How to edit photographs with a tool you (may) have already paid for?

Microsoft Picture Manager is part of Microsoft Office 2007 (and the previous version too) in the Ultimate edition. It's not a fully featured photo manipulation tool but it is really handy as it includes features to crop, resize and reduce red eye and most important - it's "in the box" you may already have installed on your machine.

"Why haven't I heard of Microsoft Picture Manager" you may ask. Good question. I found it by accident a few years ago. The application launch icon is hidden away in the "Microsoft Office/ Microsoft Office Tools" folder of the "start" menu as you can see in the following image (which I cropped using the very same tool!):

The following image shows some of Microsoft Picture Manager's options for editing a photograph of mine that was taken from behind a frozen waterfall in Canada: