Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 is a discontinued

vector graphics Vector graphics is a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector display ...

and raster imaging software package developed by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

History

Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000

Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 was released in 1999 along with

Microsoft Office 2000 Microsoft Office 2000 (version 9.0) is a release of Microsoft Office, an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for the Windows family of operating systems. Office 2000 was released to manufacturing on March 29, 1999, and was made a ...

Premium and Developer, but came separately on 2 CDs. It developed from the

Picture It! Microsoft Picture It! is a discontinued photo editing application created by Microsoft. Microsoft acquired the intellectual property rights and full U.S. trade registration from RomTech, later renamed eGames, and released Version 1.0 of the app ...

2.0 engine's .MIX format and expanded further into vector imaging technology. It required a separate installation from the main installer for the core Office suite, and was also released as a stand-alone product as part of Microsoft's Graphics Studio line of products (Greetings, etc.).

PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2

It released the subsequent version called Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 to

General Availability A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

on October 4, 1999.

PhotoDraw Release Vehicles

PhotoDraw 2000 shipped via these release vehicles * A standalone packaged product composed of 3 CDs. * As part of Office 2000 Premium (CD 3 and CD4) * As part of Office 2000 Developer (CD 3 and CD4) PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 shipped via these release vehicles * A standalone packaged product composed of 3 CDs. * As part of Office 2000 Premium SR-1 (CD 3 and CD4) * As part of Office 2000 Developer SR-1 (CD 3 and CD4)

Relationship to the Office Suite

Both versions of PhotoDraw were branded "Microsoft Office Application," and considered a "member of the family," as were other Microsoft applications (most notably

Publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

) at the time.

Discontinuation

After PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 was released, Microsoft discontinued the program. Functional equivalent would be found in

Expression Graphic Designer Microsoft Expression Design was Microsoft's commercial professional illustration vector and raster graphic design tool for web images based on Creature House Expression, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2003. It is available free of charge fr ...

Purpose and features

PhotoDraw is a full-featured dual-type (vector and bitmap) graphics software application like

Adobe Fireworks Adobe Fireworks (formerly Macromedia Fireworks) was a bitmap and vector graphics editor, which Adobe acquired in 2005. Fireworks was made for web designers for rapidly creating website prototypes and application interfaces. Its features included ...

, developed for semiprofessional business use. It includes a vast library of clip-art, and a good collection of additional fonts. Its user interface introduced an activity-based approach (manifested in special graphic menus), a concept later evolving into the

Ribbon interface In computer interface design, a ribbon is a graphical control element in the form of a set of toolbars placed on several tabs. The typical structure of a ribbon includes large, tabbed toolbars, filled with graphical buttons and other graphical c ...

of modern MS Office and other applications. As positioned mainly as an MS Office family companion and a business graphical solution suite, it was not useful enough for home users, who are more interested in manipulating digital pictures - which are bitmaps - than creating vector graphics. Microsoft has responded by bundling Windows Picture and Fax Viewer with

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

, developing

Microsoft Picture It! Microsoft Picture It! is a discontinued photo editing application created by Microsoft. Microsoft acquired the intellectual property rights and full U.S. trade registration from RomTech, later renamed eGames, and released Version 1.0 of the app ...

, as well as creating

Microsoft Office Picture Manager Microsoft Office Picture Manager (formerly Microsoft Picture Library) is a raster graphics editor introduced in Microsoft Office 2003 and included up to Office 2010. It is the replacement to Microsoft Photo Editor introduced in Office 97 and ...

for Microsoft Office 2003 to expand on Microsoft Photo Editor. Furthermore, PhotoDraw was also not good enough to challenge Illustrator, the de facto standard for graphics professionals. For professional purposes Microsoft acquired, introduced and developed

Microsoft Expression Studio Microsoft Expression Studio is a discontinued suite of tools for designing and building Web and Windows client applications and rich digital media content. Overview Microsoft introduced Microsoft Expression on September 16, 2005, at Microsoft' ...

, a graphics solution suite but it has been also discontinued, leaving MS Office users without any proper illustration tool with capabilities exceeding those of PowerPoint.

File Format Support

PhotoDraw's native file format is .MIX. Photodraw can open files in these file formats: * PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 Format (*.MIX) * PhotoDraw 2000 Version 1 Format (*.MIX) *

AutoCad AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. ...

Format 2-D (*.dxf) *

Computer Graphics Metafile Computer Graphics Metafile (CGM) is a free and open international standard file format for 2D vector graphics, raster graphics, and text, and is defined by ISO/ IEC 8632. Overview All graphical elements can be specified in a textual source f ...

(*.cgm) *

Corel Draw CorelDRAW is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Corel Corporation. It is also the name of the Corel graphics suite, which includes the bitmap-image editor Corel Photo-Paint as well as other graphics-related programs (see below ...

(*.cdr) *

Encapsulated Postscript Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) is a Document Structuring Convention (DSC) conforming PostScript document format usable as a graphics file format. The format was developed as early as 1987 by John Warnock and Chuck Geschke, the founders of Adobe ...

(*.eps) *

Flashpix FlashPix is a bitmapped computer graphics file format where the image is saved in more than one resolution. Its design anticipated that when an HTTP request is sent for the file by a browser plugin implementing the format, only the image compati ...

(*.fpx) *

Graphics Interchange Format The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , see pronunciation) is a bitmap image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released on 15 June 1987 ...

(*.gif, *.gfa) *

JPEG File Interchange Format The JPEG File Interchange Format (JFIF) is an image file format standard published as ITU-T Recommendation T.871 and ISO/IEC 10918-5. It defines supplementary specifications for the container format that contains the image data encoded with the JP ...

(*.jpg,*jpe,*.jpeg,*.jfif) * Kodak Photo CD (*.pcd) * Macintosh PICT (*.pct, *.pict) * MicroGrafx Designer/Draw (*.drw) * Microsoft Image Composer (*.mic) *

PC Paintbrush PC Paintbrush was a graphics editing software created by the ZSoft Corporation in 1984 for computers running the MS-DOS operating system. It was originally developed as a response to the first paintbrush program for the IBM PC, ''PCPaint'', whic ...

(*.pcx) *

Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the industry standard not only in ras ...

Files (*.psd) *

Format (*.MIX) * Portable Network Graphics (*.png) *

Tagged Image File Format Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processing ...

(*.tif,*.tiff) *

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(*.tga) *

Windows Bitmap The BMP file format, also known as bitmap image file, device independent bitmap (DIB) file format and bitmap, is a raster graphics image file format used to store bitmap digital images, independently of the display device (such as a graphics adapt ...

(*.bmp,*.dib,*rle) *

Windows Metafile Windows Metafile (WMF) is an image file format originally designed for Microsoft Windows in the 1990s. The original Windows Metafile format was not device-independent (though could be made more so with placement headers) and may contain both vecto ...

(*.wmf) * Windows Enhanced Metafile (*.emf) * Wordperfect Graphics (*.wpg) Photodraw can save files in these file formats: * PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 Format (*.MIX) * PhotoDraw 2000 Version 1 Format (*.MIX) *

(*.gif) *

(*.jpg) *

(*.pcx) * Picture It! 4.0 (*.MIX) * Picture It! 3.0 (*.MIX) * Picture It! 2.0 (*.MIX) * Portable Network Graphics (*.png) *

(*.tif) *

(*.tga) *

(*.bmp)

Changes in PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2

*Improved performance and stability *New Batch Save Wizard *Setup based on the

Windows Installer Windows Installer (msiexec.exe, previously known as Microsoft Installer, codename Darwin) is a software component and application programming interface (API) of Microsoft Windows used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of softwar ...

engine *Web effects *Improved integration with Office applications *Windows XP Compatibility *Larger collection of clip-art and fonts *New File Open/Save dialog boxes with places bar

Use of the .MIX file format

PhotoDraw's native file format is ".mix", a proprietary format developed by Microsoft. Only PhotoDraw can save and load its MIX files and retain the full ability to modify those files. The MIME media-type for the MIX format is "image/vnd.mix"
IANA assignment for the MIX format

Product Lifecycle for PhotoDraw 2000 V2

*General Availability Date: 12/31/1999 *Mainstream Support Retired: 6/30/2004 *Extended Support Retired: 7/14/2009

Availability

PhotoDraw is no longer available for purchase from Microsoft.

References

External links

Microsoft Announces PhotoDraw 2000 on September 12, 1998

Microsoft Announces PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 on October 4, 1999

Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000 Version 2 Debuts in Office 2000 SR-1 Editions

Microsoft Product Lifecycle Dates for PhotoDraw
{{DEFAULTSORT:Microsoft Photodraw 1999 software PhotoDraw PhotoDraw Vector graphics editors Windows-only software