I have used Adobe Photoshop, and Paint Shop Pro in the past as my main image editing software, and have been very satisfied with them. In the past, I occasionally used the Microsoft Photo Editor, which was very basic and very simple to use, to make quick touch-ups to images.

When I purchased the Microsoft Office 2000 Premium package I decided to try out the Photo Editor 2000, since it came with the software and I had heard it could do all sorts of fancy 2D and 3D image manipulation.

I have never been more disappointed with any software I have ever used!

The software is a memory PIG - both in its installation size and operational memory usage. It is dog slow! It took over 10 minutes to render a 640x480 3D image, and was four times slower than Photoshop when using an IDENTICAL plugin!

The features are extremely hard to find, and I have yet to figure out how to create a transparent GIF (I know it is capable of doing this.)

Some of the features are really neat, though. The ability to use Photoshop plugins (sort of an industry standard for these packages) and the automated 3D image creation are kind of neat. They, unfortunately, are way to slow to be of any value. There are some neat "canned" text features - but these are hard to use, at best, and not upgradeable.

Also, even with a really fast 400 MHZ PC (fast video, 100 MHZ bus, etc.) you can do nothing else while this pig is processing an image (other have a few beers while watching a ballgame - and not with your TV card, since it wont work while processing an image!)

My recommendation - STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIG at all costs! Not worth it at ANY price! Use Paint Shop Pro for a cheap alternative (accepts almost all Photoshop plugins), or use Adobe Photoshop to get all the bells and whistles.

Amount I paid is not relevant, as it was part of the entire suite.



Recommended: No