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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 76.104.200.232 (talk) at 05:54, 2 April 2007 (Updated incorrect data about Picture It! and PhotoDraw!). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Microsoft Picture It! was a photo editing program created by Microsoft. It released its 1.0 version in September 1996. Borrowing from the Wizard User Interface concepts of 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 8MB RAM Pentium. Microsoft purchased Altamira (owned By Alvy Ray Smith) in 1994 and made Alvy Ray Smith a Microsoft Fellow.

The Picture It! file format was called .MIX for Microsoft Image Extension. Some have confused .MIX with the work Microsoft did with HP and Kodak on FlashPix (.FPX). .MIX extension was also used by Microsoft PhotoDraw. PhotoDraw's engine split from Picture It!'s engine after Picture It! 2.0. PhotoDraw then became a professional image editing application that shipped with Office 2000. PhotoDraw was first imaging application to merge Vector and Rastor in the same document space. PhotoDraw was considered the major competitor to Adobe PhotoShop, not Picture It!, however PhotoDraw never released a 3.0 product. Some speculate it was due to the purchase of Visio and the huge marketshare Visio had in the vector graphics space.

Picture It! was discontinued and is now known as Microsoft Digital Image Pro.

Products

Picture It! shipped many versions

• Picture It! 1.0
• Picture It! 2.0
• Picture It! Express
• Picture It! 99 (3.0)
• Picture It! 2000 (4.0)
• Picture It! Publishing (5.0)
• Picture It! Library

External links

• Official Website

• Microsoft software
• Discontinued Microsoft software