Followers of mine on Twitter will be aware that today I have been thinking about Project Gustav, the impressive art program from Microsoft. I have been wondering what its future holds. If you don’t know about the project then have a watch the videos below, I think its a rather impressive piece of software. It appears that Project Gustav does have a name, Microsoft Digital Art and is currently available in the MOMA in New York to play with.

(Just so you know, I am not just an art lover but had an art scholarship for my entire secondary and 6th form education and I have been commissioned to do some art pieces.)

The reason I have started thinking about Digital Art is because of an article by @Dovellonsky who seems to have heard that the software will be available for Windows 8. I wonder if this will be exclusive to Windows 8, will it be bundled or available freely to all Windows PCs or will Microsoft look to monetise the software. Will it replace Paint?

I am even wondering if the software will be available only for the touch version (whatever that maybe) of Windows 8 or all versions of Windows. Seeing as it is designed for touch and paint brushes it seems odd that it would be available for PCs that could make use of it. If Digital Art is for touch versions of Windows only would that restrict the types of screens that can be used for Windows 8 PCs, capacitive screens wont work with the paint brushes that make Digital Art so interesting.

I imagine this software would be great in educational institutions. Most schools in the UK already have interactive whiteboards allowing the pupils to paint onto a very large canvas, there would be an issues of shadows though but I’m sure this wouldn’t be too much of a problem. I’d hope that if Microsoft were planning to monetise the software that it would be free for schools.

I’d hope that Digital Art will be available for free on all versions of Windows (probably only post Vista though) and I don’t think it will be exclusive to Windows 8. However, I do wonder if Microsoft will use Digital Art to popularise their new Windows Marketplace which is expected to debut when Windows 8 is launched. Digital Art could quite easily be a “must have” app for Touch PCs, I know I certainly want to play with it.

But aside from in what way the software will be accessible on PCs in the future I have also thought about in what ways it could connect to the cloud. As Microsoft is “all in” it only makes sense that there would be some kind of cloud integration with the software. I’d hope that users would be able to upload their pictures to a gallery, people cold then peruse the gallery and see other pictures, it could add a very interesting social element. This gallery could even allow users to print creations, perhaps even on to the canvas that is synthesised within the software.

I am very interested to know more about the future of Digital Art, I think it has the potential to be big. It could be very useful to novices too if combined with some new technology showed off today at Microsoft Research’s TechFest. ShadowDraw allows people to start drawing an object and then have the software put in guide lines so the user can trace an image, if this was added to Digital Art it could be very useful in sketching out the basic composition of the picture.

Apple may have far superior music making software with Garage Band but it looks like Microsoft could have the superior art software.

Do let me know what you think.