PhotoLine in English Wikipedia

[akeller]

Dear all,

in the German part of this forum gmhofmann asked for some help concerning a text about PhotoLine for the English Wikipedia.
The former article was deleted because of the claim that it sounds like advertisement.
I'm not a good writer therefore I translated the German text with Google translator and finally tweaked the result.
As I'm not a native speaker I would like to asked for some help, is somebody willing to put the finishing touches?

Code: Alles auswählen

PhotoLine (up to version 13 PhotoLine 32 or PL32) is an image editing program of the German company Computerinsel, it is distributed as shareware, and was originally developed for the Atari Falcon 030.

The program runs on various versions of Windows (98 and newer) and Mac OS (Classic and OS X) on PPC and Intel Macs. A specialty is the processing and combination of raster and vector graphics. It also has features like picture gallery, poster and label printing, generation of bar codes, creating charts and offers basic layout capabilities (document mode: For example, multi-page, print-ready documents). On Windows Aspell can be integrated, on Mac OS X the native spell checker is used. PhotoLine already brings a wide range of filters and effects, but can be extended by Photoshop plugins and the ability to import PSP tubes.

PhotoLine is working with layer technique, adjustment layer and layer styles. 16-bit images can be loaded, created and stored. Raster images can be converted into vector graphics. Recurring tasks can be automated, web-export facilitates the choice of image format, GIF animations creation or generation of buttons for web pages along with HTML code. The manipulation of PDF files is also possible and Unicode is supported. In almost all filter dialogs it is possible to manipulate single color channels directly. Beside CMYK, RGB and grayscale also HIS and Lab are supported.

Since version 11 it is possible to create dynamic Flash and GIF animations. Version 12.5 allowed the creation of 3D objects. Version 13.5 runs on USB flash drives, supports multi-processor systems and supplies character and paragraph formats, new dialogues with retractable windows, and processing of RAW files. A major focus of Release 14 is working with digital photos, modules for Raw and HDR are integrated. New in version 15 was the support of 64-bit operating systems.

The program is being developed in close contact with users and can be downloaded for testing from the manufacturer's page. The complete installation requires approximately 20 MB on a PC, 40 MB on a Mac (due to Universal Binary) and is considered very stable.

Thanks in advance,
Andreas

[bkh]

Frankly, I don't think that this will do. The last Wikipedia article has been deleted because it was considered pure advertising, and I think that the same could be said about the English version. Also, it's below the English Wikipedia's standards in that it doesn't contain references.

Otoh, it would be important to have PhotoLine in the English Wikipedia, especially because it is a prerequisite to adding it to the list/comparison of raster image editors.

A while ago, therefore, I started making a draft of an English Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BKH77/Photoline, not sure if you can view or edit it) but then I somehow forgot about it . I think in order to avoid being accused of advertising, it's necessary to add some positive and negative criticisms from (preferably English) PL reviews. But if someone prefers to have a fresh start, please feel free to.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[akeller]

Hi Burkhard,

it is possible to edit your draft.
I think your way is for sure the better one.
Hopefully there will be some help because I guess an English article would be helpful for PhotoLine.

Andreas

[ono]

It is all about making PhotoLine more popular and visible to wider audience, right? Having decent Wikipedia entry is really good idea. Nevertheless everyone reading the entry and comparison with other programs will finally reach the PhotoLine website, which IMHO looks "bit" outdated comparing to competition and IMHO discourages from trying product it advertises. So all the effort of making wiki entry may be wasted.

Take a look at the others:
http://www.adobe.com/pl/products/photoshopfamily.html
http://www.pixelmator.com/
http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/
http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/
http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

PhotoLine is just more powerful than any of the others, including Photoshop. But how the newcomer can tell that? If there are no screencasts, books, tutorials, just few sample simple designs. The ideal would be if the user comes to the PL website and says: "Wow you can really do such awesome things with PhotoLine? I am buying that!"

[bkh]

it is possible to edit your draft.

Thanks, Andreas, for your prompt feedback. In that case, it might be the best approach if everyone just edits my draft (probably, you don't even need a Wikipedia account to do that), and once things settle down, I'll add it to the official Wikipedia.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[akeller]

OK, the last hours I made some changes. It is possible without been registered at Wikipedia to change and save the content.
Maybe somebody else will help - especially the version history might be a part for the Computerinsel?
Additional it would be helpful if somebody, who knows the secrets of Wikipedia, could take care about layout. I guess I messed it up a little
Also I'm not able to include the icon from the German Wikipedia ... bummer!

Andreas

[akeller]

Thanks to Burkhard the new article is online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoline
(There is the possibility to rate the page)

[bkh]

I've fixed the spelling in the title – now at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhotoLine (but the other spelling should still work as well). Anyway, fell free to add/correct/change. You don't even need a Wikipedia account to do so. I guess it makes a good impression if there are contributions by more than two persons.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Herbert123]

I agree - the website *almost* put me off from downloading the trial, let alone making the purchase. But I for one do not judge a book by its cover - though most people do. The current look, feel, content and functional design is completely outdated. However, I understand that the devs are mainly concerned with making Photoline one of the best tools on the market.

Trouble is: in all my years as a designer (20+) I actually never read or heard about PL until a month ago, crazy as it may sound. And perhaps PL might have been mentioned in some of the pages I browsed in the past, but it never made enough of an impact on me to dig deeper (though the falcon version sounded familiar).
And, by the way: the SEO and the way the pages are coded do not exactly help either. Too much info on the home page is hidden in images, which is unreadable to search engines.

Documentation is another issue: it was quite hard to find anything of real value in there. And if I did retrieve the info I wanted, it provided too vague, or shallow information (in most cases, anyway). The tutorials on the website, though I appreciate the hard work of original creators, are fine for absolute beginners and novice designers, but the final results do not exactly inspire more professional users to have a second look at Photoline.

This sucks, because you know why? I feel Photoline is actually a rather brilliant image editing tool. I mean, the interface could use some modernization, but it is actually more powerful as a pure image editing tool than PS in most respects (and I teach Photoshop at a high level), aside from some caveats. I just love some of the stuff I can do in PL, compared to PS. (If only the devs would integrate a better brush/painting system, I could use it to replace PS and other tools completely )

It is all about making PhotoLine more popular and visible to wider audience, right? Having decent Wikipedia entry is really good idea. Nevertheless everyone reading the entry and comparison with other programs will finally reach the PhotoLine website, which IMHO looks "bit" outdated comparing to competition and IMHO discourages from trying product it advertises. So all the effort of making wiki entry may be wasted.

Take a look at the others:
http://www.adobe.com/pl/products/photoshopfamily.html
http://www.pixelmator.com/
http://www.indeeo.com/idraw/
http://bohemiancoding.com/sketch/
http://flyingmeat.com/acorn/

PhotoLine is just more powerful than any of the others, including Photoshop. But how the newcomer can tell that? If there are no screencasts, books, tutorials, just few sample simple designs. The ideal would be if the user comes to the PL website and says: "Wow you can really do such awesome things with PhotoLine? I am buying that!"