4. The Screen Setup of PhotoLine
4.11 The Layer Attributes
The Layer Attributes dialog is used to get a quick overview of the settings
and attributes of the active layer.
Most properties can be edited by double-clicking or by clicking the
Edit-button and can be deleted by clicking the paper basket. But not all are
editable or deletable. Some can only be edited and some can only be
deleted.
Attributes Common To All Layer Types
- The Layer Position And Size
- The position and size can be edited directly.
- The Transformation
- The transformation includes scaling, rotation and shearing of the layer.
The context menu of rotation and shearing can reset the transformation.
- The Layer Type
- By double-clicking Convert Layer Type (see chapter 7.5.2) is called.
- Channels
- Channels controls the visibility of the layer’s color channels. For
example, it can be specified that the layer only changes the red channel
of the document or does not change the transparency of the document.
- ICC Color Profile
- If a color profile is assigned to a layer (see chapter 7.6.15), it will be
listed. The color profile can be deleted here, too.
- Align Patterns
- This switch controls the behavior of pattern - these are pattern colors,
gradient colors and texture colors-, if the layer is moved or scaled.
Usually patterns are relative to the document, this means moving or
scaling a layer doesn‘t affect the position and size of a pattern. If Align
Patterns is turned on, the patterns are moved and scaled the same way as
the layer. Even rotations and perspective distortions influence the
patterns.
- Print
- If you turn off this switch, the layer is still displayed onscreen but no
longer printed. This option can affect exporting PDF files, too (see
chapter 7.10.1.4).
- If a layer is made invisible by using the Layer List, the layer won‘t be
printed, even if Print is turned on.
- Antialiasing
- Antialiasing defines whether layers will be antialiased/smoothed when
displayed on-screen, when printed and when saved.
- Default means that a layer inherits the antialias setting of its document.
If that is also Default, it will only be antialiased, if Antialias (see
chapter 7.2.16) is turned on. On-Screen, the layer will only be
antialiased, if it isn’t too time-cinsuming, on printing and saving will
always antialias.
- Never means that the layer will never be antialiased, even if Antialias is
turned on.
- When using Always it will always be antialiased, even if Antialias is
turned off and even if displaying on-screen is slow.
- If the active layer is an image, you can additionally select a preferred
interpolation method. The interpolation will only be used, if the scaling
of an image is permanently fixed, e.g. by reducing a document to the
background.
- Distortions and Layer Styles
- Any layer style (see chapter 2.5 and chapter 7.8.40) or layer distortion
(see chapter 2.6) assigned to a layer is listed.
- Adjustment Layers
- Adjustment layers (see chapter 2.9) show the assigned work. This work
can be turned off temporarily in order to edit the accompanying layer.
- Clipping/Masking Properties
- With layer masks, clipping layers, adjustment layers and dynamic filters
you can blur and invert their area of effect.
- The blurring can be turned off temporarily by using a switch.
- Label
- The label color is used for marking the layer in the Layer List. If the
color is completely transparent, the layer won’t be marked.
- Pixel Snapping
- This attribute controls whether the layer will be aligned to the pixel grid
of the document. Default inherits the behavior from the group or the the
document. Aside from that you can permanently turn snapping on or off.
- If you want the apply the snapping permanently, you can use the menu
command Layout/Alignment/Pixel Alignment (see chapter 7.4.58).
- Guides
- If the switch is turned on, the layer is used as an automatic guide. If you
have many layers, you may have too many automatic guides, so you
might want to turn that option off.
- Rotation Point
- Here you can enter the rotation point for the Layer Tool numerically.
- Overprint
- Overprinting is a property for printing documents in print shops.
- With overprinting a layer replaces only the color channels of the
background, which are used by the layer.
- Using overprinting you need to consider some rules:
- Overprinting is not allowed with groups, placeholder layers and virtual
copies.
- With images overprinting works only for gray images that have an
assigned color. This color has to be a spot color or CMYK with a
single color channel occupied (see Attributes Of Image Layers).
- Simulating overprint of CMYK colors on-screen only works if the
document’s color space is CMYK (see chapter 2.11).
- Simulating overprint of spot colors is only an estimate of the result.
- Overprint should not be used together with transparency, since most
print shops don’t allow transparency.
- Not all PDF viewers support overprinting.
Attributes Of Image Layers
- Image layers allow to control the type, the bit depth and whether there is
transparency/an alpha channel.
- Additional Picture Data
- If a JPEG-file is opened, PhotoLine attaches the original JPEG-data to
the newly created layer. If the layer is saved again as JPEG without
being modified, the file will contain the original JPEG-data without new
compression losses. This is useful, if the metadata of a JPEG-file - like
the ICC color profile or metadata - have to be changed.
- The additional data will be automatically removed, if the image layer
itself is modified.
- If an image layer has JPEG-data, these data will be used when saving as
PLD-file. Therefore PLD-files containing JPEG-images will be much
smaller than in previous version of PhotoLine (see chapter 5.5 "Working
With JPEG-Files" for more information). JPEG-data have an effect on
creating PDF-, SVG- and SWF-files, too.
- Color
- If the image is 8 bit gray, you can a assign one or more colors to the
image. There are 3 basic modes:
- The assigned color is a gradient: In this case, the gray values of the
image are displayed using the corresponding gradient values.
- The assigned color is an arbitrary color: In this case, a curve can be
defined in addition to the color. Both together control the appearance
of the image.
- The assigned color is a process or spot color (see chapter 2.15): In this
case, a curve allows you to control the ink coverage. Furthermore, one
or more additional spot or process colors can be assigned via
Duplicate Property
.
Please note, however, that each of these
colors may occur only once per image. If you assign a spot color or
process color (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) twice, you will hear an
error sound and the new color is not applied.
- This way you can create duotone images (monotone, duotone, tritone or
more).
- You can use the context menu of the Color entry to create and apply
presets.
Attributes Of Vector Layers
- Fill And Line Styles
- The fill and line styles are shown and can be edited.
- The Edit-button duplicates the active style. If there is more than one
style, the active style can be deleted, too. The order of the styles can be
changed by dragging.
- The Vector Attribute
- This attributes contains information which kind of geometric figure the
vector layer is. The vector attribute can only be deleted.
Attributes Of Text Layers
- shape flow properties
- If a text layer flows around or inside another layer (see chapter 6.2.12),
the shape layer is shown. Shape flow can be deleted here.
Attributes Of Groups
- Draw Isolated
- This entry is only used in combination with groups. If turned off - which
is standard behavior - the blend mode of a group is ignored and its
intensity is transferred to its children. But this may lead to unexpected
results, if a group contains overlapping layers.
- An example may make this problem clearer. Let's use a group with two
circles. The first image shows this group with 100% opacity, the second
one with 50% opacity and the third one with 50% opacity, too, but also
with "Draw Isolated" activated:

- "Draw
Isolated" gives the expected result.
- Additionally isolated groups allow the creation of adjustment layers, that
affect only the content of their group.
- Aside from that advantages there are disadvantages, too. Drawing
isolating groups is significantly slower. Furthermore no file format -
with the exception of the native PhotoLine-format PLD - can save
isolated groups. Therefore they will be converted to images on export.
Attributes Of Placeholder Layers
- Transparency
- If the content of a placeholder doesn’t have transparency, it can be
enforced with this switch. Dynamic Filters (chapter 2.10), which are
assigned to the placeholder, can thus optionally adjust the transparency.
- File
- File is an entry of Placeholder layers (see chapter 2.3.7). It displays the
file that is assigned to the placeholder. If the text is gray, the source
doesn’t exist. A double-click allows you to use a different file. If the file
data is embedded in the document, "embedded" is displayed.
- The context menu offers the possibility to convert an embedded
placeholder into a file reference and vice versa.
- If the placeholder is still empty, File is a switch, and you can use it to
specify whether a newly assigned file should be embedded or a reference
to the file should be saved.
- The trash icon will delete the current data of the placeholder.
- In addition, you can define via a list, how the associated file will be
placed in the placeholder.
- inside: The file is completely inside the placeholder.
- outside: The file completely fills the placeholder. Parts of the file may
be outside.
- Clipping: The placeholder is grouped with a clipping layer. Thus, the
visible part of the file can be changed later using the Layer Tool (see
chapter 6.2.1).
- High Preview Quality
- Placeholder layers are displayed on the screen using a preview image.
The preview quality controls whether the preview image is always
created in 8 bit or in bit depth of the original file. This may have an
impact on the appearance of adjustment layers.
- Keep in mind that this only affects the screen output. All other
operations are using the full quality.
- Save Preview
- Here you can specify whether the preview of the placeholder is to be
saved. This may save time, especially when using complex placeholder
layers.
- If the high preview quality is turned off, the preview image will be saved
lossy with JPEG compression, otherwise it’s lossless.