The program opens, modifies and saves image files in Windows bitmap (BMP), JPEG, GIF, PNG, and single-page TIFF formats.

For its simplicity and wide availability, it rapidly became one of the most used Windows applications, introducing many to painting on a computer for the first time.

[2] Paint was initially programmed, licensed and adapted from PC Paintbrush made by ZSoft, by Dan McCabe at Microsoft for Windows 1.0, released in late 1985.

Aside from "pencil" and "shape" tools and a brush that draws in 24 "brush shapes and patterns", the toolset also contained two features unique for the time: one the ability to draw Bézier curves and the other that forces lines to be drawn on three angles to create an isometric three-quarter perspective.

[5] This functionality only works correctly if the color depth of images is 16 bits per pixel (bpp) or higher.

In Windows XP and later, Paint uses GDI+ and therefore can natively save images as BMP, JPEG, GIF, TIFF and PNG without requiring additional graphics filters.

Paint in Windows Vista can undo a change up to 10 times, compared to 3 in previous versions; it also includes a slider for image magnification and a crop function.

[11] It also features "artistic" brushes composed of varying shades of gray and some degree of transparency that give a more realistic result.

Previous versions of Paint would display an error message if a user tried to paste more text than there was room for.

In addition to the traditional two-dimensional drawing tools, Paint 3D can import and manipulate three-dimensional models.

[12][13] Three months later, on July 23, 2017, Microsoft added Paint to the list of deprecated Windows features.

The closest that Microsoft ever got to enacting said decision was adding a removal notice to Paint's user interface in Windows 10 versions 1803 and 1809.

[19][20] In August 2021, Microsoft teased an updated version of Paint for Windows 11, featuring a refreshed user interface (UI), improved font picker, and a dark theme.

By default, almost all versions of Paint are generally unable to properly downgrade created images to indexed palettes using fewer than 24 bits per pixel.

When saving an image in a format that uses indexed palettes with fewer than 24 bits per pixel, a warning message appears about the loss of quality.