New in Version 14.50

Usage

Brush Editor

The Brush List now has a built-in editor for manipulating the active brush.

Load/Save IPTC-Data

In order to save the IPTC of a picture or to transfer them to another picture, the Browse function now allows to load and save them.

Text Settings Now Dockable

In order to simplify text formatting all settings were combined in the Text Settings. Furthermore the Text Settings are now dockable allowing constant and fast access.

New Filter Calculate Average

The filter Calculate Average replaces an image by the average of all pixels in the image.

Management of Very Large Images

Especially on Windows there were problems editing very large images. But images tend to become larger and larger (panoramas, ...), so we rebuilt the internal management to enhance the handling of those images.

New Curve Mode: Spline

The new curve mode Spline is easier to use as the existing mode Bezier.

Miscellaneous

Scaling Function

The dialog for scaling has completely been redesigned. It now offers the most possible flexibility when creating actions. A layer can be fit in given bounds or its width/height can be adjusted to a given value. Of course scaling in percentages is possible, too.

Curves Can Now Edit Transparency

Aside from the usual color channels the Curves dialog can now be used to edit the transparency channel, too.

Minor Enhancements

• Crop Tool
  The cropping area can now be moved using the cursor keys.
• PDF-Import
  The PDF-Import is now more tolerant against defects in PDF files.
• PDF-Export
  If ZIP compression is used, RGB images with 256 colors at most are now exported as indexed images. This way the resulting PDF file may become significantly smaller.
• Layer Properties, Resolution, Image Layers, Document mode
  In document mode the resolution of image layers now directly shows and controls the output resolution.
• Text Layer, Column And Page Break
  Inside a text flow between columns and pages Shift+Return will insert a column break and Ctrl+Return will insert a page break.
• Alignment of Dialogs On First Start
  On first start the alignment of dialogs is better.
• Texte Input
  The formatting of text using extreme script fonts has been enhanced.
• Plug-In-Modules
  The support of plugin-ins has been enhanced.
• Plug-In-Modules, Windows
  If there were many plug-ins installed and activated, starting PhotoLine could slow-down. Therefore loading of plug-ins has been sped up.
• Crop Document
  Crop Document can now be used in picture mode, too.
• Browse
  Browse allows now to control the sorting direction.
  Furthermore the sorting criterion (name, date, file size, ...) is saved, so the setting will be the same after the next start of PhotoLine.
• Working Mode
  On switching from picture mode to document mode the background of the document will be set to transparent, if the background image has transparency.
• DPI, Document Mode, Image Layers
  If the active layer is an image, the DPI in all dialogs (Attributes, Layer Properties, ...) will take the size of the layer into account.
• Layer Tool, Transformation
  While dragging the layer tool is now transforming (scaling, rotating, ...) the whole layer instead of the layer frame.
• Undo
  Undo is utilizing the memory better now (especially in combination with actions).
• Drag&Drop, Windows
  On Windows drag&drop now cooperates better with other applications.
• Color Blend Tool
  The color blend tool now allows to set a blend mode in order to overlay several blends.
• Dialog Preview
  The mouse wheel can now be used to change the zoom of the preview in dialogs.
• Palettes, Mac OS
  Palettes can now be docked (attached to each other).
• Layers/Channels - Isolated Groups
  Isolated groups are now marked with an * in the layers dialog.

New in Version 14.00

Image Processing

Create HDR-Image

This tool was vastly enhanced. Images can now be aligned manually.

The Gray Mixer

The Gray Mixer provides a superior way to convert images to black & white by adjusting the impact of individual colors on the tones of the converted image. The Gray Mixer allows to assign weights to every color. A value of 0 % indicates that a color will have the standard weight. If all colors are set to 0%, the result will look similar to the one of Convert Layer Type. The strength of the Gray Mixer, however, lies in raising or reducing the contrast of individual colors to adjust the tonality of the converted image.

Beautify

Beautify can be used to give photos a soft, romantic appearance. Soften does control the softness of the image; both, Brighten and Color sliders, are controlling the glow.

Image Optimize

Similarly to the Light/Shadow tool, Image Optimize is used for lightening dark areas (shadows) and darkening bright areas (lights). Although similar both functions are not identical and one might be preferable over the other depending on the image. In comparison to Light/Shadow, the new Image Optimize has three advantages:

• It works faster.
• It can be applied as a working layer.
• Appropriate settings for the active image are calculated automatically upon calling the function. These automatic presets are quite conservative, so you may have to increase the settings for the best effect. The automatic presets provide a good basis to start out with.

JPEG Compression for Photo Book Projects

Photo books are getting more and more popular. But there is one problem: the file size of a self-created photo book can be enormous. For example if you have a 30-sided photo book with two pictures on every page and each picture has only 4 megapixels, the needed memory is already (30 * 2 * 12 MB), all in all 720 MB.
In order to reduce this amount of data, there is JPEG Compression. This function can be used to compress a single image layer by using the JEPG method. The resulting JPEG data will be attached to the layer (see also chapter 5.5 "Working With JPEG-Files"). If a document whose image layers have acompanied JPEG data is saved, the resulting file size is usually only a fraction of the normal file size.

HD Photo File Format

The new HD Photo format provides very efficient image file compression while maintaining high image quality. Furthermore it can save transparency, ICC, XMP, IPTC and EXIF data. HD Photo also allows for 16 bit data per channel and offers a lossless compression variant.

Common

Ruler Tool

The Ruler tool can be used to create editable rulers. The tool options control, how many units will be displayed on the ruler to be created.

The Crop Tool

The Crop tool is used to cut an image or a document to a defined size. It is necessary to first enter the desired size. The Resolution switch controls whether PhotoLine should scale the selected area to a certain dpi-value after cropping or not. As long as the Resolution switch is turned off, the tool options will display the resulting dpi-value for the current selection. For free-sized cropping please use the Crop Lasso option of the Rectangle Lasso.

Test Strip

The best way to achieve color correct prints with your own (inkjet) printer is to employ a fully color managed workflow. However, this approach requires color profiles for your monitor and your printer. Such profiles can be created by professional services or with dedicated profiling hardware. However, if you don't print photos that often, this is a rather expensive proposition. In this case Test Strip can help you. It takes a given image and creates several variations of it on one page. In the center of the page there will be the original,surrounded by variations of it . The Test Strip dialog determines how these variations are created. For example, you can set the contrast modification to a 15 % range, resulting in variations ranging from 15 % less contrast to 15% more contrast than the original. By creating and printing several pages with Test Strip the best settings for all or individual colors, for contrast, saturation and luminance can be determined. Now you can create an action and apply the settings to every photo before printing. Please note, that you shouldn't replace the original image with the corrected one, because the required settings will vary from one printer to another.

More Comfortable Dialogs

The dialogs of most functions in PhotoLine offer now more comfort as the previews can be hidden. Many functions in PhotoLine are very fast; thus it is often preferable to preview the result in the original document. A simple click on the shrink bar removes or restores the preview.