It was released in 1999 as part of the Microsoft Office 2000 family of products and was specifically designed for creating and editing graphics, illustrations, and photo compositions.

PhotoDraw offered a range of features including image editing tools, drawing and painting capabilities, text manipulation, special effects, and the ability to work with layers.

It also included templates and clip art to assist users in creating various types of designs, such as flyers, brochures, and web graphics.

PhotoDraw is a full-featured dual-type (vector and bitmap) graphics software application like Adobe Fireworks, developed for semiprofessional business use.

For professional purposes Microsoft acquired, introduced and developed Microsoft Expression Studio, a graphics solution suite but it has been also discontinued, leaving MS Office users without any proper illustration tool with capabilities exceeding those of PowerPoint.