Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter [Old Version] | ![Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter [Old Version]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51CWDC84JXL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | From: Chief Architect
Category: Software
Buy New: $27.77
New (5) Used (8) from $23.88
Rating:  5 reviews
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows Xp, Windows 2000, Windows Vista
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows 98
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 045-PP-06-DV
UPC: 750839099149
EAN: 0750839099149
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: NO CALIFORNIA SALES, PLEASE! Factory sealed package looks great with a matching cover. Your satisfaction guaranteed with quick shipment. I will ship this item via FIRST CLASS MAIL. All domestic orders ship with Delivery Conformation (usually the same day). NO CALIFORNIA SALES, PLEASE!
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| Features:
| • | Fun and easy home-painting software; no design experience needed | | • | Visualize new colors, textures, and materials before repainting or remodeling | | • | Choose brands like Benjamin Moore, Sherwin-Williams, and Cultured Stone | | • | Simply take a picture and point-and-click to make changes | | • | Built-in photo editing tools; built-in library of 4,000+ materials and colors |
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| Accessories:
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS PICTURE PAINTER (WIN 98,ME,NT,2000,XP)
Amazon.com
What if you could see what your home projects will look like before you even buy your first can of paint? With Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter software you can see in an 
Change indoor colors with the click of a mouse. View larger. | 
You can explore creative options on the exterior of your home, too. View larger. | instant what your house would look like with a new color, or with new windows, flooring, countertops, doors, and more. See Better Homes and Gardens Picture Painter in action (Flash movie). With Picture Painter, you can let your creativity run wild. Start with a picture of your home, then quickly and easily start changing walls, windows, doors, flooring, countertops, and wall-coverings. You can even change your siding and stone style. With Picture Painter's intuitive tools, you can easily compare colors, textures, trim, and more to find the perfect interior or exterior combinations for your next project. All the changes you can imagine are just a few clicks away. You can use pictures of your own home or try sample photos. Simply specify which regions you want to paint, and immediately begin trying different colors. The whole process of visualizing your project is easy, and it only involves three easy steps: - Take or scan a picture. Use your digital camera and snap an interior or exterior photo.
- Load the picture on your computer. Copy your photo to your computer and mask the areas to paint.
- Choose colors and materials. Visualize new colors and materials on your own photo before you paint!
Picture Painter includes over 1,000 paint colors including paints from Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams. You can also experiment with thousands of materials and colors from several other brand name manufacturers, such as Armstrong Flooring, Warner Wall-coverings, Corian and Zodiaq countertops, Mohawk Carpets, Cultured Stone, and Daltile.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Its OK, but a bit clunky to use on a victorian September 19, 2007
Zanna (Carlisle, PA United States)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have a brick victorian home with lots of wooden architectural details that need to be painted.
Already mentioned in a previous review is that you cannot edit polygons once they are created. This a little annoying at first, but once you know it its easy enough to zoom in and make sure its just right before finalizing it.
My main issue with the tool is that I have not yet found an easy way to copy a paint color/transparency/brightness/etc fromm one layer to another. I have to pick the color for each layer manually. This makes it take longer to match up the colors that I want to be the same, as I am still trying to determine if the trim should have 2, 3, or even 4 colors.
Useful program - but a bit slow August 19, 2007
T. Larson (Ferguson, MO United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
The program works as advertised and is a useful application for exploring color schemes and surfaces.
Apparently, since it was written in Java, it is slow to start and is generally sluggish in use.
It is also fairly "minimalist" in its interface, you can add polygons and fill areas with a great deal of clicking, but I have not found a way to select and edit old polygons... or to move polygons from one layer to another.
Be aware, that to get a good result you should commit to spending the time to create a good set of layers, polygons and fill areas.
 Easy to Use May 18, 2007
B. Design (WA State, USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This software is very easy to use and so helfpul for color studies and sharing by email. Amazing what it can do and they charged so little!
Great design aid February 6, 2007
Mr. Opinion (USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This software is very useful if you are planning to do some painting and have no idea what colors you want. Using your own room photos you can change wall and ceiling colors at will. Great way to 'test' out a color scheme before investing hard work and money into paint.
Powerful -- not just a Paint program July 25, 2006
Dave (Raleigh, NC)
26 out of 26 found this review helpful
When I first saw this product I thought it was a more-or-less simple paint program. Not so. There are several features and tools which make this program quite powerful.
Overview of use:
a) Open a picture
b) Outline the areas you want to change, using the tools (see below).
c) Select a color or texture or surface (various paints, bricks or tiles, for example) to use in the outlined areas.
That much is probably expected. Here's what makes this software more powerful than you would guess from the advertising:
1) Fill tool. The first thing I thought of was "well it would be a pain to outline everything on the mantel in the living room." Not to worry. Use the fill tool to select a color region to outline and it fills in the area with the selected color or texture or material. The "fill sensitivity" is adjustable, meaning if the color you are covering is not uniform, that's ok, the tool allows some variation in the color/brightness to still be very effective.
Other tools:
a) polygon - uses straight lines and points to outline a region to be altered. All the polygon points (vertices) are adjustable.
b) variable-sized square and circle "brushes."
2) 32 layers. Put your trim on one layer, your basic wall color on another layer, your accents on another layer. Name them and sort them as you like.
3) All your hard work is retained. You spent the time to carefully outline your color areas in the picture. You sure don't want them to go away. They don't. Save the project file and the next time you open it, you'll see all your outlining is still there. You never need to re-do the outlining for the picture when you want to change colors, textures, etc. (and you shouldn't have to. They did this right.) Outlining becomes invisible in the Select Material mode, as it should, and becomes visible again in the Paint or Erase modes, as it should.
4) What about those shadows? The program somehow figures it out. If the painted plank siding on your house had lighting shadows before the alteration, it will have lighting shadows after the alteration. If all you did was change the color of the plank siding, the planks are still visible, and there's no need to outline each plank. Really nice.
5) "Erasing" tools. You just outlined the side of your house, but the new outlined region includes a window. No problem. Use the erase tool (polygon) and outline the window. There are also circle and square erase "brushes". There is no "fill" tool which _erases_. I think Chief Architect could easily add this to help outline tough areas. Maybe in the next version.
6) Perspective adjustment. This is REALLY important. Say you want to change your concrete driveway to brick. Outline the driveway, drop one of the various brick or paver textures down and it would look stupid without being able to adjust the perspective. Not only can the perspective be adjusted, but the textures can be scaled in size vertically & horizontally, offset vertically and horizontally, and rotated. This is really powerful.
One complaint, but I'm not going to bring down the rating because of it: the product uses Java and is SLOW. Slow to save, slow to update polygon points, etc. HOWEVER, I'm using a 5-year-old 1GHz Pentium 3 (Dell Dimension 4100), so YMMV on this point.
I think that Chief Architect missed the boat on marketing this software. The powerful features are not obvious until you open the package and read through the 37-page manual. Other than that, great job!
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