Customer Reviews

Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2002 Anniversary Edition [Old Version]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

If you go to the Microsoft news group and look under Pictureit you will find that "Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2002 Anniversary Edition" is nothing more than "Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2002" renamed & packaged. I have "Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2002" and the programs has many bugs in its templates section which put little red squares where graphics are supposed to be on lots of cards. Other than that it's not a bad program and does offer some neat picture editing tools an effects with lots of publishing project templates for many projects including web pages. It also can use almost any clipart graphic format you find on the web pulse Microsoft offers a large clip art library on the web for downloading from. It also has quick links to Microsoft Photo site for posting your pictures on their web site. Printing is a snap because of the many paper manufacture templates it supports. Just a few simple steps like picking print to special or regular paper, set you printer special settings then what brand of paper and pick form there listed templates which then gives you the option to print one project for the page or many different ones. Making animated email with sounds of one or multiple panels could not be easier even if using your own pictures. To have objects move around takes nothing more than picking one of the preset paths or make your own. There are also many enter & exit effects and these can be set to any length of time you chose. You can pick to have a sound play for the page and/or for each object and the duration it plays. It's not Adobe PhotoShop or Elements but not bad for simple picture editing and making animated email cards. If you want a simple to use program to make Cards, Labels of any kind, animated email ..ect and play with your pictures specially if your buying it for the kids it's a very easy program to use but if your really into digital pictures then go for something more powerful like Adobe PhotoShop line of picture software.

I bought this program to make a website and it has been a big disappointment!!! After I click on something (to move, or edit, or whatever) I ususally have to wait about 10-15 seconds for whatever I clicked to highlight so I can work with it--It's terribly slow and makes working a drag. What's even more horrible is that it repeatedly freezes up and crashes my computer... I'm lucky if I can work in 5 minute incriments before having the program freeze up. Unfortunately, the book that comes with the software is nothing but a book of clip art images... It has no troubleshooting. If you want to call Microsoft for help, it gives you a Toll charge number. It also gives an 800 number in which you are charged "a fee". What awful service!!
And beware too--stores won't take back opened software packages due to copyright laws and such. So I'm stuck with this awful dud!! A total waste of money.
PS--The web templates they include in the package are very amateurish and a real disappointment too. If you're looking to get a good web-building program, I have used Microsoft's professional publishing program, Publisher 2000, before and was really impressed. I wish I would have bought that, even though it is...more expensive than Picture It!Publishing Platinum. The only good thing I can say about Picture It! Publishing Platinum is that the clip art collection is amazingly good. Other than that.... thumbs down!

I love Paint Shop pro and use it for nearly everything, but I also run Picture It Publishing for several reasons. First off, the lettering is superior to PRP. I get a sharper titling with this program, especially on small titles where PSP tends to look fuzzy. It is very easy to control. PSP make you know what size you wish things when working in layers. With Picture You, you just add the image or titles and then you can make adjusts of all layers at any point. Save it in Picture It format, and you can come back later and made changes and adjustments as needed.

Also, many people complain PSP is too complicated for them to learn. This program is very simple and provides you many of the features and effects you get with PSP.

So if you wish to improve your photos or create projects with them, but don't want the hassle of learning a complex program, this simply to use photo/paint shop is very nifty indeed!!

My daughter wanted to purchase publishing software for a Girl Scout project. I checked in our local stores for the best buy...number of graphics for the money and types of projects it could create...and I decided on this version of Picture It! So far, I'm pleased...we both find it VERY easy to use. Love all the graphics and it's easy to change existing projects...pictures, texts or effects. Especially like the ability to remove "red eye" from photos.

Was upset to see all the bad reviews after buying in the store. Anyways, decided to install the program right away and test it out to make sure all was working well. Glad
I looked at the other reviews. Turns out I can not even get the program to run on my computer, something is very wrong with it. Even uninstalled & reinstalled to make sure.

As the other reviewers stated, Microsoft is no help and has absolutely no customer support for this product. IT's going back to the store...

Bought this program because I had home publishing 99 and liked it a lot. Program takes up almost 3 gigs(!) with full install. If you want, you can do the minimum install (700 megs) and spend your day swapping the 5 cd's. Program is very slow to respond; 5-10 second delays after every click (Pentium 4 3 gig, 250 meg harddrive, gforce4 ti4600 ). Program also crashes quit frequently. But, the most annoying thing is the advertisements for scanners, digital cameras, books, etc that take up the left third of the screen. In addition, there is no way to turn them off. Called Microsoft tech support and was informed that the advertisements are hard-coded into the program. The tech suggested I purchase a bigger monitor (LCD -expensive) or that I disconnect my broadband internet connection (not!). That's when I asked for an RMA number. Sent it back yesterday after 6 hours of frustration.

I have used an older edition for some years and just loved it. Thought it would be good to upgrade with my new XP operating system.I paid for this program at least twice with all the tech calls I made trying to get it to stop crashing not just the program but more seriously the system as well. After my 5th call to Oregon, and an hour or more on the phone, still crashs the system. It is now toast as far as I am concerned. Reinstalled my old program and it works fine. Keep your money.

I have had this program and used it for a couple months now. It is absolutely awful! I have Picture it 2001 and loved it. Somebody broke one of my discs and I am unable to use it so I figured I'll just upgrade. This program does crash way to much. Try every project I have ever worked on. Picture quality is not there. Very little templates compared to 2001 version. It is a very sad product.

The packages says there is a 30 day money back guarantee. The thing is, stores won't take it back, so you have to figure out where to send it to. The time involved, cost for packing and posting are not worth the effort. So, don't even think about taking the box off the shelf!

I bought this porgram to catch two birds with one stone - I wanted to create flyers and manipulate my digital photos. There are better packages out there for the latter. Even Kodak's standard software that come with EasyShare cameras delivers 10 times better results. As to the flyers, the few provided templates are lousy. If you want to change them, the software starts to act strangely: test cursor disappears, some routine functions take a few seconds, i.e. marking text; glitches in graphic display and all other funny things described earlier by other users. It is ridiculously slow.

I found this program easy to use to create my documents, especially to incorporate digital pictures, but have difficulty printing. The file sizes are huge and the program itself takes up a lot of memory. I have tried printing at kinkos and several other printshops, all unsuccessfully. I will go back to microsoft publisher.