Microsoft Digital Image Pro 10 Download
Joyce Buzard
Digital Image Library lets you organize your files to your liking. Images may be sorted by a wide range of critera, including keyword, date, size, file type, event, or camera. You can flag individual thumbnails with keywords such as for review or needs touch-up, and the program's default list of tags can be easily customized. The information associated with a thumbnail is displayed on the bottom of the screen and is editable by clicking an individual entry. We give Digital Image Library's interface a perfect score; it's polished and intuitive, and we never had to consult a help file to figure out how to use it.
Perhaps most importantly, Digital Image Library provides tools for archiving your photos. When you select the Archive button on the toolbar, a wizard appears to help you select photos and choose an archive destination: CD, DVD, or an external hard drive, for example. The program also allows you to schedule automatic backup reminders, so you'll never forget to safeguard your photo library.
To touch up an image, launch Digital Image Pro from the Start bar, or right-click a thumbnail and select Edit Picture. Even though all of Digital Image Pro's tweaks, effects, and project options are accessible from the Menu bar, we found the program's Common Tasks panel--located on the left side of the display--to provide easier access to most tools you'll need while editing.
To adjust your image, use Digital Image's toolbox. There's a standard array of automatic fixes for contrast, color, and exposure, as well as a selection of manual controls for sharpening, red-eye reduction, and the removal of wrinkles or scratches. Sophisticated tools, including layering, transparency, and a panorama-stitch wizard, allow you to do more than make a pretty picture. You'll also find a few artistic special effects and several preset borders and shapes to add to your image. These tools are accompanied by unobtrusive wizardlike walkthroughs that take the guesswork out of image editing.
One of Digital Image's most amusing features is its Project mode, a collection of photo-related activities that can easily distract you for hours. There are hundreds of projects; you can use your photos to create playing cards, magazine covers, stationery sets, labels, stickers, awards, albums, cards, flyers--you get the idea. We detoured from writing this review long enough to make a 12-month calendar and several sets of postcards. The process is so basic that almost anyone can slap these together in a few minutes. The template designs are attractive, if a bit simple, but they can be modified to suit your individual tastes.
We were less impressed with Photo Story, which lets you generate an animated, narrated filmstrip out of a series of static photographs. Entirely wizard-driven, the process begins by selecting the pictures you want to use. The next screen asks you to record a narrative; as you speak, you move the mouse to point out important areas of the image, then step to the next photo in the series. The program automatically generates panning and zooming from your mouse movements, but you can also manually specify which effects you want and when you'd like them to occur. Next, you set up the title page for the show and optionally add background music. Finally, you select the quality and encoding settings for the show before saving it. The process is fairly straightforward, but the resulting presentation didn't thrill us; still, if you want to tell a story and send it to friends and family, it's a perfectly adequate option.
All in all, Microsoft Digital Image Suite is an excellent value. Its sharing features are a bit thin, but if you're looking for tools to help you organize, archive, and edit your digital photo library, Digital Image Suite offers those functions. What's more, it wraps them up in a graceful interface that's simple for beginners to grasp and operate.
In the past year, China has honed a new capability to automatically generate images it can use for influence operations meant to mimic U.S. voters across the political spectrum and create controversy along racial, economic, and ideological lines. This new capability is powered by artificial intelligence that attempts to create high-quality content that could go viral across social networks in the U.S. and other democracies. These images are most likely created by something called diffusion-powered image generators that use AI to not only create compelling images but also learn to improve them over time.
Today, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) is issuing Sophistication, scope, and scale: Digital threats from East Asia increase in breadth and effectiveness, as part of an ongoing series of reports on the threat posed by influence operations and cyber activity, identifying specific sectors and regions at heightened risk.
We have observed China-affiliated actors leveraging AI-generated visual media in a broad campaign that largely focuses on politically divisive topics, such as gun violence, and denigrating U.S. political figures and symbols. This technology produces more eye-catching content than the awkward digital drawings and stock photo collages used in previous campaigns. We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale.
In its cyber operations, multiple Chinese state-affiliated threat actors have focused cyberattacks in the South China Sea region, conducting intelligence collection and malware execution against regional governments and industries. Other actors have targeted the U.S. defense industry and U.S. infrastructure, looking for competitive advantages to bolster strategic military aims.
Beginning in May 2023, Storm-0558, a China-based threat actor, accessed Microsoft customer email accounts of approximately 25 organizations including U.S. and European government entities. Microsoft assesses this activity was likely conducted for espionage purposes and has successfully blocked this campaign.
These influencers, who are recruited, trained, promoted, and funded by China Radio International (CRI) and other Chinese state media outfits, expertly spread localized CCP propaganda that achieves meaningful engagement with audiences around the world, reaching a combined following of at least 103 million people across multiple platforms speaking at least 40 languages.
The report also looks toward anticipated future actions from China and North Korea in the months ahead, as increasing geopolitical tensions fuel new threat priorities and adversarial strategies. With upcoming elections in 2024, Taiwan and the United States are likely to remain top priorities for China.
Microsoft Digital Image Suite 9 comprises two programs, Microsoft Digital Image Pro 9 and Microsoft Digital Image Library 9. The suite's look and feel are reminiscent of the entry-level Microsoft Picture It! line.
Digital Image Pro is the suite's core program for correcting and manipulating images. Like other Picture It! products, Digital Image Pro eschews traditional toolbars and palettes, opting instead for a simplified interface built around the task pane. The interface also has two dockable palettes for files and for the Stack, which is Microsoft's take on layers.
For absolute neophytes, the task pane is a blessing, presenting only the information needed for a current job. For example, the Colorize Brush task pane walks you through selecting brush sizes, choosing colors, and painting on a canvas. But experienced users will be frustrated: You can't bypass the hand-holding.
Digital Image Pro has lots of automated correction tools to eliminate common problems, such as red eye, crooked images, and poor exposures. And a number of retouching tools help inexperienced users clean up their photographs. For example, the new Smart Erase function removes a selected area while intelligently filling in the space with sampled pixels from the background.
Digital Image Pro has some very useful manual correction tools. The Adjust Levels pane, for example, has a histogram of gray values, as well as separate controls for shadows, midtones, and highlights. And the new Unsharp Mask filter lets you improve picture quality by increasing the contrast only along the edges of details in a photograph.
The program also provides several handy output options, including templates for printing multiple pictures on a single sheet and the ability to save images at appropriate resolutions for e-mail attachments or handheld devices. You can also connect to MSN Photos to order prints, photo T-shirts, and greeting cards. The program further distinguishes itself from the competition by including a number of ready-made projects, such as brochures and calendars.
Our testing revealed that Digital Image Pro suffers from several intrinsic limitations. For example, the Stack lets you adjust transparency and change the stacking order in a photo montage, but you can't assign different blending modes (like multiply or overlay) as you can in the other programs here. Likewise, Digital Image Pro's brush-based tools come in only seven predefined sizes. And with the exception of GIF animations, Digital Image Pro doesn't output sophisticated Web graphics, like Web galleries or JavaScript mouse-overs.
Digital Image Pro adds advanced image-editing functions while retaining an entry-level interface. But if you're looking for an easy-to-use, powerful image-archiving tool, Digital Image Library alone may justify the suite's high price.
The big news in this release is Digital Image Library, which delivers powerful yet easy-to-use archival functions. Digital Image Library imports images from external sources (CDs, digital cameras, scanners) and archives images to removable media. It also lets you catalog images without having to copy them to your hard drivea great way to keep a permanent, searchable record of removable media. Digital Image Library can sort thumbnails using several criteria, including date, size, and file type. More important, it can sort based on user-defined keywords and ratings.
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