Amazon.com: Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum [Old Version]: Software

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2.4 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews)

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73 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great For The Beginner, September 26, 2000

R. Lade "prophoto" (Palm Beach, Florida) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

OK, here we go again. If you read my review of Picture-It 2000, you'll probably notice that I liked that program for what it was intended to do, which is hold your hand through just about every phase of editiing a photograph. Well, this latest version still does just that. You can't miss with this program if you're just getting into the digital photo editing game. What's happened here from what I can tell (please keep in mind that I've only been playing in this program for about a week) is that PI Platinum has combined Picture It and Home Publisher for the most part. Only MUCH bigger! If you do a full install of this program you'll use up just around 3 gig of your hard drive. There are more photos, clip art and templates in this thing than anyone could ever hope to use. There'll be another version out before you use all this stuff! There's seven discs to this program and even with the full install there's still some disc swapping to do, although it is fairly minimal.

The big thing here, and I can't stress this enough, is how easy this program is to use. And new to this version is the free web posting. Microsoft gives you a list of no-fee sites (of which MSN is one of the choices) as well as a list of fee-based sites. There are a few things I don't like about this program and the worst in my opinion is the cloning tool. Once you position the marker and begin to clone, it becomes very difficult at times to see where you're cloning from because the marker tends to vanish and you can lose track of where it is. Picture It 2000 had the same problem. The other negative is that there aren't a lot of "special" effects in here. Again, just like Picture It 2000.

Aside from the minor quirks, PI Platinum 2001 is pretty decent. I do photography professionally, so I use Photoshop 5.5 and U-Lead Photo Impact for most of my work, but for quick e-mailing and general puttzing around, a program like this or Photo Deluxe 4.0 is a must.

Finally, and I said the same thing in the review I did on Photo Deluxe 4.0, ULead Photo Impact gives you so much more and it's not a difficult program to use. But if you want an all-encompassing program where you can edit your pictures, create countless cards, calendars, stationery, and just about anything else, plus easy and quick e-mailing and web posting, you can't beat Picture It Publishing Platinum 2001.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Bloated but not bad!, December 17, 2000

Hitech ">>hitech>" (Western NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

This package caught my eye by it's price at a local warehouse club. With the rebate offered it just couldn't be beat (plus the specs of images and templates included were higher than the other similar products offered).

We bought it to do some simple Christmas cards w/photos from both my digital camera and scanner. I also picked it as it was from Microsoft, and I run Windows 2000 on this machine, so I expected stellar compatibility, which I got.

It's a fairly simple program to install, but it takes quite some time (even on faster Pentium III's w/lots of memory and a 7200RPM DMA-66 hard drive). It's also bloatware (just as anything Microsoft is) and takes a bit of space.

It's really easy to use software, and makes some fantastic layouts. I usually used JASC's PaintShop to scan or import my digital images and touch them up, but the included photo touchups worked OKAY.

I think it's a good program, but with so many different products out there, I'm sure there's another choice just as good.

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Many great possibilities !, September 22, 2000

J. Robinson (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I discovered Picture-It when I was looking for software that would let me print frames around my photos. And it does this - plus much more.

I have been creating lots of printed photos from my travels and family gatherings. And everyone loves the neat frames (borders) around them. I share them with friends and use magnets to hold lots of them on my refrigerator.

You can create your own custom calendars easily also. So many great photo projects. And of course you can do great greeting cards, too. I create half-fold cards on glossy greeting card paper and people can't tell I printed them myself at home (HP P1100). I print a small for-keeps self-photo on the back of the card as a nice "extra." It prints on the glossy side; so they get a nice personalized greeting card and a picture they can keep if they want to cut it out before disposing of the card.

The software walks you through the steps necessary to create/customize nice results. You can create excellent output for printing, for sharing by email, for posting to a web site, and even for sending to an online photo-printing service.

I feel I got more than my money's worth with this product.... especially after the $15 rebate, and with the great pack of sample papers included in the box.

There are about 10 cd's with this software. But not all of it is installed to the hard-drive during installation. When you select certain items from the "catalog" (index), you can see which cd it is on before you select it. I find that I use artwork from cd #2 a lot. So I copied the contents of that CD to my hard-drive. (When the software asks you to insert a particular CD, you can click "options" and specify a different location where it should look for the CD.) And you can download additional clip-art and projects from the internet...many for free.

You can also use picture-it to catalog your photos - - even if they are on removable media (cd's, zip disks, etc.). It can create multimedia gretting cards.

I didn't expect great things from this software because of the low price and the $15 rebate; but I definitely got a lot more than I ever imagined. And I've only had it 3 days! It's just what I needed.

My setup: (hardware/software/etc.) - Digital Camera: Kodak DC4800

- Printer: HP Photosmart P1100xi

- Paper: HP Glossy Greeting Card (half-fold)

- Paper: HP Premium Glossy Photo Paper (all sizes)

- Windows 2000

- Paper Trimmer: Fiskars 12-inch rotary

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