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Microsoft Fresh Paint

Digital graphics editor

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 18, 2025
Entity authorityQ6840135
Source-derived summary

Fresh Paint is a painting app developed by Microsoft and released on May 25, 2012.

History

Fresh Paint originated from a Microsoft Research project known as Project Gustav, an endeavor to reproduce the behavior of physical oil paint on a digital medium. To push the boundaries of simulating oil on a digital medium, the research team created a physics model that precisely replicated on a screen what would happen in the real world if you combined oil, a surface and a tool such as a paint brush. Two publications, Detail-Preserving Paint Modeling for 3D Brushes and Simple Data-Driven Modeling of Brushes, were released as a result of the team’s findings.

After a variety of internal testing Project, Gustav was codenamed Digital Art. Partnering with The Museum of Modern Art, Digital Art was tested for a year by 60,000 people. With feedback culled from MoMA, developers expanded the existing physics model, experimenting with how real oil paint blended and reacted to the texture of a canvas. After final adjustments were made, Digital Art was rebranded as Fresh Paint. It was released to the public on 25 May 2012.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Microsoft Fresh Paint” as digital graphics editor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Microsoft, Fresh and Paint.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Microsoft, Fresh and Paint providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Microsoft Fresh Paint”, the useful work is to connect “digital graphics editor” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6840135. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Microsoft Fresh Paint”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Microsoft Fresh Paint primary sources, Microsoft Fresh Paint archive and Microsoft research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Microsoft Fresh Paint” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.