Image Editing Software

Microsoft Corp. recently announced Microsoft(R) Graphics Studio Picture It!(R) 99, the latest version of the company's award-winning photo-editing software. As part of Microsoft's Graphics Studio line, a premier brand of desktop publishing and imaging products, Picture It! 99 consumer photo-editing software provides professional-quality digital imaging functionality for home and small-business users. With expanded photo-editing, image contrast and enhancement capabilities, greater ease of use and now two CDs of high-quality templates, project ideas and clip art, it's more fun than ever to turn good pictures into great pictures, calendars, e-mail postcards, business flyers and more.

From simple tasks such as eliminating red-eye and fixing scratches to putting a friend on top of Mount Everest, shedding those last 10 pounds or swapping bodies with a favorite hard body, Picture It! 99 is the only software needed to edit and enhance personal photos with professional-looking results -- regardless of skill level.

With two CDs full of ideas and artwork, Picture It! inspires users to do more with personal photos than they ever thought possible. For example, users can create fantasy vacation photos and then e-mail them, with sound and music, to friends; create personalized photo calendars as gifts; or help kids create trading cards for their entire Little League team.

Fancy equipment is not needed to experience Picture It! 99. With the cost of scanners and digital cameras falling, and with many photo finishers able to put photos on disk or post them directly to the Web, it's easier for almost anyone to edit and enhance their pictures with amazing results. Picture It! 99 even ships with several special offers from Kodak to get consumers started.

Since introducing Picture It! in 2006, Microsoft has asked more than 1,000 consumers how to improve the product to meet their needs, and Picture It! 99 reflects what consumers said they wanted most from photo-editing software. “We have managed to improve an already great product by listening to what users told us was most important to them,” said Jonathan Schwarz, worldwide product manager for Picture It! 99. “We didn't mess with a good thing -- we only made it better!”

Highlights of the new release include the following:

* More powerful editing tools:

-- The Quick Touchup 60-second photo-lab solution allows users to correct tint, crop, rotate and fix red-eye instantly.

-- The Clone brush can clone out distractions from a photo, such as a stranger in the background, or clone in another fun element.

-- Touchup Painting gives users the ability to paint brightness, contrast, tint, color and transparency onto a single object or area of the photo, making it easy to hand-tint a black-and-white photo or brighten face shadows in an otherwise well-lighted picture.

-- Emphasize an object or background in the image by applying a choice of special effects to particular elements in the photo.

-- Old to New automatically restore images to their original quality.

* Wider array of professional-quality projects:

-- Two CDs with more than 1,000 professional-quality images and templates allow users to create a wider variety of professional-looking projects.

-- The Save for the Web Wizard gives users the ability to prepare a picture or project for the Web simply and efficiently.

* More ways to print photos, from the printer and online:

-- Upload any project to Kodak PhotoNet or Fujifilm.Net and receive a standard photographic print in return.

-- Print All Pictures allows users to get the most out of expensive, coated inkjet paper by printing a collection of images on a single page -- no matter what their size or orientation.