This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 68.118.208.140 (talk) at 03:56, 28 September 2008. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 03:56, 28 September 2008 by 68.118.208.140 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 2002 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Graphics software |
| License | Proprietary |
Microsoft Picture It! is a discontinued photo editing application created by Microsoft. Version 1.0 was released in September 1996. Borrowing from the wizard user interface concepts of Microsoft Publisher, Picture It! was geared to make digital imaging easy for consumers. It was the first consumer imaging program to enable sprite creation, leveraging alpha masking (a concept published by Alvy Ray Smith, founder of Pixar, in 1978) while running on an 8 MB RAM Pentium computer. Microsoft purchased Altamira Software, the company owned by Alvy Ray Smith in 1994 and made Alvy Ray Smith, a Microsoft fellow.
The Picture It! file format used the extension .MIX (Microsoft Image Extension). The .MIX extension was also used by Microsoft PhotoDraw although its format was incompatible with Picture It!.
In 2003, Picture It! was significantly changed and rebranded as Microsoft Digital Image with the home publishing features removed and a focus exclusively on photo editing. Digital Image was also eventually discontinued in 2006 after the release of Windows Vista.