bruceb news

Kodak got a bunch of publicity last month when it attacked Microsoft for not giving its photo finishing software fair treatment in Windows XP. (See my link and comments on July 7.) It was played up as another example of big bad Microsoft giving preferential treatment to its own services and squashing competition.

Microsoft and Kodak reached an agreement today, but that doesn’t matter. What caught my eye was that Kodak’s complaints last month were released on the same daythat Kodak announced its new long-term partnership with AOL Time Warner for photo services to be built into AOL’s software and massively marketed later this year as “You’ve Got Pictures!” In other words, the complaints were a ruse. […] continued

After months of speculation, Microsoft has now confirmed that Photodraw has been discontinued. There’s no obvious replacement. Photodraw was perfect for quick work with photos and clip art. Nothing on the market comes close for ease of use or breadth of features. We can keep using Photodraw – it’s not broken, and it works fine after upgrading to Office XP – but this announcement means that there will be no new release to deal with Photodraw’s shortcomings. And more importantly, it means that creating files in Photodraw’s proprietary .MIX format is a dead end. .MIX is supported by Picture It, but that program doesn’t have the features to replace Photodraw. […] continued

Adobe Photoshop is legendary. Graphics professionals can do magic with it, and they turn up their nose at anything else. I’ve tried to learn it repeatedly, and I remain firmly convinced it is the least intuitive, worst designed, most annoying program in the world. Did I mention that it’s incredibly expensive?

What do I use? Professionals and snobs, avert your eyes. I use Microsoft Photodraw v.2 for photos. It’s fast and easy and I can easily live with its limitations and quirks. And Microsoft Picture It Publishing Platinum is just great – it’s got all the core functions of Photodraw, plus tons of projects and wizards for greeting cards, signs, and lots more. […] continued

I know lots of people who are finding that working with images on a computer is hard and mysterious. It’s taken me years to get grounded – and all that experience has mostly taught me how little I know. If you’re serious about learning about screen resolutions and pixels and web-safe colors, this is a sample chapter from a book named Easy Web Graphics, with a wealth of basic information about the things you’ll need to know.