The reason why I am writing about Microsoft Picture It is because I am very impressed with this program. I have compared it with other Programs which were much more expensive such as AdobePhotoshop and Photoshop Deluxe and although these programs have a host of features, for the average layman such as myself, they are too complex to use. Picture It Express is user friendly, and I have always gone back to using it because I know that I can do the things I want to do with my photographs easier than I can with other programs.
The layout of Picture It is easy to understand. The opening screen has a variety of options, and when you press ?Get Pictures? it gives you options that even a child can understand, i.e. from files, from scanner, from camera or you have the choice of starting a blank project or opening an existing project. Nothing complicated there at all. Your existing images are easy to find, and everything works as it should which to me is essential for a program. With the more complex programs, the options are not as obvious, are worded in an obscure way, and I really do not know what I am doing. Maybe if you are a professional then the other programs would be understandable, but to me they are not.
Having
acquired your picture with double clicks in the right places you then have options of what you want to do with the picture, i.e. add text. This is useful sometimes if you want to make cards from your pictures or CD covers, or simply remember where you took the photograph.
Touch up is another option, and here it gives you four further options, being Brightness and Contrast (words that I understand), Correct Tint (which can actually enhance a dull photograph, Red Eye which is obvious and which is easy to manipulate, and Remove Scratch which is also a very simply explained procedure.
When I bought the computer, I was new at computing, and I found this program out of all the programs that I had to be the easiest to use, and after four years of computing still do. I love this program with a passion, so much so that if I make errors in my photographs, I am never too worried because I know that I can correct them when I get home.
The next button on the taskbar is an interesting one. Special Effects. This is good fun. You have the choice between Picture Putty and Sharpen or Blur focus. Whilst the words Picture putty are not obvious, as soon as you go into that option, the things that you can do with a photograph become obvious, as the instructions are first rate. You can distort a whole object and make an abstract picture and here they were even more thoughtful. If you do not like what you have done, you have an option to undo it. This is great for people like me who are just playing around with a program. Many more professional programs do not give you that option. The other Picture Putty feature is that you can distort part of an image by hand. This is where the fun comes in. You can make short hair long; you can make ears huge, or give your best friend a big nose.
If you press the button distort by hand, you are then given easy options Smear, Bulge, Shrink or Erase. How clear do you want it ? You can bulge someone?s cheeks, smear the end of their hair to make it appear longer, shrink their nose a little, or erase parts of the picture that you have previously distorted that you do not like. Again, Microsoft thought of idiots like me when they made this program, and when you have finished, you have the option to keep your alterations, or to restore the picture to its original state. In the distortion process, you have the choice of how big a distortion you want starting with pin size and working up to large paintbrush size. I think this is very clever, and play with it a lot.
The next option you have on the main screen is paint or colour effects, and here you can turn your photo into Black and White, or add painting to it. I must confess I do not use this feature a lot, although I have on occasion. In fact there is not one feature of this program that I have not used at some stage, which is why I rant about it so much. So many programs are so complex that people are afraid of them and do not use them to their full capacity.
Moving onto the next button on the opening page, you have a choice of edges. This I use a lot. Baby pictures with a faded edge are rather nice, and a couple with a heart shaped edge for anniversary cards is pleasant. You can choose the vignette that you want, i.e. shape, and the intensity of the shading. Again, they thought of idiots like me and you can undo things if you do not like them.
Saving Pictures is a wonderful feature on this program. The button is labelled save and send. You can save to floppy disc, which I do not find economical. You can ?Save as? and then chose between all the varieties of photos that exist, and here I often save as JPEG format so that I can use the photographs for other programs. You can save as wallpaper, in other words so that you can use the photograph on your monitor which is nice sometimes, you can save and send and this feature is particularly helpful because it puts your photograph into an email and automatically reduces its size and here you have a choice between small and medium and it lets you know which is the best quality and which will send the easiest.
The print section of the program is really good. I like this a lot. You can print an individual picture, or a group of pictures, and it shows you possible layouts so that you have the choice. You can print a page of small photographs of all your photographs and often I do this if I want to share photographs with friends, but do not want to waste a lot of ink. By printing one sheet of all the photographs, they can then chose the ones that they want from that sheet.
On the projects side of things, you can use your photographs to create collages, cards, calendars, Fun stuff (like magazine covers), mats and frames.
Finally you can go online and download more features for the program, although I have not yet done this as I find the program fills all of my needs.
Picture It Express comes with the Microsoft Works Suite although I have seen it from time to time on Amazon and also today saw it for sale at $26 on Ebay. This can also be found on Priceminister.com, second hand at 15 Euros, which is about ten Pounds.
I know that programs have advanced. I know there are a lot of new things going on in technology, though this program does not seem to date. It is always there, ready to do the things that I want it to do, and in this day and age of technology, that is quite an achievement. For once, Microsoft got it right.
very helpful by (95%):
helpful by (5%):
