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Rating: 
Summary: Different, but immature.
Review: H&M Software advertises StudioLine Photo as a unique consumer-grade digital image manager that both beginning and advanced users will enjoy. While StudioLine Photo 2.0.19 is indeed unique from its competition, the program is too immature at this time to be considered as anything but a supplemental tool.StudioLine Photo separates itself from the competition through a unique storage management scheme. By default, the program maintains and works with its own separate copy of the user's digital image collections. None of the competition offers a similar feature, the benefit of which is this: if you accidently erase or mutilate some of your digital photographs in the Microsoft Windows file system, you will still have an original maintained inside the StudioLine Photo Image Archive. Similarly, if you accidently erase or mutilate your photographs in StudioLine Photo, you will still have your original files in Microsoft Windows. Users may specify whether the Image Archive should maintain its own copies on a per-file or per-folder basis, or by media type (i.e., different settings for files on the network, local hard drive, local CD / DVD, etc.). Advanced users will appreciate StudioLine Photo's ability to track multiple derivative files. The main issues with StudioLine Photo are that it lacks the manners and tools to smoothly and productively manage images inside (and outside) of the program's Image Archive. StudioLine Photo's user interface is very pretty, but inconsistent with the standard Microsoft Windows user interface. The keyboard and mouse do not complement each other in StudioLine Photo, as they do in Microsoft Windows. The main menus and several important functions, such as Search, are accessible only via the mouse. In most Windows applications the right-click of a mouse may open a content-sensitive menu, and keyboard arrow keys may be then used to navigate up and down that menu. In StudioLine Photo however, Right-Click may open a context-sensitive menu but the keyboard arrows keys will navigate the underlying screen, not the menu. Such inconsistencies between Microsoft Windows and StudioLine Photo may make it difficult for novices to adapt to the latter program, and make it at least somewhat annoying (if not unproductive) for advanced users. Of major concern, StudioLine Photo lacks a synchronization function. The program cannot monitor for new (or deleted) photographs from the user's image collections and adjust the Image Archive automatically. Photographs must be manually added to the Image Archive. Photographs must be deleted twice - once in the StudioLine Photo Image Archive, and again in Microsoft Windows. The ambiguity will almost certainly confuse novice users. Many users will likely find themselves turning to other software for the basic file-level management functions necessary to create effectively and efficiently structured digital image collection. Support for metadata in an image manager is important. Pictures may be worth a thousand words, but not always. Without aid, the casual viewer may not understand a picture's content or context. (E.g., What is this a picture of? Who are these people? Why did I take this picture?) Even the photographer himself may not remember these things one or five years later. Metadata is the great mnemonic device that helps users remember content and context by providing a way to store a photograph's caption text, category, timestamp, camera settings, and other useful attributes with a digital image. StudioLine Photo's Image Archive provides proprietary and user-defined metadata fields; reads EXIF metadata (the standard used by most digital cameras); and reads and edits IPTC metadata (the preferred captioning standard). On paper, this level of support is better than most of the competition, but the program is marred by a poor metadata editor. Instead of showing multiple fields at once, the StudioLine Photo's metadata editor allows users to view and edit only one field at a time, and only forty-four characters at a time. Users may enter metadata to only one image at a time; there is no batch support for quickly entering metadata to multiple images at one time, such as titling a collection of images "Office Charity Ball 2004." While the program can search through its internal database and EXIF and IPTC metadata simultaneously, information must be manually copied one field at a time between each metadata subsystem. StudioLine Photo has two other notable features: a slideshow generator, and a web page photo gallery creator. The latter has several very attractive templates. The slideshow generator is very basic. It can go backward and forward between pictures, and does not support any transition effects. However, StudioLine Photo's slideshow generator uniquely supports the on-screen captioning of internal database, EXIF, and IPTC metadata. No other consumer-grade digital image manager can do this. I can't think of a standalone slideshow generator that can do it, either. (Compudex's ProShow supports only EXIF metadata, not the more descriptive and useful IPTC standard.) As a user, this means your viewers not only see the pictures in the slideshow, but may simultaneously also read your comments about picture content and context. (E.g., Title: Office Charity Ball 2004, with Brian, Ciara, and Maya. Caption: Unknown to Brian's wife Maya, Ciara is actually Brian's workplace mistress.) In summary, StudioLine Photo 2.0.19 is an awkward product, but with a potentially great future - it is definitely a product to watch. To become competitive, StudioLine Photo needs to improve its user interface; eliminate the ambiguity in how pictures are stored and managed in the program's Image Archive, and Windows file system; and increase usage of EXIF and IPTC metadata. Both ACDSystem's ACDSee 6.0 and Adobe's PhotoShop Album 2.0 have Calendar Views (synthesized collections of photographs based on EXIF timestamps). StudioLine Photo, has shown, through its slideshow generator, that the program can surpass its competitors in the creative and useful application of metadata. StudioLine Photo 2.0.19 seems to have problems reading USB keychain memory drives, at least on my Windows XP Home SP1 computer.
Rating: 
Summary: Now I am going to purchase it!
Review: I have just downloaded your Studio Line, version 1.3, and the Photo freeware and I am amazed at the work you have put into this! I can hardly wait to get started.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute best surprise!
Review: Your software is the absolute best surprise I have had since starting with digital. Your competitors' products are full of bugs and install issues and even then, not half as useful as advertised.
Thank you,
A very satisfied customer, Kyle
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