I'm wondering if perhaps you have Picture It Premium 10?

I have the 2002 version where you CAN do shadows, filters, skews, etc. and is very user friendly. Recently I bought the Premium 10 Picture It - was VERY disappointed and sent "not so nice" e-mail to Microsoft. Discovered you can't do 1/3 of the things in Premium 10 that you could do in 2002 version (and this was suppose to be upgrade)! My personal findings were it's nothing but photo management and advertisement for Digital Image Pro. Have removed from PC and gone back to OLD version.

Not much help, but sure understand your frustration.