Suddenly Microsoft Paint rules: the new background removal tool is an impressive free alternative to Photoshop's premium version

pcgamer.com:

Paint now offers the single-most useful feature I require of a photo editing application: background removal. And before you turn your nose up at little ol' Paint, let me tell you this: it's really rather great.

As a long-time Adobe Photoshop user, I'm often on my high horse about how good Photoshop's background removal tools are. The company, which strives to be the first and only word in AI photo editing, is often integrating new AI-powered features into its photo editing software, though it also charges a significant monthly sum for the privilege of using it. Nonetheless, I often use these features daily with few complaints.

Then there's Paint. An application that six years ago appeared destined for the recycle bin, only to be saved by an «outpouring of support and nostalgia». An application that has sat within the Windows OS for over three decades and barely changed an iota for many of those years. At least until very recently. 

In a recent Insider build of Windows 11, Microsoft dropped a new background removal feature into the long in the tooth, often neglected, app.

For admittedly snobbish reasons, I didn't have particularly high expectations of Paint's native background removal feature. But I was editing an image of a Samsung monitor for a recent article and, actually, Photoshop's new-fangled AI background removal proved too smart for its own good.

Photoshop's tool saw the spaceship adoring the stock image of Samsung's monitor as the subject of the image, not the monitor itself, and made a right mess of the whole thing. My colleague then suggested I should see if Paint's new background removal tool makes the same mistake.

Lo and behold, no, it doesn't. Paint makes a clean cut around the monitor and delivers the