Microsoft Photo Editor is a

raster graphics editor A raster graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to create and edit images interactively on the computer screen and save them in one of many raster graphics file formats (also known as bitmap images) such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. ...

component of

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, or simply Office, is the former name of a family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. It was first announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at COMDEX in Las Vegas. Initially a ma ...

first included with

Microsoft Office 97 Microsoft Office 97 (version 8.0) is the fifth major release for Windows of Microsoft Office, released by Microsoft on November 19, 1996. It succeeded Microsoft Office 95 and was replaced by Microsoft Office 2000 in 1999. A Mac OS equivalent, Mi ...

. It features editing tools to texturize, create negatives, adjust gamma, and add transparency to

GIF 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. ...

images. It was replaced in

Microsoft Office 2003 Microsoft Office 2003 (codenamed Office 11) is an office suite developed and distributed by Microsoft for its Windows operating system. Office 2003 was released to manufacturing on August 19, 2003, and was later released to retail on October 21, ...

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 ...

, although many Photo Editor features were not available in Picture Manager.

Issues

Early versions of Microsoft Photo Editor, including the version bundled with Office 2000, do not preserve metadata from

digital camera A digital camera is a camera that captures photographs in digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film. Digital cameras are now widely incorporated into mobile devic ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and im ...

images. The Office 2000 version sets the

display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution i ...

metadata of

BMP file 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 adap ...

s to 0 by 0, regardless of what resolution is set through the program UI. Version 3.0.2.3 and earlier have a 10

megapixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the ...

resolution limit. Large bitmap BMP files can be opened in Microsoft Photo Editor 3.0.2.3, as well as, e.g. a 4000×2578 (10.3 megapixels), 15 MB JPEG image. Version 3.01 has an issue where, under certain circumstances, the program opens minimized with no way to maximize it. The solution is to delete the "InitialPosition" entry in the following

Windows Registry The Windows Registry is a hierarchical database that stores low-level settings for the Microsoft Windows operating system and for applications that opt to use the registry. The kernel, device drivers, services, Security Accounts Manager, and u ...

location: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Photo Editor\3.0\Microsoft Photo Editor The following script can be saved as a .reg file to fix the issue in Windows XP and later versions: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Photo Editor\3.0\Microsoft Photo Editor"InitialPosition"=-

Issues

See also

References

Further reading