Microsoft's Paint now lets you save projects as layered files in the latest Insider build, as part of its continued efforts to make the default image editor great again

Keep it under your hat, but Microsoft's Paint app has been experiencing a quiet resurgence over the past few years. Oft neglected as a potential image editing tool, MS has been beavering away in the background, adding features like background removal and object selection to relatively little fanfare. Still, updates are updates, and many of them have been good.

Now MS says Paint is getting one Photoshop-like feature that might make it even more appealing—layered project saving, in the form of a new .paint file extension (via The Verge). The update comes as part of the latest Windows Insider build, which is often a pretty good indicator that it'll turn up in a regular release version sometime soon.

"You can now save your creation as an editable Paint project file and seamlessly pick up where you left off," says Microsoft principle product manager lead Dave Grochocki.

"Once you’re ready to save your artwork, go to the File menu and select Save as project. The File Explorer will open, allowing you to choose a location and save your work as a .paint file. When you’re ready to return, simply open the file to launch it in Paint, right where you left off."

Cue fireworks, streamers, and a loud rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. Oh, all right then, maybe not, but it's cool to see Paint get the ability to save layered project files in a Photoshop-like fashion, especially as its ability to break images down into individual parts is better than ever these days. There's also the AI image generation feature that might benefit, of course, but I think we're all a bit tired of talking about that at this point, aren't we?

Special props should also be given for labelling the new file format as .paint, rather than something cryptic like ".pntlyr" or similar. I've got a thing about sleek file format names, and no, I don't have to explain to you why.

MS is also adding an opacity slider to the Pencil and Brush tools, which should help with blending and layering effects for you artistic types out there. I'm clearly not one of you, as the header image for this article demonstrates.

It's often the little things in life that make programs better, but it's genuinely heart-warming to see Paint gradually be brought into the modern age in this fashion—unlike 3D Paint, its former (and to my mind, inferior) cousin, which was unceremoniously booted from Windows late last year.

We don't mention 3D Paint. In fact, I never should have brought it up in the first place. You saw nothing, ya hear?