# MS Paint file size



## 0ldsch00l (Jul 16, 2007)

In my ICT lessons, I'm teaching my school children use of MS Paint. The default Save As option for Save as type is "16-bit Bitmap" which leads to large file sizes. How can I change the settings so Paint always defaults to the "256-colour Bitmap" option?


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## newhere123 (May 10, 2007)

Paint is a very basic, not very good program. I don't believe it has the option to change the default, but, depending on your needs, you could pretty easily change the save type (on each save) to be something like PNG (smaller, all detail preserved) or JPEG (very small file size, but with artifacts).

Inkscape is an easy-to-learn, commonly used in schools, free program you can use (instead of Paint), it has many more tools than Paint, and by default it saves images as SVG, which means that it has a very small file size with unlimited resolution. (By the way, you could export the images as PNG, as well, with Inkscape, and then use another program, such as Paint, to change that into a jpeg, tiff, or 256 color bitmap.)


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