Microsoft Picture It Publishing Platinum (5th Anniversary Edition) is the most complete, comprehensive application that I have seen on the market. Microsoft, in their boxed edition says they do it all, and they did deliver all that they promised, and then some.

The application comes with five discs. The first is a set up disc, the other four are art and design. You only have to install the first disc to run the application. I have a large enough hard drive so that I did put in all discs. I must admit that with the 250,000 images, 15,000 designer templates, and two million greeting card possibilities the installation took time. The built in photo editing tools compare very very favorably with much more expensive applications that devote the entire application to editing photos. You can crop, rotate, control brightness and contrast, correct red eye, clone, touchup, remove scratches, colorize, put in shadows, 3D effects, and correct focus.

The application, in spite of being humongous, is easy to use. They have formulated the application so that no matter what it is you want to do, they have given you step by step information on how to accomplish your goal.

The application allows you to create almost anything with step by step process. You can design and create everything from business cards and stationery to party hats. You can incorporate photos right from your digital camera or your scanner. You can add text to perfect your final piece of art.

You can tailor the designs with your own photos that you have already stored in your computer or your CD's, or, if you choose, you can opt for one of the 15,000 templates that are included. If you find that you are at a loss for words, Microsoft Publishing Platinum has included 3500 sentiments and 5000 quotes. In addition they have some of the most innovative font styles that I have not seen in any other application.

You can make greeting cards, multimedia greetings, invitations, calendars, newsletters, announcements, posters, banners, flyers, signs, labels, stickers, stationery sets, party sets, certificates, awards, web pages, activity books, coloring books, video labels, and on and on it goes. You can use the frames, mats, make albums, post-cards. There simply doesn't appear to be an end to all the features of this robust application. In addition they give you a manual with all of the artwork so that you can check it out and know in advance what images or click art you can use.

Requirements: Windows 98 or later; 128 MB RAM, 360 MB available hard disc space (655 recommended). Art and Design requires 1.5 GB.