Photoline

Professional image editing on the Atari?

Graphics professional Ed McGlone puts us in the picture... 

Ever wondered how the adverts in glossy magazines are produced?
You know the ones - the Kit-Kat ad with the couple sunbathing on a jetty made out of Kit-Kats or the Pepsi campaign where all sorts of things were shown with their colour changed to blue.
These images are typical of the output from image manipulation software, usually the industry standard PhotoShop, which is now available on both the Mac and PC platform.


Adobe Photoshop (PC version), notice the similarities 
 

Photoline is billed as professional image editing software for the Atari platform so can it deliver the goods? 
 


Photoline loaded up with a picture of one of my favourite bass guitars 
 

Inside a smart colour printed box there's three floppy disks with a 48 page spiral bound manual. Two versions of the software is supplied - one for ST's with Motorola 68000 processors and one for machines fitted with at least an 68030 processor and a maths co-processor - typically FPU equipped TT's and Falcons. 
Photoline runs in any colour resolution, including monochrome, although all internal processing takes place in 24-bit colour. In theory image editing could be carried out on almost any Atari setup - although in my professional opinion the baseline setup is 640x480 in 256 colours. 
Installation involves copying files from the master disk into a hard disk folder then entering your details into the registration dialog. 
Photoline has a modern GEM interface with non-modal floating tool palettes and dialogs - making a high screen resolution even more desirable.

In Use

Anyone familar with Photoshop can start work immediately - the programs are strikingly similar!
Each image is displayed in its own window and a floating toolbox contains icons for all major functions. Typically, clicking on any icon opens a dialog box containing options for that tool. 
For example, click on the Drawing tools icon and the dialog offers a choice between 
  • Paint, 
  • Flood,
  •  Finger,
  •  Filter or
  •  Copy 

- along with an option to set the intensity of the tool. 

Guitar cut from the background using Automask 
 
 

Intensity sets the degree of transparency - set to 100 painting with red changes all the pixels under the brush to red. Reducing the intensity means the colour tints the image. Additionally, the brush itself can have a varying degree of transparency fall off - the edge of the brush is more transparent than the centre. 


Image grid distortion in progress, I'll wipe that smile off your face! 
 

Some of the other tools available from the main tool box include: 

  • Flood: A fill tool for areas of a similar colour 
  • Finger: Smearing tool used for blending areas of the image together 
  • Filter: Applies any of the special effects filters under brush control 
  • Copy: Excellent tool for copying parts of an image under brush control 

An undo function is available - sometimes!
Image processing is memory hungry and Photoline tries to conserve memory by only filling the undo buffer on request. This means unless Undo is specifically selected before carrying out a process undo isn't available.
On balance I feel most users would prefer a conventional undo function with an option to disable it if memory is tight. 

Masks

The masking section of Photoline is extremely comprehensive and adds immeasurably to the power of the package. Auto mask is a clone of the familiar Photoshop Magic Wand tool which semi-automates mask generation. A mask is any area of an image protected from changes - the result of any process carried out on the image only affects unmasked areas. Click the Magic wand onto a part of the image to mask out a specific area of the image - for example a red car. A tolerance slider sets the range of colours affected - a setting of 100 masks out the entire image, 0 only selects pixels of exactly the same colour leaving room for manouerve in-between. Another very useful option enables small batches of stray pixels to be ignored which means a low tolerance level can still pick out solid areas of colour. Areas can be added to the mask by shift-clicking, or removed by control-clicking. Once the mask is defined it can be adopted within the image. During this process, the edges of the mask can be softened over a user-definable number of pixels. Masks can also be created using rectangular, circular or freehand lassoes and once adopted, can themselves be modified using all available paint tools. 

Text and guitar have been given a drop shadow effect 
 

However, I have one gripe. Running the 030 and FPU version on a Falcon felt easily as fast as Photoshop running on a 486 PC - except for automasking which is much slower taking around a minute to automask a complex image. This is very frustrating when trying to set the tolerance level for a complicated mask. 

Filters

Photoline includes many filters which can be applied manually using the current brush but are normally applied globally over the entire image - with or without a mask. 
The supplied filters cover a wide spread of image processing needs including soften, sharpen, several different types of smoothing, edge, outline, relief, noise, sponge - they're all there and work well. In general the filters are so powerful it's probably worth reducing the intensity level so the filter doesn't overpower the image! If none of the pre-set filters are suitable, there's a user programmable "Free" filter. Type numeric values into any of the 11 parameter fields then wait to see what happens! Some great effects can be programmed but unfortunately the manual skips over the concept behind this filter so experimentation is the order of the day. Free filters can be saved or loaded at any time so if you come across a good parameter set add it to your library. 

Mask inverted enabling different backgrounds to be applied 
 
 

Colour handling

Colour correction is another area of activity the busy image manipulator needs to understand. Often a scanned image lacks contrast or is too dark or bright overall. Photoline has some excellent tools for this type of work. The Colour Look Up Table (CLUT) dialog has four colour curves - one for the entire image RGB values and one each for the Red, Green, and Blue channels. Straightforward contrast and brightness for the image can be handled by two sliders and, if realtime is checked, the results can be seen as you work. Anything more complicated, for example, correction of colour casts, is handled by double clicking on one of the colour curves. A curve editor is displayed which allows the curve to be modifed by freehand drawing using the mouse, 
 


Changing the appearance of an image using Histograms, the CLUT editor and the Curve editor 
 
 

Rescaling

Images can be scaled by a percentage or to a fixed target size - optionally maintaining the aspect ratio. Impressive interpolation algorithms ensures great looking images even when reduced to a fraction of their original size. Enlarging images typically results in blockiness but amazingly Photoline adds pixels in an attept to smooth the image - the resulting image isn't as sharp as the original image but you can't have your cake and eat it. The same smoothing algorithms are also used in the Rotate command which allows image rotation in increments as small as 0.01 of a degree and the results are always good. 
 


The Outline filter in action 
 
 

Text handling

Text is well catered for in Photoline which can use either Calamus or GDOS vector fonts via NVDI (v3 or later). Typical everyday procedures, for example, placing a line of text with a drop shadow, can be performed without fuss. 
Photoline includes a basic vector graphics module designed to create and tweak lassoes and masks and can load or save Calamus Vector Graphic (CVG) files or GEM Metafiles. Vector paths can be used to guide the paint tools enabling smooth curves and straight lines to be painted onto an image - superb. 
By now you should be getting the impression Photline is a professional and comprehensive package and you'd be right. I've covered masks, filters, text handling and rescaling because these are the tools of the trade but Phololine has plenty of tricks up its sleeve there isn't space to cover in detail including: 
  • Projection of an image onto a user defined 3D shape 
  • Warping - the distortion of an image by projection onto a grid 
  • A whirlpool "Strudel" distortion effect 
  • Mosaic effects... 
  • 24 different brush types, with edit, load and save options 
  • Lasso copies between images via Drag&Drop 
  • Lassoes can be used as brushes 
  • Colour selection and palette organisation via Drag&Drop 
Most of the tools have hidden strengths which become apparent with familiarity. 
Photoline will reward anyone who spends the time to explore its capabilities.


Picking the Relief filter from the Filters pop-up 
 

No software is perfect but Photoline is the best image processing software I have ever used on the Atari platform. 
 
 

  • Product: Photoline v2.2 
  • UK distribution: 
  • Price: £169 
  • Pros: 
    • Standard interface, 
    • wide range of tools and filters, 
    • produces excellent results
  • Cons: 
    • Skimpy manual, 
    • slow auto masking, 
    • quirky undo buffer
  • Rating: 90% 
 
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