Product Reviews

Adobe's Photoshop Elements has been so successful because it manages to combine powerful photo-editing tools with an ease of use that allows even complete novices to get good results quickly. The developers of StudioLine could learn a lot from that approach. While this image database software provides some powerful features, its ease of use is woefully poor.

Things start off reasonably well, with a simple window that lists a number of primary tasks from which you can choose, such as importing photos into the program's image archive, editing individual photos or creating a slideshow. However, even simple tasks such as adding photos to your archive are complicated by the confusing interface and a reliance on obscure jargon.

Select the Load option to import some photos, and a browser window appears that allows you to locate your photos and import them. Unfortunately, the browser was obscured by a Hint palette that attempted to explain how to use the browser. When we tried to move the Hint palette out of the way, a bizarre set of arrows popped up in various parts of the screen, leaving us wondering what was going on. When we located

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our photo collection and tried to add it to the program's archive, we were asked whether we wanted to create 'proxies' for our photos. We had to head to the online help files to work out what was going on.

Fortunately, things started to make more sense once we'd managed to import some of our photos. The central part of the screen is used to display previews of your photo collection. There's a panel running down the left-hand side of the screen, along with a series of buttons that allow you to switch between various sets of tools. Click the Image Toolbox button, and this panel displays the main photo-editing tools including options such as red-eye removal, exposure correction, colour balance and a limited selection of special effects filters. There's a good set of basic editing tools, but StudioLine can't match the more varied artistic effects and filters found in rivals such as Photoshop Elements or Corel's Paint Shop Pro.

Again, the interface gets in the way. Each time you click on an editing tool, an additional set of options for each tool appears in a separate panel down the right-hand side of the screen. But instead of resetting itself for each new tool, the right-hand panel piles feature upon feature. After clicking on a few tools to see how they worked, we found this right-hand panel awash with so many different options we decided to quit the program and start all over again.

StudioLine has its strengths: its powerful search tools and ability to organise large collections of photos. Serious photographers with large libraries of photos can download the trial version to try it. However, its photo-editing tools are unremarkable, and it's hard to recommend it while its interface remains so chaotic.