To use StudioLine for your images, they need to be imported into the StudioLine Image Archive. The Image Archive will always safe-keep the original image, so that you can safely experiment with the effects of the various StudioLine functions and not worry about losing your originals.
Locate your images on your computer:
Disk Drives
Computers and digital cameras are storing images as files. With Microsoft Windows, files are saved to disk drives. Each disk is labeled with a unique drive letter (followed by a colon) and usually represents a physical device - either internal to your computer or some external unit. Most commonly, drive letters ôA:ö and ôB:ö are used for diskette or ZIP drives, ôC:ö is the hard disk. Other drive letters (ôD:ö, ôE:ö,à) may be assigned to additional hard disks or your computerÆs CDROM or DVD drive.
Digital Cameras
There are two common interfaces to connect digital cameras to your computer. One method treats your camera like a scanner and uses the TWAIN interface. In that case, follow the directions supplied with your camera on how to copy images to your hard disk.
Many cameras are treated by Windows, as if they were simply another removable disk drive. Windows will assign an available drive letter (e.g., ôE:ö) as soon as your camera is connected and your pictures are immediately available to StudioLine.
Folders
Managing hundreds or thousands of images, documents, programs and other files on your computer would quickly become confusing. ThatÆs why Windows organizes files in folders. In many cases, larger folders are further divided into sub-folders.
It may be helpful to visualize a disk drive as the root structure of a tree. The very top of the root structure is the main folder û also known as ôrootö. The first level of branches represents any folders contained in the ôrootö folder. Each of the branches can branch out even deeper, representing another level of folders.
The StudioLine Explorer ôDesktopö shows a list of all drives connected to your computer.
Double-click the drive letter that contains your images, e.g. ôRemovable Disk (E:)ö for your digital camera, or ôCompact Disc (D:)ö for a photo CDROM.
The left pane of the StudioLine Explorer panel lists any folders on the selected drive. The right ôcontentö pane, lists the content of the top-level ôrootö folder on the selected drive. To keep the display concise, the content of other folders is not listed immediately. Double-click on any folders in the left pane, to open and view its content.
Typically, digital cameras store about 100 images per folder. Several image folders are then grouped together in a parent folder. To locate your first 100 images, you would have to double-click on drive letter ôE:ö, then on the parent folder ôDCIMö and finally on the image folder ô100abcö. (Of course, you would have to substitute the drive letter and the folder names with the appropriate letters and names applicable to your computer and camera.) To view the next 100 images, you would first have to return to the parent folder by pressing the button ôOne Level Upö:
Then click on the folder containing the next set of images, e.g. "101abc".
Once you located the images on your digital camera or your computer, you can drag them from the StudioLine Explorer panel to the StudioLine workspace:
Simply press the left mouse button on any picture.
Hold the mouse button while moving the mouse pointer to the background of the main StudioLine window.
Finally, release the mouse button and the image will be dropped on the Image Archive content pane.
This technique is referred to as ôDrag & Dropö.
You can also import multiple images at one. To select more than one image, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking the left mouse button on the chosen images. You may also click between images, hold down the mouse button and drag it across the list of chosen images to create a selector band around them. You can still add additional images to your selection, by using the Ctrl key.
See the chapter on Selecting Objects, for further information. [->LINK].
You can create folders in the Image Archive to better organize your images.
See the chapter on Creating Folders, for further information. [->LINK].
Once you imported your images, theyÆll appear as thumbnail pictures in the Image Archive content pane. DonÆt be alarmed by the small appearance - the images are stored full size and are ready for further use.
See the chapter Working on Images for further information.