VBA – Open Image With Paint3D

To round off my recent set of articles about automating opening images in various applications:

VBA - Open Image With Windows Photo Viewer

Ever had the need to specifically open an image in Windows Photo Viewer? I’ve provided a multitude of ways to open files: but what if we don’t necessarily want to use the default application and want to specifically open the image in the Windows Photo Viewer?

VBA – Open Image With MS Photos

Relating to a question in my previous post in which David Marten inquired about doing the same in MS Photos, I decided to look into the matter. I was surprised at that I couldn’t locate any examples of this. The only ones that would work were if MS-Photos was already defined as the system’s default…

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VBA – Open Image With Paint

So, since I’ve recently had a few posts regarding opening images in Microsoft Photo Viewer, MS Photos: I thought I’d also demonstrate how easy it is to open an image in Paint as I know many people love to use Paint.

I thought I’d include examples of automating Paint3D.

Launching Paint3D

You can open Paint3D by simply doing:

'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Procedure : Paint3D_Launch
' Author    : Daniel Pineault, CARDA Consultants Inc.
' Website   : http://www.cardaconsultants.com
' Purpose   : Open Paint3D (start the application)
' Copyright : The following is release as Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
'             (CC BY-SA 4.0) - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
' Req'd Refs: None required
'
' Usage:
' ~~~~~~
' Call Paint3D_Launch
'
' Revision History:
' Rev       Date(yyyy-mm-dd)        Description
' **************************************************************************************
' 1         2023-04-19              Initial Release
'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub Paint3D_Launch()
On Error GoTo Error_Handler

    'Call Shell("mspaint /ForceBootstrapPaint3D")
    Call Shell("explorer.exe ms-paint:")
    
Error_Handler_Exit:
    On Error Resume Next
    Exit Sub
 
Error_Handler:
    MsgBox "The following error has occurred" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Source: Paint3D_Launch" & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Number: " & Err.Number & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Description: " & Err.Description & _
           Switch(Erl = 0, "", Erl <> 0, vbCrLf & "Line No: " & Erl) _
           , vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "An Error has Occurred!"
    Resume Error_Handler_Exit
End Sub

Opening an Image in Paint3D

This turned out to be trickier than I had originally thought.

I tried all sorts of variations, but in the end I found no documentation regarding ms-paint: URI, nor any examples anywhere. Thus, the only solution I could find was to use ‘plain’ Paint with the command line switch /ForceBootstrapPaint3D which opens things in Paint3D. Thus resulting in a procedure like:

'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' Procedure : Paint3D_OpenImage
' Author    : Daniel Pineault, CARDA Consultants Inc.
' Website   : http://www.cardaconsultants.com
' Purpose   : Open the specified image in Paint3D
' Copyright : The following is release as Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
'             (CC BY-SA 4.0) - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
' Req'd Refs: None required
'
' Input Variables:
' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
' sImg      : Fully qualified path and filename of the image to open
'
' Usage:
' ~~~~~~
' Call Paint3D_OpenImage("C:\Temp\TestImage.png")
'
' Revision History:
' Rev       Date(yyyy-mm-dd)        Description
' **************************************************************************************
' 1         2023-04-19              Initial Release
'---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub Paint3D_OpenImage(sImg As String)
On Error GoTo Error_Handler

    'I haven't found an ms-paint: store app URI to open a file, nor
    '   any support documentation, so we have to use a workaround by
    '   using Paint and using it to lauch Paint3D
    Call Shell("mspaint """ & sImg & """ /ForceBootstrapPaint3D")
    
Error_Handler_Exit:
    On Error Resume Next
    Exit Sub
 
Error_Handler:
    MsgBox "The following error has occurred" & vbCrLf & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Source: Paint3D_OpenImage" & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Number: " & Err.Number & vbCrLf & _
           "Error Description: " & Err.Description & _
           Switch(Erl = 0, "", Erl <> 0, vbCrLf & "Line No: " & Erl) _
           , vbOKOnly + vbCritical, "An Error has Occurred!"
    Resume Error_Handler_Exit
End Sub