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Revision as of 07:40, 26 April 2007 by SuperMidget (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 9 (9.0.912.0) / ? |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Photo editor |
| License | ? |
| Website | www.microsoft.com/ |
Microsoft Picture It! is a 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 8MB RAM Pentium. Microsoft purchased Altamira Software, a company owned By Alvy Ray Smith in 1994 and made Alvy Ray Smith a Microsoft fellow.
The Picture It! file format is called .MIX (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 raster graphics 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 has evolved into what is now known as Microsoft Digital Image.
Products
Picture It! shipped many versions and editions
- Picture It! 1.0
- Picture It! 2.0
- Picture It! Express (part of Microsoft Plus! 98)
- Picture It! 99 (3.0)
- Picture It! 2000 (4.0)
- Picture It! Publishing
- Picture It! Library
- Picture It! Platinum