Brilliant program for making graphics

[oasisx]

When I first started making websites several years ago I used a program that came free with my PC to make the graphics, banners etc. It was Microsoft Picture It!, one of the earlier editions, number 7 I think.

It was absolutely brilliant, I couldn't ask for anything more from a graphic design program even though it was meant for managing photos. You could do absolutely anything with text, there were countless effects and the text was treated as a scalable object, you could add countless pictures on top of each other and create all manner of images.

Unfortunately I lost the program when I got hit by a virus and when I reinstalled it from the CD it was a mere shell of the former program with all the best features missing. I got the latest edition - number 10 which is called Microsoft Photo Premium but it is many many times worse than the previous edition (how is that possible?). So I went on and got adobe photoshop but I also found that this was very limited compared to my old program.

Is there any way I can get hold of that edition again? I would do (almost!) anything to be able to use it again, it made everything so easy and I have lots of graphics to design at the moment.

Any advice gratefully received.

[oddsod]

A Google search [google.co.uk] takes me to pages like this [bizrate.com]. It may take some hunting through the results....

[benihana]

If you cannot find it, i would really suggest trying to get stuck into photoshop. I would be very surprised if you really found it 'very limited' if you spent a little time learning what it can do..

[Harry]

You found Photoshop limited compared to Picture it?

Whoah. Isn't Picture it the one trying to be Photoshop?

Photoshop is an industrial machine. It doesn,t come with easy presents for most common tasks. But, hell, Photoshop will do anything you want it to do and more...

[oddsod]

>> You found Photoshop limited compared to Picture it?

It's not about how much it can do. It's about how much it can do with very little user knowledge. I had to invest considerable time to get reasonably familiar with Photoshop when my old image editing program stopped working. Till I invested that time Photoshop was pretty limited.

[jt007superman]

I use Ulead PhotoImpact SE, which came free with a twenty dollar version of clickart by Brouderbound. It has most of the features of Photoshop, but it's 100 times easier. It has a point and click type interface, and real time adjustments. Hundreds of undo's redo's objects, pre-configured graphic effects like 3D, blur, mosaic, etc... It's great.
I guess it's also important to note that I have used Photoshop, and believe it is the most powerful application for graphics, but I could no sooner pilot a 747 than use it.

[Marcia]

>>I have used Photoshop, and believe it is the most powerful application for graphics, but I could no sooner pilot a 747 than use it.

I'm still using Photoshop 5 (never upgraded) and find that for simple, basic tasks it's easy to use - far easier than PSP, which is very robust and multi-functional (and cheap) but complicated as all get-out compared to the earlier version of PS.

Added:
Seems that Picture It may be out there under a different name, if it's the same program. It's cheap enough as a clearance item at Amazon

[bizrate.com...]