Microsoft Picture It! Publishing Platinum 2002

Rating:
Summary: Does Not Work With Lexmark X83
Review: I have always been a user of Microsoft Picture Series software, until now. I purchased this newest release and to my dismay discovered it will not work correctly if you have a Lexmark X83 Printer. My previous 2001 version worked great. Only certain things on this new 2002 version will work with the Lexmark X83. Printing an Envelope will not work. It only allows you to print from the middle of the printer and any Lexmark X83 owner knows this isn't possible without running into a serious envelope jam with your printer. All of the other options on Picture IT! are blocked out. Microsoft says, it only supports certain printers. Then they said, they would say I had a printer problem? Funny, I uninstalled Picture IT 2002, and re-installed the 2001 version and everything worked perfect again. Seems like microsoft is delibrately leaving drivers out or hardware support is seriously lacking. Anyway, don't waste your money if you are a Lexmark owner. When I looked into Regedit, I noticed Picture IT 2002 supports very few Lexmark Printers. Only Z42, Z43, Z11, Z12, and Z51. Don't waste your money if you have any of the X series. Microsoft is seriously ripping people off on this version of Picture IT 2002!

Rating:
Summary: Weak Editing Tools
Review: I have been using Adobe Photoshop 3.0 for about a year. However, I have been searching for a new photo editing program due to the extremely cumbersome process for saving files in the JPEG format in Adobe. I bought Picture It expecting the same quality of editing tools and an easier loading/saving interface. Unfortunately, the editing tools in Picture It don't come even close to Adobe's. I was not able to produce a number of detail corrections that I can perform with ease in Adobe's program. Thus, I will keep searching for a program that can meld ease-of-use with quality editing tools.
The one good thing about the Picture It is it comes with a 30 day money back guaranty, the one feature I will be using.

Rating:
Summary: Very easy to handle, but...
Review: I love the program for its easy handling, and since using Windows XP, no troubles with crashings. Have but 1 problem: after making a personal calendar for 2005, that program won't open anymore, even after desinstalling and re-installing from scratch... Only through the first made calendar, can I access the programm. Take care if you ever use it. The red eye corrector won't work every time either, if so, change the size of the picture and try again!

Rating:
Summary: MS Picture It Publish It Platinum is a good program!!!
Review: I really like this program. I use it primarily for photo editing, but I am also beginning to use its other great features such as card and label making. I do not give it 5 stars as it is not 100% user-friendly. However, I would buy this program over again if I had to make the choice. You can't beat it for the money.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous publishing software
Review: I used to do a lot of family desktop publishing from Microsoft Publisher. I never liked that program because it was hard to use. Picture It! Publishing, on the other hand, is very easy to use -- and offers all the tools a family publishing fan wants. You can get up and running in just a few minutes, and the program is intuitive. Definitely the best such program I have used. I tested the program on Windows ME and Windows 2000 systems and it was rock solid and never crashed. (Of course, your mileage may vary.) I eventually installed it on a Win2k laptop and have been very happy.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't work with Lexmark X73 for printing envelopes
Review: I was extremely disappointed with this software. Although it works fine for photo editing and creating greeting cards I have spent many hours trying to get a envelope to print correctly. No matter how I put the envelope in the printer it just never comes out right. I'm either missing part of the picture or the text or it's not centered, etc. I've even contacted Lexmark because at first I thought it was my printer. But it definitely is NOT my printer but the software.

Rating:
Summary: Frustrated in Texas
Review: I wish I had read these reviews before I bought Picture It. It would have saved A LOT of frustration. I thought it was just me or my computer. I have had almost every problem mentioned by the other reviewers. I bought it based upon the name Microsoft. Silly me! This program is a piece of junk. Things crash for no reason. Things lock up. It takes forever to do anything. Little documentation or instructions. It is NOT intuitive. My old computer works great without it - I found after I bought a new computer and downloaded it off of the old one. Thank goodness I did not put it on the new one. Try Adobe Elements and forget this thing.

Rating:
Summary: Worth a try
Review: I'm a college student and was looking for a decent non-professional product under $.... I found the software easy to learn and a lot of fun. I haven't had any problems storing pictures or printing. There is a lot of room for creativity.
Pros- easy to learn, a lot of applications, tons of images, a decent price
Cons- shameless Microsoft plugs (I thought it was a joke at first), a bit slow (my computer is Pentium 3/ Windows 98/ 128MB RAM), no slide show feature, few options for collages.

Rating:
Summary: Problems with this program are directly related to COMPUTER
Review: In response to all of these reviews that I have seen on this product.... I just have to say that the majority of the "crash" issues are directly related to the specs of the machine that you are running this program on. I will agree that this program is a memory hog, any good graphics program is. That's the way they are. That includes Print Artist, Print Master, Print Shop... any good program after repetitive graphics and photo use, needs lots of memory. Any graphics design person such as myself will recommend that you do not even ATTEMPT this on a computer below 256 MB of RAM and will tell you that there can still be crashes if you are under 512 Mb of ram with a good processor. I had this program running ME with 256 Mb of ram and I had crashes. Part of them were ME crashes and part of them were Picture It crashes. But all related to RAM. Now I run this 2002 version on Windows XP with NO PROBLEMS and I have been running it that way since XP came out with no problems. Now I have a new PC with 512 Mb RAM and an Atalon XP 2800+ and It runs BEAUTIFULLY. I have not had a crash from this program since I got away from the ME operating system. This program is not buggy for everyone to the extent that people are talking about. It has more capabilities to the trained eye, such as filters, transperency, etc that are similar to Photoshop, but Photoshop is a $700.00 program. This one is less than $50! I have had this program since it was released and I still love it, it serves all of my practical purposes and required no training (unlike Photoshop CS, which I have taken 6 eight-hour classes for.) So it's a great buy for the money and easy to learn I hope this helps anyone who is looking. And as for the guy who said it is Java and runs in your internet browser? I don't know where he got that. This program absolutely does not run in an internet browser.

Rating:
Summary: Problems with this program are directly related to COMPUTER
Review: In response to all of these reviews that I have seen on this product.... I just have to say that the majority of the "crash" issues are directly related to the specs of the machine that you are running this program on. I will agree that this program is a memory hog, any good graphics program is. That's the way they are. That includes Print Artist, Print Master, Print Shop... any good program after repetitive graphics and photo use, needs lots of memory. Any graphics design person such as myself will recommend that you do not even ATTEMPT this on a computer below 256 MB of RAM and will tell you that there can still be crashes if you are under 512 Mb of ram with a good processor. I had this program running ME with 256 Mb of ram and I had crashes. Part of them were ME crashes and part of them were Picture It crashes. But all related to RAM. Now I run this 2002 version on Windows XP with NO PROBLEMS and I have been running it that way since XP came out with no problems. Now I have a new PC with 512 Mb RAM and an Atalon XP 2800+ and It runs BEAUTIFULLY. I have not had a crash from this program since I got away from the ME operating system. This program is not buggy for everyone to the extent that people are talking about. It has more capabilities to the trained eye, such as filters, transperency, etc that are similar to Photoshop, but Photoshop is a $700.00 program. This one is less than $50! I have had this program since it was released and I still love it, it serves all of my practical purposes and required no training (unlike Photoshop CS, which I have taken 6 eight-hour classes for.) So it's a great buy for the money and easy to learn I hope this helps anyone who is looking. And as for the guy who said it is Java and runs in your internet browser? I don't know where he got that. This program absolutely does not run in an internet browser.