its features, but it is very flexible and you can use it as an MS paint replacement to a cheaper Photoshop alternative. And last but not least, if you need to use a lot of Windows apps, Wine is your best bet to get MS paint running on your Mac. So this was our list of the Microsoft Paint for Mac. Which one do you use daily or did we miss yours? Let us know in the comments below.

Paintbrush is a raster image editor for Mac OS X. It aims to replace MacPaint, an image editor for the classic Mac OS last released in 1988. It also is an alternative to MS Paint. It has basic raster image editing capabilities and a simple interface designed for ease of use. It exports as PNG, JPG, BMP, GIF, and TIFF. The application also is often used for pixel art because of its grid option, and is not made for large scale images or GIMP or Photoshop-like editing on pictures or photographs.

Features and capabilities[edit]

It includes a simple brush-based freehand drawing tool, an eraser tool, a select tool, a freehand spray can tool which applies several pixels onto an area instead of just one, a fill tool, a 'bomb' tool that clears the page, a line tool, a curve tool, square, circle/oval, and rounded square tools, text tool, a color picker/eyedropper, and a zoom in/zoom out tool. Zooming in will go up to 1600%, while zooming out will only go up to 25%. There are adjustable stroke sizes which pertain to the brush, eraser, and spray can tools. Stroke size 1 has a width of 1 pixel, and stroke size 10 has a width of 19 pixels. The text tool allows users to select from their computer's font menu. Also, colors can be selected from a palette.

Paintbrush also includes a grid capability which shows each individual pixel on a grid. This option is particularly helpful to pixel artists.

The application includes an invert colors option, and a crop-selected-area function.

It can export all of the universal image formats such as PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, or TIFF (though like most applications, doesn't use application-specific formats like Photoshop's .psd or Paint Tool SAI).

Limitations[edit]

The application is purely a 2D bitmap editor, and as such has no vector capabilities. It is also not designed for photo manipulation, and therefore lacks advanced photo editing tools such as saturation, exposure, sharpness, or tint.

It also has a limitation in that the brush, spray can, and eraser will not draw any colors with opacity or transparency.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^'We're not dead yet! None Paintbrush'. Paintbrush.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2016-04-02.

External links[edit]

Microsoft Paintbrush For Mac

• Paintbrush (software) on SourceForge.net

Download Paintbrush For Windows 10