How to smooth objects effectively in MS Paint



As a general rule of thumb, don’t trust what Paint tells you is good. On the left of the image is Paint’s default circle for a 13x13 area. It looks pretty rubbish. Using high magnification, it is pretty simple to draw a much better one, indeed, you can tweak the original by a few pixels each way (e.g. here by removing the two pixels either side of the 4 bars).

Now, here is the important bit; you need to draw a grid, using pencil and paper, and then sketch the shape you want onto it. Make sure the grid is sufficiently big to fit the image on, and the squares are all equal (these are your pixels).

In our example, you now have a circle drawn on a grid. Now look at each individual square, and estimate how much of the square is shaded (rough estimates such as all, none, half, not much at all, almost all, etc. are great). Go Colors > Edit Colors and choose the right color intensity for the pixel in question. A rough guide for grayscale is:

ALL: 0
NONE: 255
HALF: 128
MOST: 200ish
A BIT: 60ish

These are rough ideas, you should have a better idea of how much you want. Apply these figures to the image (use View > Zoom > Show Grid if it helps, on 8x), and the result is something like image 3! This does take a long time, but be patient, it’s really a great feeling when it works.

Compare image 1 and image 3… lol