The Paint program is another one that comes with the computer system. It came with the Windows system since the 95 version. It is a simple computerized version of well… painting on paper, or a graphics program some people call it. Kid's love it! They can make their own art masterpieces.
Let us go to the Start button, and then click on All Programs when the menu pops up. Then look for "Accessories", then look for the paint program, and click. When that opens up, you will see on the left side, some buttons, these are your tools that use to create with. Up top, are the color's you have. If you need more, above the colors, it reads colors…. Click on it and you have even more choice in colors!
The Tools
The two dotted lined shapes are your free-form select. This is where you pick a place in your art specifically, to do more.
- The Eraser. Just what you would use an eraser for.
- The "Paint Bucket".This is where you can fill in all at once with a single color.
- The Eyedropper. This is used for when you need the exact color that is already in your art, but in a different spot.
- The Magnifier. This will "zoom in" or magnify your art so you can see the pixel size.
- The Pencil. Just as you would use a pencil on paper.
- The Brush. This is your paintbrush to create with. When you click on the brush, look under the tool section, you find another section of dots, squares and slashes. This is the SIZE of the brush you want it to be.
- The Spray Paint Can. This is called the "AirBrush" tool. This is if you need to have an air-brushed look, or spray-painted look. Under the tool section you have the sizes of spray you can pick from.
- The Text. You can even put text in your art. Under the tools, is how you want the text, either with a background, or with no background. You can even pick the font you want also.
- The Straight and Curved Lines. This is if you want to make a straight line or curvy line, from point A to point B. After you make the curvy line, click anywhere on it and hold the mouse button and "pull". This will put the curve into the line.
- Pre-Shaped Lines. These are the Rectangle, the Ellipse and the Rounded-Rectangle. These are pre-shaped to make perfect shapes of what you want, in any size you want.
- The Polygon. This is the semi-arrow shaped button. This is when you need something like a graph, showing the up and downs of something.
The words on top: file, edit, view, etc, are pretty much the same as in the word processing program.
Now that you know Paint… try it out and play with it and have fun!
