Show HN: GrobPaint: Somewhere Between MS Paint and Paint.net

3/15/2026 at 1:45:20 AM

Great effort and reason to create this! I'm accustomed to using the Magic Wand tool in Paint.net[1] and Pinta[2] to select pixels based on color. Any chance you could add that functionality?

[1] https://www.getpaint.net/doc/latest/MagicWand.html

[2] https://www.pinta-project.com/user-guide/wand/

by hbcondo714

3/15/2026 at 4:15:29 AM

It lists Magic Wand under Features [1] https://github.com/groverburger/grobpaint/blob/e249c7553f4c8...

by icameron

3/15/2026 at 5:05:34 AM

Yep, magic wand already exists with contiguous/global toggle and tolerance slider. : )

by __grob

3/15/2026 at 4:07:07 PM

Thanks! Not sure how I missed that!

by hbcondo714

3/15/2026 at 4:46:26 AM

The name of this project brought many memories of the HP 48G to the forefront of my mind, after so many years. Its 1 bpp pixelated icons and drawings were indeed called GROBs - there are collections of these online. What a coincidental but fine name for a pixel-capable graphics editor.

by summa_tech

3/15/2026 at 5:18:20 AM

Haha glad it brought back fond memories! Grob is just the nickname of my username GroverBurger. Fun coincidence.

by __grob

3/15/2026 at 9:46:56 AM

Looks nice, thanks for sharing.

I'm using Affinity v1 for some specific photo manipulation work, and the workflow is a bit convoluted.

Very tempting to make a specialized tool like this for that.

by faeyanpiraat

3/15/2026 at 12:06:30 PM

I'm still looking for something like paint.net on MacOS, any recommendations?

by Phlogi

3/16/2026 at 5:12:24 AM

Pixelmator - 1000%. Native MacOS - quick to load and very intuitive layer-based paint interface. It's a one-time purchase for $50 but they used to run sales.

They were bought by Apple recently but still sell it. I moved to it when I migrated away from Photoshop. It doesn't have some of the fancier stuff like puppet mesh warp, but for an all-around editor I'd argue its unrivaled in the Mac space.

https://www.apple.com/pixelmator-pro

EDIT: Krita is also great (and free) but it feels more geared towards digital painting.

by vunderba

3/15/2026 at 2:17:24 PM

Pinta is the closest I've found, though I've gotten pretty familiar with paint.net and there's small differences that make me feel slower using Pinta.

I'm glad to see entrants in this space!

by netinstructions

3/15/2026 at 2:47:28 PM

I liked Krita a little more than Pinta as a replacement, but for the same reasons it feels slow.

It's really a shame the Paint.net author is so devoted to being Windows only.

by JCattheATM

3/15/2026 at 7:52:48 PM

Very actively developing this project, so hopefully it'll become a suitable replacement relatively soon. Please open GitHub issues or PRs if you have specific requests, happy to help.

by __grob

3/15/2026 at 8:39:58 AM

Grob is either Slavic cognate for "coffin" or German for "rough" :)

by egao1980

3/15/2026 at 7:53:13 PM

Neat! Glad it's a cognate for cool words haha :)

by __grob

3/15/2026 at 8:24:18 AM

Looks minimalistic and nice to use. I might try making a pixel icon for my app with it.

by kreicer

3/15/2026 at 7:53:22 PM

Let me know how it goes!

by __grob

3/15/2026 at 9:29:57 AM

Do you really need that Python script? I think you could end up with a nicer user experience if you rewrote those 264 lines to JS with Electron.

by Kwpolska

3/15/2026 at 2:46:53 PM

Let's not encourage even more Electron apps, please.

by JCattheATM

3/15/2026 at 9:28:32 PM

What is this if not an Electron app with the Electron parts written in Python?

by Kwpolska