ZdNetItalia : PhotoLine

Use a powerful image-processing package
If you still haven't found the right image processing and painting software for your 32-bit Windows system, try PhotoLine. This well-done program is chock full of bells and whistles, plus it supports nearly every popular raster and vector format. Use several built-in special-effects filters, including an excellent USM filter tool. Industry-standard 8bf plug-in filters are supported as well. You'll also find a histogram, the ability to replace colors and swap color planes, 8-bit masks, image conversion, color reduction, image projection on 3D surfaces, image morphing on a grid, and image rotation and scaling. Numerous input and output options are offered, including support for 16- and 32-bit TWAIN interfaces for scanning and downloading images from digital cameras; calibration of various parameters before printing; HPGL output of vector graphics; loading, processing, and saving of CMYK images; quadruple color separation; and saving of single color planes. The program also includes many easy-to-use paint, draw, and text functions, such as painting with user-defined brushes, variable tool sizes, a color picker, intelligent automask, color gradients, vector text, a stamp option, and flood filling. Other features include OLE2 support, docking dialog boxes with hide functions, a variable number of undo steps, zoom and unzoom functions, a vector editor for shapes and texts, a powerful multiple-layer option (limited only by the amount of memory), an image browser, and support for pressure-sensitive graphic tablets. PhotoLine's well-designed interface can be displayed in English or German, with easy access to its painting power (which just might give that other well-known shareware paint program a run for its money). You can try out this evaluation edition for 30 days. Reviewed on Jul 10 1998.