A review of PhotoLine for the Mac

[OldRadioGuy]

Occasionally I do a Google search to check on the latest reviews PhotoLine is receiving from the online community.

Often it’s obvious the reviewer has not looked at the software closely enough to really understand it, and PL gets downgraded because of its non-Photoshop feel. Where readers get a chance to respond, their reviews are usually higher than the site reviews.

Most of these reviews are for the PC version of PhotoLine. But in my latest check, I found a review written earlier this year for the Macintosh version of PL.

On Tonio Loewald’s blog, “inconsequence,” http://loewald.com/blog/?tag=photoline he writes of Mac world alternatives to Photoshop, comparing PhotoLine, Apple’s Acorn and Pixelmator.

PL gets good marks in most of Loewald’s 17 categories of comparison and a peer-leading rating in three of those evaluation classifications – Image Format Support, Architecture and File Format Support.

In the Ugly Stuff category, PL is downgraded because of its icon. The gradient tool is praised in Cute Stuff for being “full-featured…launches amazingly fast.”

In Online Community, Loewald writes of an “active community” but some (Lame) tutorials.

This is one evaluation where I would disagree with “inconsequence.” The PL tutorials in English are not just lame -- they're downright bad. They look obsolete by at least 10 years.

This is a flaw in selling this powerful photo editing + program. At least on the English side, there should be new and better tutorials – on YouTube, for example. They would be a big help in making PhotoLine more appealing to a new market.

Bob

[greenmorpher]

Weird! He bags a program because of its icon??? Personally, and I'm on a Mac, I prefer PL's icon to many others -- it is distinctive and immediately spotted n the dock. The sort of icon Graphic Converter now offers, for example, with a couple of pages and a tool, is commonplace on Mac and thus confusing. And what's so great about the Acorn icon? t is quite distinctive, but apart from that, neither the icon nor the name shout "graphics program". They could be anything, including a real estate agency.

Then he dismisses the web export functions which are much more extensive than offered by either of the other two -- because he doesn't use them and hasn't checked out that they work. Pathetic. (Actually, I just can't understand why you can't build a complete website in PL. But hey ….)

He is right about the tutorials. You, Bob, are even more right about them! Add the manual. it and the itnerface have got botter but there is still some way to go.

He makes an issue of supporting Core Image stuff on the Mac. Judging by the programs I have looked at over years which support Core Image, that stuff really isn't so brilliant. A big plus for PL should be that it doesn't support Core Image (neither does Photoshop, of course) and thus it offers a full range of filters!

As for his statement that PhotoLine "supports Photoshop plug-ins" -- that should be a huge plus too. Instead of pointing out what a huge advantage this is for anyone who wants to extend the program's capabilities (and noting that a lot of work done in the very expensive Photoshop actually isn't Photoshop doing the job but very expensive plug-ins), he waxes enthusiastic about being able to write your own plug-ins in Acorn!!! That's insane!

In reality, PhotoLine should be getting top marks in this comparison. It is the standard against which the other two fall down, yet he rates it below them because he gives as much weight to such things as the appearance of the icon (his subjective judgement) and compliance with Core Image as he does to having the most comprehensive tool set for everything -- real world functionality.

Of course, this is the problem with relying on others to spread the word about your product -- they will say what they like and it might be quite silly. To build sales, the Hubers need to do stuff like spend some serious time developing new and better tutorials to demonstrate various tools (or paying someone to do them), upgrading the manual (it's a graphics program, folks, let's get more graphics in there), and smoothing out he interface -- and most importantly, getting the word around to lots of forums, etc. I'm currently mentioning PhotoLine at every opportunity on the dpreview forums (mainly photographic -- e.g. http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1041).

You see Loewald's weirdness appearing again when you look at his piece on substitutes for CS5. The best substitute is CS5 Academic, he says. Well, what a genius! Of course, you can't get that drastically cut price unless you can prove academic status. And all he's talking about is price, not real world functionality. All those big, heavyweight programs. This guy is suggesting they're good but he hasn't even explored PL's web options because he doesn't do that stuff? He needs to take a look at himself -- and ordinary users. I would suggest 95% -- maybe 99% -- of CS5 users don't need anything like all the functionality they have bought, but they can't avoid buying it because Adobe has gained such a dominant position in the marketplace. Sure, there is no real, live (see next paragraph) alternative to the bundle on Mac now -- but there sure are some excellent alternatives on Windows.

Incidentally, I use the fully integrated (everything happens in the one window) Canvas X, now supplemented by PhotoLine, as my CS alternative -- raster, vector, DTP, Web design, etc., etc. tool. Development of Canvas for Mac stopped half a decade ago; it continues for Windows, which now has Canvas 12. The joke is that ACD took over Canvas but won't develop its raster capabilities because it wants to force Canvas users to go to its ACDSee Pro for raster -- which means they downgrade Canvas's integration advantage. That, of course, leaves the way open for PhotoLine, as in my case, other other capable raster editors.

Cheers, geoff

Geoffrey Heard
The Ad-Doctor-Online
http://www.ad-doctor-online.com
The Worsley Press

[bkh]

Weird! He bags a program because of its icon??? Personally, and I'm on a Mac, I prefer PL's icon to many others -- it is distinctive and immediately spotted n the dock. The sort of icon Graphic Converter now offers, for example, with a couple of pages and a tool, is commonplace on Mac and thus confusing. And what's so great about the Acorn icon? t is quite distinctive, but apart from that, neither the icon nor the name shout "graphics program". They could be anything, including a real estate agency.

Yes, you are right, his comment on the icon is a bit ridiculous. Otoh, I think that his overall judgement about PL (in the summary table, the main article is about Acorn) is fair. To me, it seems clear that PL is by far the most versatile of the three programs, but that its user interface and tutorials leave something to be desired.

Then he dismisses the web export functions which are much more extensive than offered by either of the other two -- because he doesn't use them and hasn't checked out that they work. Pathetic. (Actually, I just can't understand why you can't build a complete website in PL. But hey ….)

I guess what he means isn't "Web export" by itself, but the other functions in the Web menu. Most of them are specialities for web designers, so for somebody using PL as a photo editor they may seem distracting and confusing. In my personal PL menu, I have placed "Web export" in the File menu because it's something I use very frequently.

He is right about the tutorials. You, Bob, are even more right about them! Add the manual. it and the itnerface have got botter but there is still some way to go.

Agreed. Add the "Samples" section and the documents that come up when you choose, e.g., "New business card …"

If PL's current focus is on photo editing, then the tutorials don't even cover the relevant topics.

The "Tutorials" section also refers to video tutorials on expertvillage. The link seems outdated, but if you search for PL in the search window, (or use http://www.ehow.co.uk/search.html?s=pho ... rate&t=all directly), you end up with a number of video tutorials. I have a personal dislike for video tutorials, so I didn't even try to judge them, but at least the topics look promising.

He makes an issue of supporting Core Image stuff on the Mac. Judging by the programs I have looked at over years which support Core Image, that stuff really isn't so brilliant. A big plus for PL should be that it doesn't support Core Image (neither does Photoshop, of course) and thus it offers a full range of filters!

He doesn't consider this a minus, though, as far as I can see. I wouldn't mind if PL offered those Core Image filters for which there are no PL equivalents … doesn't make sense to offer duplicates though. I guess PL doesn't use CI filters because you'd have to have (not entirely compatible) replacements for Windows anyway.

In reality, PhotoLine should be getting top marks in this comparison.

And indeed, this is my overall impression …

Cheers, Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Weird! He bags a program because of its icon??? Personally, and I'm on a Mac, I prefer PL's icon to many others -- it is distinctive and immediately spotted n the dock. The sort of icon Graphic Converter now offers, for example, with a couple of pages and a tool, is commonplace on Mac and thus confusing. And what's so great about the Acorn icon? t is quite distinctive, but apart from that, neither the icon nor the name shout "graphics program". They could be anything, including a real estate agency.

Yes, you are right, his comment on the icon is a bit ridiculous. Otoh, I think that his overall judgement about PL (in the summary table, the main article is about Acorn) is fair. To me, it seems clear that PL is by far the most versatile of the three programs, but that its user interface and tutorials leave something to be desired.

the problem is he says he will put in green in the table anything which denotes that program is the leader of the three. Right from the first entry, stuff for photo editing, he breaks that rule and damns with faint praise. The PL column should be pretty much green throughout.

Actually, rereading his piece, he is right about one other thing. I agree with him that the DRP stuff in PL is half-arsed -- Canvas kills it. But he refers to it as cluttering up the menus -- I disagree with that -- half-arsed is /still/ better than the nothing offered by the other two and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't clutter the menus.

He makes an issue of supporting Core Image stuff on the Mac. Judging by the programs I have looked at over years which support Core Image, that stuff really isn't so brilliant. A big plus for PL should be that it doesn't support Core Image (neither does Photoshop, of course) and thus it offers a full range of filters!

He doesn't consider this a minus, though, as far as I can see. I wouldn't mind if PL offered those Core Image filters for which there are no PL equivalents … doesn't make sense to offer duplicates though. I guess PL doesn't use CI filters because you'd have to have (not entirely compatible) replacements for Windows anyway.[/quote]
Nevertheless, he is talking about Core Image support in the other two as a positive. He ought to be making the point that it is not that great and that they are /restricted/ by Core Image. He ought also be making the point that PLs Photoshop compatibility for plug-ins is a /huge/ positive.

If you go to his site http://loewald.com/blog/?p=4022#comments (why doesn't this site open referenced sites in a new tab with their actual URL visible?) you'll find there is provision for registering and making comments. I'm not going to do that, but it would be good if one of you other adventurous souls did.

Cheers, geoff

[Koyaanis]

Most people today are what I call "twitter-heads". They don't have the attention-span required to comprehend anything beyond the depth and scope of a 140-character report of the lunch-menu of their latest pop-star.

When I show someone PhotoLine I will often tell them that G. Huber should receive an international programmer's award, yearly, for his amazing work. Such a powerful full-featured work-horse in such a small package. The kind of concise and efficient programming that was demanded of programmers when they only had 64K of RAM to work with (I myself had only 2K to work with and was published on that; every byte, nibble, and bit mattered). I've been using PhotoLine since v3 or something like that. And still, to this day, I find some new feature handy but hidden on some right-click, or CTRL-right-click, or ALT-right-click menu that I never right-clicked on before (PC version).

PhotoLine is not for the twitter-heads' "But it doesn't LOOK pretty!" crowd, it's for the "I'm intelligent enough and creative enough to learn the depth and scope of a complex and efficient program and actually get something done with it!" crowd. I had long ago posted a functions & tools commands cross-reference list for those wanting to migrate from PaintShopPro and PhotoSlop to PhotoLine (that web-hosting site now long gone). In making that lengthy list I was amazed to find that bloatware PhotoSlop only had about 2/3rds of the features and functions of PhotoLine, and there were no multi-step equivalents "to get there" in PhotoSlop either.

Sometimes I just think you have to be happy with knowing that you're one of the few that aren't led around by the nose on popular opinion and instead can think for yourself. Happy that in being able to think for yourself you managed to find PhotoLine. A reward for just having that level of independence and intellect. A secret club of independently-thinking smart people. This may not make the Hubers as rich as Bill Gates; but it sure puts them in a place of our honor, respect, and admiration.

[ono]

I agree totally with you Koyaanis. However you are looking just from the technical perspective. Right now to fully perceive virtues of PhotoLine one needs to be more programmer or engineer than digital artists. These you call "Twitter-heads" are having more artistic sense than common sense, so they first see the ugliness of PhotoLine, and they loose the will to look deeper under the hood. I know that very well, because I made 3 attempts before I finally decided to use PL everyday.

I am not afraid to say, UI of PhotoLine is UGLY, hell functional but ugly. Its icon is ugly, toolbar icons are ugly, the about box it ugly - all of them look like done in Paintbrush within 1 hour. How you can convince anyone that you can create beautiful designs with PL if it's about box is much below "an average".

Gerhard is genius programmer, but he is by no means an artist and he does not need to be one. Yet PhotoLine won't be noticed by wider audience unless it gets professional quality UI done by professional artists using PhotoLine itself. Most of ppl does not see the slight differences between what you call amateur and professional graphics, but the potential PL users DO. I can tell you that (where I am not an digital artists) I can make PL icon or its about box within 1 hour without much effort. On other side the professional icon design takes at least few days up to few weeks. I have read many stories and interviews with professional artists and all of them say design takes a time.

Altogether I strongly recommend to hire some professional (I kindly offer contacts to designers I was working with) to do redesign of PL graphics elements and PL website itself, also putting some outstanding sample designs. It doesn't cost fortune, it doesn't need to be "candylooking" like Pixelmator, but I am sure that once PL gets the "touch" sales will raise. The success of Pixelmator is the factor of belief that this tool give such outstanding possibilities, proven by lots of really nice looking designs and good looking UI, regardless of the fact that PL is much more functional.

Finally IMHO some of professional looking designs are: http://psd.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/icon-design/

Regards,
Adam

[OldRadioGuy]

I have posted a comparison of the interfaces of PhotoLine and several other photo editors in its price range at my blog, http://www.oldradioguy.org/2011/11/comp ... faces.html.

Bob

[podperson]

Interesting to see a thread on my review of Photoline (I've actually been covering the top Photoshop alternatives on the Mac for some time, trying to keep up-to-date with a rapidly changing landscape).

First of all, green denotes a major change. Bold represents an advantage. Red represents a disadvantage. You're right though, Photoline deserves more bold and I've made some changes accordingly.

On the whole, I don't see a lot of major criticism of what I have to say.

Is having a crappy icon a big deal? It is if you want to sell your software to designers. Photoline's terrible icon, much of its UI, and the website reveal a lack of attention to detail that does not tend to impress the design-conscious. It wouldn't cost much to hire someone to design a kickass icon for Photoline (or just buy something off the shelf, or heck use the one I offered for free). But, frankly, there's more that needs doing than just fixing the icon. First impressions matter. But look, if you don't think the icon is important then by all means ignore that aspect of my comparison.

How important is Core Image? Well, a lot of Photolines peripheral features aren't particularly well implemented (e.g. a lot of layer styles are rendered so poorly I would never use them). Core Image tends to do what it does exceptionally well and fast, e.g. its zoom and motion blur functions leave Photoshop's for dead in both quality and speed.

I'd love to be able to give up using Photoshop and switch to an alternative product, but Photoshop remains so far ahead of the competition it's not funny. (And yes, I despise Photoshop's icon too, but at least it's merely boring and not hideous.)

[greenmorpher]

Fair enough, poddy.

Cheers, geoff