Product ReviewsMultimedia software
PhotoLine is the work of German brothers Gerhard and Martin Huber, and upon opening it (and the application opens in a split second), it has all the outward appearances of a Photoshop clone. However, that's not quite the case, since PhotoLine is very much its own image editing application in that it also has considerable vector and typographical capabilities. You'll see familiar floating, stackable palettes - Layers & Channels for instance, but not Paths. Paths functionality is contained within vector layers, and there are functions to convert vector paths into selections (called Lassos in PhotoLine) and vice versa, but these are simply accessed from the Tools Menu in the Toolbar, or the right-click Context menu rather than from a Paths palette. Similarly you'll see an Actions palette, but no History palette: no big deal, since PhotoLine supports multiple undos via Command-z, which requires an extra modifier in Photoshop - something oddly missing in Photoshop. Text layers can have kerning, line and paragraph spacing applied to them, and there are also controls provided for flowing text from one frame into another, giving DTP-like capabilities. Also of note on the DTP side is that under File > New, you get pre-made templates for business cards, CD booklets, CD inlays, DVD inlays, fax cover sheets and even cassette and Zip disk inlays. The Toolbox on the left-hand side also shows broad similarities to Photoshop's. The most notable exception being the Layers tool. This is an honest-to-goodness selection arrow, that can also be used to move layers. No Pen tool, but again, this function is taken on by the vector drawing tools. These contain the usual straight line, freehand and Bézier tools - although the outline of a curve as you're drawing it
PhotoLine also reads and writes most file formats (it can be considered a replacement for Graphic Converter in this respect) and Photoshop files come in pretty cleanly. The one exception is text layers, which may not always work (although we experienced no problems). To counter this, PhotoLine also imports a rasterised version of the text layer. When writing to Photoshop files, you will lose text editability if the file is subsequently opened in Photoshop. One format that it doesn't support, however, is .hdr (High Dynamic Range) which uses 32bits per channel. Full 16bit support is included, however, as well as CMYK and Lab colour. While you can give up the notion of using any Photoshop keyboard shortcuts in PhotoLine, there's still a lot that will be familiar: Layer Effects are supported - 16 varieties compared to Photoshop's 10, as are Adjustment and Filter Layers - but this is where you'll see another side to PhotoLine: its dialog boxes. While some like Histogram (Levels) are well-thought out, many are pretty confused - and confusing to use. A little more attention here would be welcome. Layer masks are also included, although they have to be accessed from the Layer menu in the menubar - really, a button on the Layers palette would make the whole exercise a lot easier. These work more or less as you would imagine they would, except that you can add Layer Masks to Background layers and you can also have multiple bitmap masks for each layer. One area where PhotoLine is in desperate need of attention is its documentation. Given that the program strays so far from industry standards in certain areas, the help could be a lot more expansive. The English can also be a little 'quaint' at times, but there is a forum which is quite active if you have any pressing questions. However, the big plus for this program is its tiny €59 (£45) price, and the fact that it requires no mind-numbing activation, making it useful application to keep on a MacBook if you're constantly on the go - although a little more synergy with Photoshop's interface and keyboard shortcuts would pay great dividends. By Tim Danaher |
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