Way back in the early before time, Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to brand Windows 10 entirely around the label “creators”, and one distinctly odd consequence of that was an application called “Paint 3D”, a replacement for the traditional Paint application that Microsoft had been shipping one way or another since 1985, when it included a simple bitmap editing program called “Doodle” with its mouse drivers for DOS. Doodle would be replaced shortly after by a whitelabel version of ZSoft Corporation’s PC Paintbrush, and once Windows 1.0 rolled around, it was rebranded as Paint, a name that has stuck until today.
Paint 3D was supposed to replace the regular Paint, with a focus on creating and manipulating 3D objects, serving as an extension to Microsoft’s failed efforts to bring VR and AR to the masses. Microsoft even went so far as to list the regular Paint as deprecated, but after a lot of outcry, has since reneged and refocused its efforts on improving it. Paint 3D, however, is not officially going to be deprecated, and has been added to Microsoft’s list of deprecated Windows features.
Paint 3D is deprecated and will be removed from the Microsoft Store on November 4, 2024. To view and edit 2D images, you can use Paint or Photos. For viewing 3D content, you can use 3D Viewer.
↫ Microsoft’s list of deprecated Windows features
I don’t think anyone is going to shed a tear on this, but at the same time, as with everything Microsoft changes or removes from Windows, there’s bound to be at least a few people whose entire workflow heavily depends on Paint 3D, and they’re going to be pissed.
Copilot likely being next.
This is why I focus my creator activity around Linux.
I think the only time I fired up Paint 3D is when I clicked it by mistake. I’ll stick with Photoshop and The Gimp for now (or even Paint.Net).