Windows 7: MS Photo Editor

I'm a fan of the Microsoft photo editor that came with office, and I've been using it as my default image viewer for years. I wasn't sure I would be able to get it working on my Windows 7 pro machine but I got it to work.

In case anyone wants to know, here's what I did to move it from my XP system:



1. copy PCDLIB32.dll to \windows\system32\

2. create the directory \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Photoed\ and copy these files to it:
CHALKCHA.DLL
EMBOSS.DLL
GRAPHICP.DLL
NOTEPAPE.DLL
PEINTL.DLL
PHOTOED.CNT
PHOTOED.EXE
PHOTOED.HLP
STAINEDG.DLL
STAMP.DLL
TEXTURIZ.DLL
WATERCOL.DLL

3. create the directory \Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Grphflt\ and copy these files to it:
BMPIMP32.FLT
CDRIMP32.FLT
CGMIMP32.CFG
CGMIMP32.FLT
CGMIMP32.FNT
EPSIMP32.FLT
FPX32.FLT
GIFIMP32.FLT
JPEGIM32.FLT
MS.BMP
MS.CDR
MS.CGM
MS.EPS
MS.FPX
MS.GIF
MS.JPG
MS.PCX
MS.PNG
MS.TIF
MS.WPG
PCDIMP32.FLT
PCXIMP32.FLT
PICTIM32.FLT
PNG32.FLT
TIFFIM32.FLT
WMFIMP32.FLT
WPGEXP32.FLT
WPGIMP32.FLT

4. Import photoed.reg to your registry



Once I got everything in the right place it worked like a charm. No compatibility mode or admin rights required to run.

Interesting fix, thanks for sharing RAS230!

Cheers,

Walker
Windows Outreach Team

did you get it to read files larger than 3mb?
that is where mine stopped
see
microsoft photo editor problem

did you get it to read files larger than 3mb?
that is where mine stopped

I've been able to open images that were 7MB or more. I haven't run into a hard file size limit with photo editor (that i've noticed). I have gotten errors which say "Image is too large (too many bytes)", but I stopped paying attention to file sizes after I noticed that error being triggered by a file just over 1MB when I could still open other images which were much larger.

It seems like the limitation has more to do with how much memory is needed to display the image than with the size of the file on disk (see WD2000: Error Creating New Image in Photo Editor).

I'm guessing that the 32MB memory limit, like the limit on the number of open files (also 32), is not an arbitrary limitation that can be changed by a registry key or even a patch because the constraints were built into the program by how it was designed. If that's the case nothing short of a major re-write would increase those limits and that isn't going to happen.

Microsoft abandoned Photo editor when they came out with Office 2003. They replaced it with Microsoft Office Picture Manager which is not the same thing at all (file manager, not image viewer). The best advice you're likely to get from Microsoft is to use Windows Photo Viewer. It most likely handles larger images consistently. I tried it for a few days when I first got Windows 7, but I didn't like not being able to drag and drop several files at a time and it lacks the simple but powerful editing features photo editor had.

There are other options out there for both image viewers and editors. The last time I looked for a good image viewer I wasn't too impressed with the free options I tried. They all seemed to want to organize and manage image collections and not just quickly show me a picture then get out of my way.

That's why, even with it's limitations, I still use photo editor for my default image viewer. It's fast, simple, and 90% of the time it does exactly what I need it to. When I run into an image that's 'too large' and I only need to view it, I'll throw it in a new tab in my browser (which is almost always open already anyway) or if I need to do anything fancy I'll wait for photoshop to load. If it's an image I'll open often I'll use photoshop to save a copy of the image re-sized to something that photo editor can handle and keep the big file for editing.

RAS230,
thanks a lot for sharing, your guide helped me to solve my problems. Got very used to old photoed, glad I needn't miss it in the new world.

RAS230
thanks a lot, I first install photoed with an install disk from offpro97. install doesn't finish error regole id1095.
I can launch photoed in admin mode.
impossible to uninstall ...
Limitation: I don't have the option save as tiff (and ccit compression)
no change after registering your .reg.
do you have the option to save as tif?
thank you for your help

I have found all the files as directed by RAS230, but the following files can not be found in any Office 97 or XP installs I have on 7 different computers we have:

- BMPIMP32.FLT
- CDRIMP32.FLT
- FPX32.FLT
- MS.BMP
- MS.CDR
- MS.FPX
- MS.PCX
- MS.TIF
- PCDIMP32.FLT
- PCXIMP32.FLT
- TIFFIM32.FLT
- WMFIMP32.FLT

Where can I download these files?

I'm so glad to see fans of Photo Editor, which I loved and miss terribly. I've been using Microsoft Office Picture Manager which is good, but not quite as good as its predecessor, Photo Editor. Thanks for the download instructions RAS230. Rep+ to you.

PS What about the files that brucekrymow is missing? Do you know where he can download them?

Or they can be zipped up & emailed to my Gmail account... if that's cool??

(bruce krymow AT gmail DOT com)

This is interesting. For years I just took the 772 kb photoed.exe file and copied it to later desktops.