Microsoft Fresh Paint for Windows 8 is awesome – Really!

Yes, we can complain for hours about Windows 8, and we have our reasons. But today we found out about a little gem, which you will only be able to enjoy when you have a Windows 8 system. Microsoft Fresh Paint is a Metro application and it’s awesome. Unlike the Microsoft Paint you’ve become acquainted to through all previous Windows versions, this is application is very feature rich. When you fire up the application you will be presented by a canvas, which actually resembles the look of a canvas (think of the actual structure) but if you rather paint on a paper surface then you can select it too. Select a background color and you’re ready to go.

The software was originally created as a prototype for the Materials Lab at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the developers have taken a lot of effort in finding out how oil paint and water based paint behaves on a certain surface. Like actual paint you can mix it when it’s wet, and if you hate looking at paint dry, you can dry it with a fan. When you want to do the actual painting you can pick from numerous brushes, put them in a plate of water, use an eraser or a blender, increase and decrease brush size and much more.

The application can be downloaded (free) from the Windows 8 Application store. But, you will need Windows 8 installed. We’ve tried it using a Virtual Machine running Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and it worked fine. Unfortunately the VM doesn’t have a lot of memory and CPU power assigned and the application warned that it wouldn’t function properly, but we had no problems whatsoever. We’re looking forward to better art than what we were able to produce. A bit of an artist should be able to produce great pictures!