Customer Reviews

Microsoft Picture It! Publishing 2001 Platinum [Old Version]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

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.

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.

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

My husband and I bought this software from [a store]. I've used Printmaster and Microsoft Home Publishing Suite to create school newsletters. The description on the Picture It box looked promising. It convinced me that it was better than what I've been using. I thought it would be perfect for our brand new super duper computer. The time it took to install this software (the maximum installation) was tolerable. However, this software has BIG PROBLEMS! Picture It kept crashing ("illegal operation, must be shut down"). When we ran "windoctor" to find out what the error was about, it said that there was a missing file (that, or it could not access it). The file was a Picture It "dll" file. When we ran all 7 discs through "find file" command, no such file could be found either. We consulted the Microsoft customer service, and we uninstalled and reinstalled many times using different techniques that were told to us by Microsoft customer service people. The problems didn't go away, and even created more problems. Sometimes, even when we were only sending an e-mail, we'd get a pop-up message that said we needed to put the Picture It disc in the drive (really strange!). On one other installation, the image icons would not appear. Eventually, we returned the software to [the store], and then bought another Picture It, hoping that maybe we had a bad box the first time. The second Picture It box we bought had the same problems. We tried installing on our other computers (we have four computers in the house), but the same problem existed. We returned the second box, and we don't intend to buy a third. Good luck with it if you buy one!!!

After waiting 80 minutes for the installation of a program I was hoping to find to my liking for the work I do, I encountered nothing but error and illegal operation messages. After full install, it still required me to insert discs for some usage. I uninstalled the program only to find many problems with other programs on the computer. What a waste of time and money!

I bought this software because it looked like a good one for a reasonable cost. However, this program has problems after installing. I exchanged the software, believing that it had a bad disk after getting error and illegal operation messages. The new program did the same thing. A friend of mine bought the same program also and is having the same problems. We know it isn't our computer because hers is brand new and mine has a new hard drive installed. I do not recommend this product.

This program was a waste of money! It took almost 3 hours for me to install it on a brand new laptop. I was able to complete a progect. My trouble began when I tried to print. I got a different error message everytime i tried to print. I waited a day and tried again. It printed/but the page was blank. I went to the website it and stated that maybe the printer was outdated. My printer is a brand new hp deskjet so there is no way that it is outdated. Please!!! don't waste your time or money on this ... software from Microsoft. If i could, I would give this program 0(zero) stars

I saw that many other people had issues with the install time and that they had also received errors and illegal operations. I am glad to hear this because I was afraid I was the only person who had these problems. This program would not print AT ALL. I have 3 printers, HP 520, HP 660 and the new HP Photosmart 1000. The program would die when you tried printing anything. It did this on multiple PCs as well. The space this program requires is obscene at best. I saw people saying this package is good for the beginner. Not even close. I have been building and configuring PCs and installing every software known to man for over 10 years and this program had me at my wits end on more than one occassion. As I write this I am TRYING to uninstall the software from my wifes PC. It has taken well over 1 hour to get half way done. Do yourself a favor, just go ahead and buy Publisher 2000. It costs more, but is definately worth it. Well, the 97 version was well worth the cash. I have the 2000 version sitting here. If Picture it will ever finish uninstalling I will install Publisher 2000. Just when I think Microsoft has really gotten it's act together along comes this piece of junk.

Since this program took over an hour to install, I thought it must have a lot to offer. What it offers is frustration and headaches. It is simple to use until you get "illegal operation" error messages. After working 2 hours on a photo album that looked fanstastic, all was lost when the program crashed. The same thing happened after I redid the work, and again when I tried it on my neighbor's computer. We both have new, powerful computers so it's not the computer, but the software. It has since been uninstalled and thrown into the trash bin. I wish I had read these reviews sooner and purchased something that actually worked! What an interesting concept!

MS Picture It Publishing 2001 combines Picture It Photo with Greetings Workshop/Home Publishing. The end result is a terrifically well integrated program which allows you to edit your photos, store them in a gallery, and use them for publishing to paper, web, e-mail, etc. You can make all the usual paper projects, including greeting cards, banners, letterhead, business cards, etc. But you can also place your very own pictures in your projects to send to family, friends, or publish to the web. This is an excellent integration of two solid programs. Good for beginners and more seasoned folks alike. It doesn't have all the tools of a Jasc Pain Shop Pro or ULead's Photo Impact, but for a quick and very easy project its great because its so fast to learn!