Spray painting is painting using a device that sprays the paint.

There are several different technologies for doing this.

1. Canned spray paint: This is the most common in the consumer market is an aerosol can of spray paint.
2. Semi-professional spraypainting: there are a variety of hand-held paint sprayers that either combine the paint with air, or convert the paint to tiny droplets and accelerate these out a nozzle. Commercial examples of this include the popular product the Wagner PowerPainter(tm).
3. Professional spraypainting: Automobile body shops use air compressors and specialized equipment to spray paint onto a car body. This can be expensive, with a high-quality car paint job costing from $2000 to $5000. The high cost is due to the high quality paints, the laborious nature of surface preparations, and the cost of the equipment to do this task.

One of the applications is graffiti.

Getting paint to adhere to a surface is a specific area of technical expertise that isn't appropriate for this topic.

See also:

• airbrush
• aerosol
• primer paint
• topcoat paint
• specialty paints like rust-prevention paint (product example: http://www.RustOleum.com Rust-Oleum).
• electrostatic painting