Microsoft Paint Keyboard Shortcuts
Impress your friends with your intimate knowledge of Microsoft Paint! See also albinoblacksheep.com's MS paint tutorial, and paintmash.com's Paint discussion.
| ALT | |
|---|---|
| Alt-C | Opens the drop-down menu for Colors. |
| Alt-E | Opens the drop-down menu for Edit. |
| Alt-F | Opens the drop-down menu for File. |
| Alt-H | Opens the drop-down menu for Help. |
| Alt-I | Opens the drop-down menu for Image. |
| Alt-V | Opens the drop-down menu for View. |
| Alt-F4 | Closes the drawing. |
| Alt-Esc | Windows command to switch between windows/opened programs. |
| Alt-Spacebar | Windows command equivalent to right-clicking on the blue bar at the top of the window. |
| CTRL | |
| Ctrl-A | Selects the entire canvas, useful before flipping, rotating, stretching, or skewing the entire canvas. |
| Ctrl-C | Copies the selected area. |
| Ctrl-E | Brings up the image attributes. |
| Ctrl-F | Shows a full-screen view of the image. |
| Ctrl-G | (Only at 6x,8x, or 10x zoom) Shows a grid under the drawing; it is sized by pixels. |
| Ctrl-I | The fun one, inverts the colors. |
| Ctrl-L | Removes/Adds the "Color Box"(Color Pallette) at the bottom of the screen. |
| Ctrl-N | Opens up a new canvas within the same screen. *Will delete current drawing unless you save it. |
| Ctrl-O | Opens up the "Open file..." screen. |
| Ctrl-P | Prints the image. |
| Ctrl-R | Brings up the "Flip/Rotate" tool. |
| Ctrl-S | Automatically saves your drawing under the name you have it saved as, if not, it will bring up the "Save file as..." |
| Ctrl-T | Removes/Adds the Main "Tool Box" on the left side. |
| Ctrl-V | Pastes whatever you have copied or pasted into the top left corner of the screen; if you are zoomed in it will be in the left corner of where you are zoomed in to. *If the selected image being pasted is bigger than the canvas you have, it will automatically be re-sized to fit the image being pasted. |
| Ctrl-W | Brings up the "Stretch/Skew" Tool. |
| Ctrl-X | Cuts the selected area, in other words copies the selected area, but takes it off the screen. |
| Ctrl-Y | Re-does whatever you undid or deleted. In case you feel it looks better that way or are trying to figure out things. |
| Ctrl-Z | Undoes whatever you just drew with the last click and hold of your mouse. Undoes only up to 3 previous clicks in XP, slightly more in Vista. |
| Ctrl-PageDown | Zooms out to 1x from zoom. |
| Ctrl-PageUp | Zooms in to preset zoom. |
| Ctrl-Shift-N | Clears the entire canvas. |
| Ctrl- (Minus on num pad) | Makes any of the drawing tools(Including spraypaint) you are drawing with increasingly smaller, smaller than you can select normally. |
| Ctrl+ (Plus on num pad) |
Makes any of the drawing tools increasingly larger, infintely large. When using "Color Select" tool -Selects that color as an auxillary color for use, not a primary or secondary When using any of the drawing tools -Draws in the auxillary color |
| Holding Shift: | |
| When using the "Line Tool" -Makes a straight line at 90 or 45 degree angles. | |
| When using the "Ellipse Tool" -Makes a perfect circle. | |
| When using the "Rectangle" -Makes a perfect square. | |
| When using the "Rounded Rectangle" -Makes a perfect square with rounded edges. | |
| Other | |
| F10 | Changes the cursor of Spraycan, Pencil, Crosshairs, etc.. to a normal pointer cursor until you click the mouse or push a key. |
| Print Screen | Takes a screenshot and is automatically copied. So after you take a screenshot, it is best to paste it somewhere, usually on a new canvas, before you copy anything else. |