Chapter 20. Customizing the My Pictures Experience with Microsoft Picture It

Chapter 20. Customizing the My Pictures Experience with Microsoft Picture It!

In This Chapter

• Using photo-enhancement software to pick up where My Pictures leaves off

• Microsoft Picture It! 7.0 is a good choice for "Absolute Beginners" who want to perfect their pictures

• Touch up photos by adjusting the levels and focus qualities, and correcting red-eye

• Crop, resize, and create cutouts with your digital images

• Add text and shapes to your pictures

• Create frames , mats, and edges to accentuate and enhance your images

• Add special effects

We've covered all the basics for maximizing your enjoyment of digital images using Media Center's My Pictures interface. Now you're ready to move on to the advanced class: how to finely adjust your My Pictures image files using advanced Windows tools, such as the Microsoft Picture It! program.

In mid-2003, Microsoft "soft-launched" a new version of its photo-enhancement software, offering free downloads of Microsoft Picture It! Version 7.0 via the Windows XP Media Center home page. At last check, the company had started charging for the program, although mail-in rebates and other promotions are often available. There is also a Premium version (sold at http://shop.microsoft.com and other retail sites) that adds numerous templates for photo- related projects ”from trading cards to wedding albums.

Whether you decide to use the Microsoft product described here, or another of the many fine "third-party" commercial photo-finishing software products, you'll find many of the same basic features and capabilities. All should offer a range of capabilities for enhancing your digital images beyond the rudimentary "fixes" offered within the Media Center My Pictures interface, and the Windows XP operating system itself. However, Microsoft's consistent use of common Windows XP conventions, and the overall programming quality applied to most of its products, makes Picture It! an excellent choice for a photo-enhancement companion product to complement ”in fact, to complete ”the digital image experience offered by Media Center.

One of the things that makes Microsoft Picture It! a good choice for Absolute Beginners is the extensive use of wizards within the program. The opening screen shows a project selection wizard that lets you jump right into a productive, photo-related activity (see Figure 20.1).

Figure 20.1. This is an example of the many wizard routines found in Picture It!