Built-in Desktop Publishing Functions with Ready-Made Templates for Calendars and Greetings Cards

NEW YORK, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- H&M Systems Software, Inc. today introduced Release 2.5 of its flagship StudioLine Photo 2 digital imaging software at Digital Life, Booth 1623. This latest release enables photographers to easily design and print customized calendars, CD cases, or greeting cards featuring the activities of children, relatives, family pets and memorable events. A new "timeline" view makes it easy to browse sets of photos by year and month, while a "filtered" view displays a convenient subset of the archived images that's easier to manage. Special support for Window XP SP2 has also been added.

Pros benefit from new IPTC, EXIF and RAW abilities, upgraded GUI for a close Windows look and feel, greater image editing and archiving flexibility, image ranking and parallel viewing on multiple monitors. StudioLine Photo 2 is an economical, yet versatile tool designed to meet the demands of professional and novice photographers, stock houses, graphic designers, and others needing an all-in-one solution for editing, storing, and managing digital images.

"As more photographers, designers and artists rely on the benefits of digital cameras and their related hardware and services, it is important that software vendors support the changing technology," said Alexis Gerard, president, Future Image. "The increasing use of on-line image processing, new hardware platforms and changing camera formats makes software support from vendors like H&M key to growth in the market."

Create Personalized Holiday Gifts
StudioLine Photo 2.5 enables scrapbook hobbyists, graphic designers and photographers of all skill levels to quickly and easily insert a user's favorite photos on new print templates for calendars and holiday greeting cards. A page editor gives photographers the chance to further personalize their designs. Other templates will automatically print an index, cover and inlay for photo CD jewel cases. H&M will continuously extend the library of available print templates -- including the ability to produce entire coffee table books. Holiday shoppers short on time and with limited budgets can now create unique, customized gifts built on a lifetime of memories.

Support for Windows XP SP2
StudioLine Photo 2.5 enables web galleries to be previewed on the desktop without being blocked by the tightened security of Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Users' publishing photo galleries to the web will benefit from StudioLine Photo 2's ability to check for indications of the Windows firewalls (and similar solutions) and automatically switch to a supported file transfer mode.

Image Editing
Users can now utilize more than one monitor to compare photos or preview editing results in high resolution. A RAW filter enables photographers to optimize RAW images if the camera model's defaults are not desirable. A "Scaling" tool frees disk space and reduces processing time if an image was scanned with too much resolution. Users save time when editing images by toggling from landscape to portrait format, without rotating the image. The updated "Crop & Rotate" tool maintains the current aspect ratio by default, and displays the resulting pixel size in the title bar. Accurate color corrections are made with the updated "Colors" filter, displaying the offset between original and new RGB values. Advanced users will appreciate the "live" histogram, which refreshes automatically during editing to immediately assess results.

Image Archiving
Several archiving capabilities have been enhanced in StudioLine Photo 2.5.
A "timeline view" allows users to quickly locate images and to "drill down" to any time period. Using the "filtered view," users browse image archive folders containing images that match specific criteria. The "keyword view" organizes images hierarchical by keyword. User-defined keyword lists ensure consistent terminology when describing similar images. The ability to rank images (on a scale from 1 to 5) gives users additional criteria by which to organize and select pictures. Sequence numbers can be automatically added to names or descriptions, and frequently used image tags can be grouped together for easy maintenance, and even copied to other images.

Enhanced IPTC and EXIF Support
Photographers can correct date and time stamps in instances when a camera was not set up properly or when an image was scanned. Convenient time offsets enable users to adjust an entire picture series for time zone differences.
EXIF information encoded in TIFF and most RAW files are also recognized.
Certain EXIF tags can be edited, including description, comments and artist.

Enhanced GUI
StudioLine Photo 2.5's menu bar, folder pane and other GUI components use a lighter system font, and have been given the familiar Windows look and feel.
Image tools, descriptors, selection criteria, timeline, folders and other views are now conveniently tucked away in a tabbed pane, freeing up most of the screen for viewing of actual images.

Slide Shows / Image Viewer
StudioLine Photo 2.5 caption displays have been improved during full- screen slide shows, along with a new trash bin button used to immediately discard poor quality images. Additional scaling factors now cover a range from 12.5% to 1600% for more flexible image sizing.

Requirements, Availability and Pricing
StudioLine Photo 2 requires Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP, and is available at major stores, with a suggested retail price of $49.00. In Europe, the suggested retail price is EURO 49.00. Electronic copies of the software can be purchased at the product web site http://www.StudioLine.biz for $44.00, or EURO 44.00 in Europe. A free 30-day trial can be downloaded.