Customer Reviews

Microsoft Picture It Premium 2002 [Old Version]

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

 

 

I bought PictureIt! for two reasons. I wanted the ability to categorize my photos and the ability to do simple photo editing. This software does neither task very well.

Organizing my photographs was a slow and difficult process. Adding a single picture to the gallery takes 5 steps. I would expect a folder "windows-style" approach where I could add pictures to different folders and then add meta-data about the folder. Not only is organizing pictures with this software both counter-intuitive and time consuming, but after I had added pictures to a gallery and saved, when I returned to the same gallery my pictures were no longer there. In other words, the gallery didn't retain what I had put into it.

The photo-editing part of PictureIt!, is simplistic, but so much so that editing is a very imprecise affair. There are easy buttons for reducing snow or scratches, for example, but it is very difficult to navigate precisely using the zoom feature, so that "real" editing is hard to do. I still have PhotoShop4.0 somewhere so I will go back to it. My guess is that Microsoft intended this to be THE picture tool for the new digital camera enthusiast. Unfortunately in the process of letting human factors make this simple to use, they also made it counter-intuitive and overly complicated for doing simple things. They need a better human factors group to design this product.

I am hoping that PictureIt!=ReturnIt!.
If not my advices is PictureIt!=DontBuyIt!

I used Microsoft Picture It for 2 years, and recently purchased Adobe Photoshop Elements. There's no comparison! I wish I had switched to Elements a long time ago. Picture It downfalls include:

- Poor quality JPG images

- A memory leak that that caused the Picture-It to slow down with each file save, with the delay becoming several minutes after about 5 file saves.

- Painfully slow when displaying thumbnail images when choosing a new file.

I purchased Adobe Elements for about ... a month ago. What a difference! The program loads files faster, performs modifications faster, has many more special effects filters, and doesn't slow down with each file save. Thank you, Adobe! Good bye, Microsoft!

This software prevents the downloading of your digital pictures to your desk top. I found this extremely annoying. Apprently, this program only lets you download intial photos into the program which locks you into " Picture It ". If you need to keep your photos into a seperate desktop file, you would be in a distinct disadvantage. On the positive side, it is extremely easy to format 8X10's in this program.

Finally, Picture It offers the features I have been waiting for in a photo package: easy-to-use and easy-to-organize albums. It used to be a pain to organize your pictures, but with Picture It this is no longer the case, but a rather pleasant task. And there are so many ways you can improve your pictures -- and Picture It is by far the most friendly software in this regard (although for "pro" jobs you'd still use Photoshop).

I have experienced no problems with the software on my Pentium Celeron laptop (Sony VAIO) or the Pentium III desktop (Acer). Even a kid can use this software. This is just perfect for digitizing and storing family photos. Highly recommended.

This is really a great program to make fun of your photos, to make on a easy way your own calendars. After a little self study, the program is very easy to work with, it has enough examples for greeting cards, calendars etc. This program is inviting you automatically to do nice thing with your photos and make professional art works of them. Compliments to the people of Microsoft.

This is the worst product I EVER ordered from MS!! I give it one star only because this format won't allow me to give it a ZERO! It rewrites my harddrive every time I try to install....it tells me I must have the newsest version of Internet Explorer.....WHY.....it's a photo editing program!! Not a webbrowser! I have purchased two different versions of this....at Best Buy....which I might add will not take it back!! NICE POLICY..... I am a 54 year old woman who does not pirate software! I just want somethng that works as well as the old version....which was 2000 and somehow disappeared from my computer....and WHY does MS feel it is necessary to tack on IE to a photo editing program???
Please let me know if anyone else has experienced these problems..I loved the old version and wish I could replace it!

This software program makes the incredibly easy seem so difficult. It takes 4 or 5 steps to save pictures to the gallery (or at least I thought...my pictures were not there the next time I checked). The software has given me lots of trouble recognizing my digital camera. It is cumbersome in every aspect. Thank goodness Microsoft offers a 30 day money back guaranty on thier products....

In candor...

This program does the same three things that every...photo program does, except it costs more ... Anyone seriously considering it should look long and hard at _Photoshop Elements_ first. The difference in price is small; the difference in function is spectacular. I wish someone had told me this before I wasted my money on this dog.

I am disappointed because: (i) it takes many steps to get pictures into the "tray" for editing, (ii) it is loaded with preset forms that are useless -- I want a program with a large variety of unadorned, pre-designed album sheets (without any prior designs), such as the program that came FREE with my HP printer. This doesn't have a single one. All it has is one clean sheet, and each photo has to be separately sized. It's useful, I guess, for special projects, but difficult if one wants to print out album pages with a variety of photos.

I thought I would be able to do great things with this software, but it does little more than what comes with Kodak Picture CD - it just takes longer. I had problems with it crashing that turned out to be a conflict with Norton Antivirus. To be fair, I haven't spent a lot of time trying to become more familiar with the program. I haven't found it to be very intuitive.