Graphics!........They are so much fun. I know that so many people find board games and card games a lot of fun, but my fun time is with graphics. When I first saw PhotoMontage 2000, I must admit that I wasn't quite sure what a montage was, or how it differed from a collage. Well, I soon found out!

A montage is a collection of pictures that you have in your computer that makes up, in tiny thumbnails, a larger picture. Let me see if I can explain that a little clearer. I made a collection of all my pictures, then I selected one picture, and with the magic of this application, I put all of my collection - hundreds of tiny thumbnails - into the picture that I selected. It turns out to be a micro-image photo. A Dali-esque creation of your very own. Just in case you don't have a lot of pictures in your computer, Arcsoft included their mega collection of over 20,000 images, so that all you have to do is select one picture and then use their collection to make your montage. It is really neat. Or, if you wish you can repeat a small number of micro images over and over again to make up your montage. PhotoMontage can automatically adjust the color of each micro image to match perfectly, the original color of your main photo.

If you feel especially creative, you can turn your montage into a game of hide and seek and randomly place your favorite image among the thousands of micro images, and then challenge everyone to find the hidden treasure.

Once you create it, the montage can be printed out on an ordinary inkjet or laser printer, or if you wish, you can have it made into a full size poster by sending the image to the PhotoMontage web service. The application gives you a lot of leeway in the look of the picture, because you can alter the size of the picture, the brightness of the picture, etc. If you don't have pictures in your computer, you can chose a picture from their collection, i.e. sports, nature, animals, etc. as your main picture, and use their mega collection to make your montage.

Now that I explained what a montage is, I should further explain that a collage is also a collection of pictures, but they are not micro-images.

I am sure you would want to know that you can use PhotoMontage with Windows 95/98/or NT. You need 16mg ram, but 32 is recommended; 20 mg hard disk space,100 mg recommended for rendering the montage. The price is $40.00.

The only negative comment that I have is one that I have with many new applications on the market. Their User's Guide is on the net, - and I prefer a hard copy. This means that I either have to print it all out, or at least print those areas that I need help with. However, the User's guide is quite extensive, and makes the application easy to use.