New Functions in Version 13.50

Dialogs

Unified Design

Most dialogs have been redesigned to simplify their handling.They now have a common structure:

• at the top there are the presets
• at the left side there are the settings
• at the right side there is the preview
• unten links die Vorschausteuerung
• at the bottom there is the preview control andOK,Cancel andReset

Dialogs Now Scalable

Dialogs are now scalable. This way it is possible to enlarge the built-in preview.
Additionally there are controls for adjusting the zoom of the preview.

Preview Now With Curtain Control

The preview built-in in many dialog now often has a "curtain control".By using this you can view the original image at the left side of thepreview control and the edited one on the right side. If the curtaincontrol is moved to the very left, a single click on the preview will show the original image.
Aside from that the full preview of many functions has been sped-up.

Show Extreme Values"

The preview now optionally allows to mark extreme values. Extremevalues are areas, that are very dark or very bright. This way you cansee at once if the corrections made were too strong.

Reset

Most dialogs now have a Reset-button.
By using this button PhotoLine will reset the dialog settings to thestandard values of the current function. By holding Shift while usingReset, PhotoLine will show the values that were used on entering the dialog.

Enhanced Functions

Golden Section

The rectangular lasso is now able to display the Golden Section anda grid dividing the selection in three parts.

Isolated Groups

PhotoLine is now supporting isolated groups. Isolated groups arealways displayed as an entity. Layer intensity and display mode aretherefore directly applied to group and not inherited to the childreninside the group. By doing this ugly effects are avoided, if partlytransparent layers are overlapping. The following example will makethis effect clearer:

Additionally isolated groups allow to restrict working layers to the content of a group.

New Picture/Layer

New Picture and New Image now allow to create images with 16 bits per channel.

Selection of Layers

If you are editing complex document, selecting a layer nested deeplyin groups can be annoying. Therefore PhotoLine has enhanced the selection tool:

• Layer Tool: By holding "Shift+Ctrl" (Windows) or "Shift+Cmd"(Mac OS X) layers inside groups can be selected directly.
• Layer Tool: By pressing and holding the mouse button, you canswitch through all layers au the current mouse position by usingthe keys arrow-left and arrow-right.
• Text Tool: Text layers are always selected deeply, that meansyou can always directly select text layers inside groups.

New Functions in Version 13

Image Processing

Channel Mixer

The Channel Mixer (Tool/Channel Mixer) allows to replace the singlechannels of an image by a combination of the existing channels.The Channel Mixer is mostly used to convert a color image to grayby using user-defined rules. Aside from that it can be used as an effect.

Easier Post-Processing of Photos

In order to simplify the enhancement of photos PhotoLine offers newautomatic and half-automatic functions. Aside from the already existingAutomatic White Point Correction there are now functions to automaticallycorrect the brightness (Filter/Automatic/Brightness Correction) and thecolor saturation (Filter/Automatic/Color Correction). Automatic Correctioncombines these three functions to one.
Furthermore there is the Correction Wizard to correct the white point,the brightness, the saturation and the sharpness step by step. Eachstep allows to optimize the precalculated values according to the current image.

Rectify

Rectify (Filter/Digital Camera/Rectify) removes perspective distortionsfrom digital photos. You only have to define four edges, that shouldbe straight. The rest is handled by PhotoLine.

High Pass Filter

The filter High Pass (Filter/Other/High Pass) keeps strong contrastsand converts weak ones to gray.By combining the result of the filter High Pass with the originalimage by using the display mode Screen the edges of the originalimage will be enhanced.

The Healing Brush

The new tool Healing Brush can be used to remove disturbing partsof an image. This is accomplished by copying the structure of asource area to the destination.

Mark Extreme Values

If Mark Extreme Values (View/Mark Extreme Values) is turned on, allparts of the document windows will be marked which are full black orfull white. This way excessive corrections can be identified immediately.
The options can be used to set-up the color used for marking andthe tolerance of black and white.

Light/Shadow

The function Light/Shadow has been reworked.

Browse

Keyword-View

There is now an additional tab in the Browse window: Keyword. This tablists all IPTC-keywords used in the active directory. Behind the keywordthe number of occurrences is shown.
The list can be sorted alphabetically and by numbers.

External Software

The Browse window now is able to call other applications in order toedit the currently selected files.

Copy and Paste

Files can now be duplicated by using the standard commands Copy andPaste. On Windows 2000 and XP Cut is supported, too.

Links

The directory tree of the browse window now lists links to directories, too.

Load/Save EXIF Data

EXIF data can now be saved as a separate file and afterwards be appended to an image file again.

Copy EXIF Date

If images taken by a digital camera are edited and saved, of coursethe file date is modified, too. But often this behaviour is notwanted, because sorting by date will use this modification dateand not the date of taking. Copy EXIF Date fixes this problem bycopying the date of taking stored in the EXIF data to the filedate. This function can be applied to every selected file or toall files in a directory. In the latter case all subdirectoriescan be included, too.

Change EXIF Date

If the internal time or date of a digital camera was not set correctlywhen taking a photo, the date of taking can be corrected by using Change EXIF Date.

Additional Information

The thumbnails in the Browse window are now showing additional information by adding small icons:

• whether the photo was taken upside-down
• whether there are EXIF or IPTC data
• whether the file is a Raw image

Furthermore additional EXIF data can be shown textually under the thumbnail.

Text Enhancements

Text Styles

Text styles are used for uniform formatting of long text.
A text style stores all attributes needed for formatting a text.There are two different kinds of text styles in PhotoLine:

• Character Styles
  Character styles contain all settings defining the appearance oftext like the font family, the size, the color and so on. Characterstyles can be applied to single characters or to a block of text.
• Paragraph Styles
  Paragraph styles contain all settings of character styles. Additionallyall options needed for paragraph formatting are defined: line andparagraph distance, left and right edge, and so on. Paragraphstyles are always applied to full paragraphs.

If a style is applied to a text and this style is modified later,the text will change its appearance automatically accordingly.
Text styles can be created hierarchically. This means a new textstyle can inherit all settings of another style and only differs insome points. Changing the base style will modify the settings ofthe derived style, too, if the derived style hasn't defined this settings on its own.

Spell Checking

On Mac OS X PhotoLine is supporting the built-in spell checker. OnWindows ASpell, an Open Source spell checker, is supported which hasto be installed separately. ASpell can be downloaded from:http://aspell.net/win32.
The spelling is checked while entering the text. Unknown or incorrectlyspelled words are marked red.
The context menu of a marked word offers proposals for correct spelling if there are any.

Crop Text Flow

Crop Text Flow is a comfortable way of splitting a text flow thatuses several text layers.

Serial Document

The function Serial Document combines a CSV-file and a templatedocument and creates a serial document. The template document controlswhich data field to insert in the result.

Miscellaneous

Support of Multiprocessor Computers

If you run PhotoLine on a computer with more than one processor core,PhotoLine will utilize these additional cores.

Support of USB-Sticks

PhotoLine can now start directly from an USB-stick. You just have tocreate a directory named "UserSettings" in the application directoryof PhotoLine (on Mac OS X in the "Resources"-subdirectory), and PhotoLinewill use it to load and save its settings.

The Curve Creation Tool

This new vector tool allows to create and edit new vector graphics in a single step.

Create Multipage Document

Create Multipage Document allows to combine all open pictures to asingle document. Each picture will be on a separate page.

Im- and Export of DDS-Files

PhotoLine is now able to load and save DDS-files. DDS-files are mainly used by computer games.

Windows: Set and Get Wallpaper

PhotoLine can now get and set the background image of the desktop.

Card Is Now View

The Card-dialog has been renamed to View, because it now additionallycontains a list of the opened documents and a list of the pages of the active document.

Menu reworked

In cooperation with the users and beta testers of PhotoLine the menu entries have been reordered.

Windows: Docked Dialogs Now Minimizable

Docked dialog can now be minimized.

Minor Enhancements

• Rotate Layer
  Rotate Layer offers now several types of interpolation.
  
• Working Layers With Display-Switch
  In the Attributes-dialog the working layers now have switch whichallows to turn off the work temporarily. This way the layer itselfcan be edited more easily.
• Color Picker
  The info-windows of the color picker can now be turned off by using the options.
• Import/Digital Camera Raw Data
  The import function of raw-files now offers an export-function.
  
• Standard Filter
  Most standard filter now allow a filter size smaller than 1 pixel.
• Image Noise
  Image Noise has been reworked and enhanced.
• Adaptive Soften
  The filter Adaptive Soften has been enhanced.
• Histogram Correction
  The RGB-histogram now shows additionally the single color channels, too.
• Optimize Contrast
  Optimize Contrast is faster now.
• PSD Import
  Histogram and Curves working layers can now be imported.
• PDF Export
  The PDF-export optionally exports only the printable layers.
• Grid
  The origin of the grid can be adjusted.
• "Change Layer Name" Recordable As Action
  Renaming a layer can now be recorded as action.