2. Basics of Image Processing
2.11 Document Mode And Picture Mode
PhotoLine has two basic working modes: the document and the picture
mode.
Documents are used for creating greeting cards, labels and things like that.
Pictures are used for web graphics or if the result will be used in another
application.
Nevertheless, documents and pictures are very similar. Both consist of
layers, and nearly all functions can be used on both.
The main differences are:
- In picture mode, the first layer is always an image layer. This image
layer is called background layer. There is no such layer in document
mode.
- The background layer defines the size of the picture. If the background
layer gets smaller, the whole picture gets smaller. Documents behave
differently. On creation, their size is defined. After that, a document
containing a single page is created without any layer.
- In picture mode the background layer defines the color space, in
document mode the color space is defined by the ICC color profile of the
document (see chapter 4.9 and 7.6.12).
- Documents can contain several pages, pictures can’t.
In this manual, both terms are used synonymously. If documents and
pictures behave differently, it is explicitly written.
To change the working mode of an existing document or picture, see chapter
4.9 "The Document Attributes".