Customer Reviews

Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9.0 [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

For those who aren't professional photo editors, let's be honest with each other: how many of us have bought the professional programs that professionals recommend, and then find that the learning curve is so difficult that we don't use them? I have several other photo editing programs: Photoshop Elements 2.0, Paint Shop Pro. I kept buying the next one because the "pros" recommended them. I found that to learn EACH task it took from 1/2 to 1 hour. There is NO simplicity to anything with those programs. They can do awesome things, I just don't have the time to figure out how to do EACH and EVERY ONE. Using MS Digital Image Pro, it is set up so simple, you can just make a few clicks and almost every task can be accomplished. I've imported many photos into the program, modified them easily and quickly, and then placed them into a video which I burned to DVD's for projects at work. I received quite a number of complements from other "non-professionals" on the quality of the changes. I was also able to easily make modifications for pictures of my family which came out very nice.

If you're looking for a professional, extremely extensive program, perhaps you might want to look at the other ones. But if you're like me and want a fun program that also will deal with 90% of common tasks, this will save you a lot of frustration.

I've got a great digital camera. I enjoy taking pictures of the friends and family. I've got photoshop 7 and I know how to use about 5% of it. I don't have the time to take the class to learn the software. I picked up Digial Pro 9 on a whim and as it turns out, I LOVE IT. It's easy to use and it does everything that matters to me. Now sure it might be nice to convert the picture over to a water color painting with the granite sandstone filter applied and blah blah blah... whatever. I just want my pictures to look better and to have a little more control to remove a few things that I don't want in them. With Digital Pro 9, it's easy and fast. I am sold. I use Pro 9 all the time now, my pictures look great and I'm VERY happy. Don't let people turn you off to this product. I'm not a pro microsoft advocate, but I've got to tell you, this is good software. You'll pick it up quickly and and do more in an hour than you did in 10 hours with photoshop 7 (unless your a professional in which case what are you doing looking at this review, it's for the normal people).

Good luck.

As a user of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements 2.0, Paint Shop Pro, Photo Impact Pro, etc ... ( I have just about all of them), I decided to purchase Digital Image Pro 9 after using a simple version of Microsoft Picture it! that came bundled with a new computer I bought and got very good printing results. This program is very user friendly and while it doesn't have the advanced features of Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro such as layers and such, it has some features that are worth the price of the program alone.

PROS:
*** The "Smart Erase" tool is fantastic!! It saves a lot of time from using the clone tool and it's amazing how it will erase an object from the picture and fill it in with the surrounding background. I even erased a small tear that was halfway into a doorway and half on the door frame and after circling the tear, it magically removed the tear and reconstructed the half on the doorway, and the half on the door frame seamlessly in one click!
*** Cropping is a breeze! There are presets for sizes (4x6, 5x7, etc..) or you can custom crop. The whole process takes all of about 10 seconds.
*** The printing of photos is very easy and the colors come out very close to the originals without having to calibrate your monitor like they suggest in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. There's absolutely no learning curve in printing from Digital Image Pro 9. Just preview and print!
*** Other very good tools are the "Straighten Photo" tool which couldn't be simpler! You simply click one end of the edge of the photo and stretch the line to the other corner and hit "enter" and bang! Photo straightened! Also, the fix redeye, remove dust, remove scratches, and remove wrinkles tools work better than any of the other programs I use.

CONS:
*** The clone tool is "horrible"! Unlike the Adobe products, there's no way to "unalign" the clone point when you first start brushing. Which means, If you click a point a half inch to the left of where you want to "clone", that point follows you around wherever you're painting which makes it very diffucult to work with intricate patterns or areas with a lot of specks or dust. With Photoshop or Elements, you can set a point and just keep cloning from that point, which is usually a clean area with no dust or specks, without having it follow you around to points that you haven't cleaned up yet.
*** It won't handle very large files. On a few occasions, I scanned pictures at very high resolution (2400 dpi) and saved them in TIFF format. When I went to open one of those files in this program, it wouldn't open it with a message that read " not enough memory" to open the file. The files did however, open up with no problem in Photoshop Elements.
*** A few of the other tools aren't very good. The "remove spots or blemishes" tool just puts a big blurry "dot" in place of the spot or blemish that you're trying to remove, with a color that is similar but not always the same as the surrounding color. They should've just left this tool out because you can get much better results with the clone brush or the smart erase tool. The "blending" tool is just mediocre as is the "adjust lighting" tool.

Overall, this is now the program I use the most for my basic photo editing needs and printing photos that don't need a lot of work or special effects. It's very quick, intuitive, user friendly, and has everything the average user needs to edit and print great looking photos. If you're a collector of photo editing programs like it am, this is definitely one that is a must have!

I've used MS PictureIt! Photo Premium 2001 (v. 5.x) for the past few years and loved its simplicity, even though it had a couple of limitations. Despite serious efforts to learn Jasc PhotoShop Pro, the learning curve just was more than I was ever able to totally absorb, and I always found myself deferring back tothe MS product. Considering Adobe's PhotoShop Elements concerned me that it would still carry some of the difficulties of use that go along with it's full PhotoShop parent, to which others have confirmed to be true.

In looking at upgrading, I struggled betweeen choosing the newer MS PictureIt! Photo Premium 9, and getting this product which was not that much more expensive. (I had no use for all the photo cataloging and management features of the more expensive MS Digital Image Pro Suite.) I was afraid that getting the this middle-of-the-three product might be more difficult than the very easy program I'd been used to.

Well, I bought it, and I LOVE it. I definitely made the right choice. The program has an improved interface, some new features that are really terrific, the ability to control a lot of things more precisely (like actually being able to choose a font's point size!).

The program loads quicker than my old product and I've had no stability problems. I'm able to easily undo any action I perform. A few things have been moved around from where I'm used to being able to find them, but everything that I need seems to be here (and more!). It's also wonderful to have the choice to hide the COMMON TASKS, FILES, and STACK palettes to get more canvas room, when needed.

It even ships with a 1" thick paperback manual that offers instruction as well as tips on taking great photographs in the first place. I am TOTALLY satisfied with this purchase, and think that you will be too.

Just an FYI, you *CAN* undo transparency, soft edges, etc, unlike mentioned above. No features were removed...in fact many were added to DIP 9

I have been using Adobe Element 2.0 for nearly a year, and Digital Image Pro for only about 3 months, and I must say I can accomplish the same amount of work with Digital Image Pro in a fraction of the time compared to Elements. I actually enjoy using both programs for different tasks, but quite honestly, I find myself gravitating more and more to Digital Image Pro, as I wear "several hats" in my work and due to time pressures, I simply don't have the time to learn the full functionality of Elements, or its sometimes painstakingly unintuitive program design. In contrast, when I use Digital Image Pro, I feel I am "cutting right to the chase" and getting my task work done, without the need for wasting time constantly referring to a manual. This is not to say I plan to give up on Elements; but if you're a novice like myself, you will likely find Digital Image Pro to be more enjoyable and productive program to use.

This is a great product for anyone wanting to correct or enhance their photos and it doesn't require any experience in photography. I used it to enlarge, enhance and correct pictures I had taken at a concert and I was completely surprised and very pleased with the end result.

The first reviewered probably missed some of the features and thought them removed because they have moved. But the interface is better than before, and if you are new to this program you'll like how easy it is. It has both basic and more advanced editing tools. If you want simple photo editing, get Picture It Photo Premium 9, but this program gives you more control over how you edit.

I've been using Microsoft's "PhotoDraw" for several years to resize, sharpen and do minor touch-ups (contrast and brightness) on photos for websites. I figured it was time to upgrade, so I purchased Digital Image Pro 9. The "Pro" in the title is completely misleading -- in my opinion, this is a very amatuer photo editing application designed for novices to choose a few of the built-in, automatic photo enhancing features like redeye reduction and not for any manual photo touch-up.

I normally resize 3MB .jpg's directly from a camera to 300 pixels wide for insertion on my websites. I have found that photos can NOT be resized smaller in Digital Pro 9 without serious and unacceptable loss of pixels and quality. This is almost unbelievable, because I had no problems resizing photos with PhotoDraw (which Microsoft no longer sells or supports) nor with PhotoShop Elements.

Correspondence on Microsoft's community discussion group for the product confirmed that resizing without severe quality loss is not possible with Digital Pro 9. I've basically thrown my money away. Also to consider is that the menu structure of Digital Pro 9 is different than other Microsoft products and not very intuitive; many functions have no "back" button. I don't recommend this product for even basic photo editing.

This is one of the better photo editing programs I have used. It is very simple and easy to use, yet very powerful. Most programs such as photoshop, and even elements are very hard to use. Although this isnt quite as powerful, it makes up for being so easy to use. Its nice and cheap 2, what could be better?