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August 11, 2009
More new PS panels: Sharpening, blending
Photographer/coder Glenn Mitchell has posted a new set of sharpening actions panels for use with Photoshop CS4. (He's excited about scripting & panel development for PS: "From a programmer's point-of-view, Photoshop CS4 offers extraordinary opportunities to modify and extend the user's experience with Photoshop... Well done!")
Elsewhere, Mike Hale took the blending modes panel I mentioned yesterday and upgraded it* to handle multiple selected layers at once. You can download it here (see also Mike's release notes).
On a related note, in case it's useful, here's a list of blending mode keyboard shortcuts.
* Potentially interesting explanation: You can use Configurator to open up & remix any Configurator-made panel: just double-click the .GPC file in the exported panel's folder (Photoshop CS4/Plug-Ins/Panels/{your panel's name}/). That is, the XML file used by a panel at runtime equals the source code for that panel. Anyway, I suggested that Mike remix the panel by applying his code to the buttons.
July 21, 2009
The progress of Configurator
Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost has worked with Kelby Training to create a video tutorial showing how to assemble custom UI panels using Adobe Configurator. Note that you need to be a KT member to watch more than the intro segments.
Elsewhere, I see that photographer & author Vincent Versace is using Configurator-made panels to enhance his writings on black & white conversion and selective blur/focus. Way to go, Vincent. I love seeing experts embrace a new way to download their brains right into Photoshop.
Normally I don't talk about unannounced products, but I'm happy to report that development of the Configurator authoring tool is proceeding nicely. (Didn't want you to think it was a "one-and-out" kind of endeavor.) Besides addressing key requests from users of v1.0, we're focusing heavily on plumbing like object containers, auto-layout, and localizability. That'll let us eat our own proverbial dog food, using Configurator to create Photoshop enhancements that ship in the box. (I expect our ideas here to generate much discussion and maybe even some controversy, but no one ever said that progress was easy. I'll be asking for your input soon.)
If you're using Configurator today, I'd love to hear from you & see examples of your work. Let us know how you use the tool and/or how you'd like to use it.
May 28, 2009
Alien Skin rocks out with Configurator, Flash panels
I'm delighted to see more developers leveraging Flash panel support in Photoshop CS4, delivering new levels of integration and usability. Alien Skin has introduced a pair of panels that drive their cool Snap Art 2 product. They write:
One of [the panels] lets you start any of the Snap Art filters with a single button press. No more navigating deep into the Filter menu! The other panel uses the Snap Art Pencil Sketch filter to make even more photorealistic portraits.Groovy. "Expect panels for some of our other plug-ins in the coming months," say the Alien Skin guys, and I look forward to sharing more news from other developers soon.
April 6, 2009
Configurator: Punk Rock for Photoshop
Not long ago the folks at Computer Arts featured an article in which illustrator Jason Cook talked about how Adobe Configurator has helped streamline his use work. ("Configurator puts the user many steps closer to making things quicker and easier to use.”)
This inspired me to write a little manifesto on what Configurator means in the big picture--how it's really about subverting Adobe's authority (in a good way) over what constitutes "Photoshop." The article will appear in the magazine's forthcoming all-Photoshop issue (see cover), but in the meantime, Computer Arts has graciously let me post it here (PDF) in case you're interested.
To the barricades,
J.
March 30, 2009
Electric Rain finds success with Configurator
"Goodbye seven-click, menu-driven plug-in launch…hello single-click access to 3D joy." I'm really glad to see that Electric Rain has enhanced the usability of their Swift 3D.PS 3D plug-in for Photoshop by leveraging Flash panels & Adobe Configurator. On their site they posted a detailed overview of the panel creation process and benefits. Good stuff, guys.
Speaking of Configurator, thanks to all the folks who attended the Photoshop extensibility sessions that Jeff Tranberry, Tom Ruark, and I presented last week at Photoshop World. By popular demand Jeff has posted his slides alongside lots of other detailed notes on panel creation. More ambitious Configurator users will want to check out his notes on combining scripts with Configurator panels, including some details on how to package up external files using Extension Manager.
March 20, 2009
Scott Kelby's blog comes to Photoshop
I'm very happy to see that you can now read Scott Kelby's Photoshop Insider blog right within PS CS4. Check out Scott's post for more info & the download link. The panel was created with the help of Configurator. (For similar panels that let you read Julieanne Kost's blog and mine inside PS, see previous.) [Via Bryan O'Neil Hughes]
March 17, 2009
Learn about Configurator, PS scripting at PS World
If you're attending Photoshop World in Boston next week & have an interest in customizing/extending Photoshop, please come check out the sessions that Jeff Tranberry, Tom Ruark, and I are doing on Wednesday afternoon. We'll start things simple with Configurator & move gradually into actual script-writing. I've posted the details in this post's extended entry.February 19, 2009
Paving the cow paths: Auto-build panels?
People sometimes feel overwhelmed by Photoshop & other large applications: the tools and commands they need seem buried among a bunch of irrelevant stuff. We want to improve matters.
Configurator lets you build your own interface panels, grouping your essential tools and commands for easy access. Configurator is ridiculously easy to use, but actually building a useful panel might take more effort than you'd expect. You have to give some thought to how you work and to what, exactly, you want to accomplish.
So here's an idea: What if Photoshop could watch how you work, then suggest panel configurations? In other words, the app would become smarter, adapting itself to your specific workflows.
PS would collect data on your usage patterns & feed it to Configurator in order to auto-build a panel containing your most-used tools and commands. Thinking aloud, I'm imagining something like this:
- PS would ask whether you want to enable the data-gathering process (invisible, with no impact to performance).
- If you opt in, you'd work for a few days without interruption.
- At some point PS would say, "Okay, I've gathered some data on how you work. Would you like to assemble a panel containing your most frequently used items?"
- If you say yes, Configurator would appear and present a list of these items, letting you uncheck unwanted ones. (For example, maybe you don't need a button for New Document if you're always going to hit Cmd-N.)
- The remaining items would be laid out automatically on a new panel. You could of course tweak things from there, or you could start running the panel as-is in PS.
Unlike Microsoft Office, PS wouldn't try to be clever & modify your work environment on the fly (e.g. hiding menu items you haven't used recently). Rather, it would just present you with some info & give you the opportunity to take action. If you're game, great, but in any case it won't be sneaking around, doing stuff "for" you while you're not looking.
Thoughts?
Thanks,
J.
PS--Re: the title of the post: "Paving the cow paths" refers to streamlining existing behavior without trying to change it. A panel of most-used tools wouldn't change the tools you use; it would just make it easier to group & access them (and by extension to hide the rest). Going beyond cowpaths--helping people discover "best practice" ways of working--is another can of worms that I'll address in a separate post.
February 14, 2009
Julieanne blogs, right inside Photoshop
Adobe evangelist Julieanne Kost has started a blog in which she's sharing all sorts of good miscellaneous tips. It's already chock full of useful info, with lots more to come.
Just for the heck of it, Jeff Tranberry & I fooled around with Configurator a bit and created a panel (see screenshot) that displays the RSS feed from Julieanne's blog right inside Photoshop. Download the panel from her site, double click it to install, restart Photoshop, and then look under Window->Extensions for "Daily_PS_Tip."
And if you'd like to follow my blog from within Photoshop, well, why not? Here's the download.
All of this is more proof-of-concept right now than anything, but I believe that over time it'll be possible to knit community & desktop together in some really interesting ways. For more thoughts on that subject, see my previous post about P2P notes inside PS.
[Update: I've posted a new version of the panel for my blog. If you had problems installing the original version, you may want to try again.]
December 14, 2008
Deke's new Configurator-made panel
I'm delighted to see super Photoshop ninja Deke McClelland grabbing Adobe Configurator and using it to streamline the app for use with his forthcoming book:
Interested as I am in all things Photoshop, I decided to put Configurator and Flash panels through their paces. So very late in the creation of Photoshop CS4 Channels & Masks One-on-One, I created a custom palette (screenshot) to provide access to common selection and masking features from one convenient (but tall) location. The book should be out in a month, but members of dekeOnline can download the palette today, for free, and install it in about a minute.
Solid! The panel is among the first of what I hope are many, many interesting remixes of the Photoshop UI, tailoring the work environment to specific needs & helping flow knowledge to right where it's needed.
November 26, 2008
More Configurator info, ideas
The Configurator team has put together a rather comprehensive user guide that features screenshots and guidance on using the application. The app is designed to be very straightforward to use, but the guide can help answer questions as you start using Configurator more intensively. The team has also provided a list of known issues--rough edges & their workarounds.
Don't be shy about letting us know how you'd like to see the tool evolve. We'd like to make it both broader (supporting more Suite apps) and deeper (offering richer functionality and more refinements). A few ideas we're kicking around:
- Support containers (sub-tabs, accordions, etc.) that would make it easy to provide more content within a single panel
- Offer better localization/auto-layout (so that a tab could be switched from English to German to Japanese on the fly; this is essential if we're to use Configurator to create content that ships in the box)
- Include more widgets that can be dragged in (e.g. a foreground/background color indicator/selector like the one at the bottom of the PS toolbar)
November 18, 2008
Configurator is live!
I'm extremely happy to say that Adobe Configurator 1.0 is now available for download from Adobe Labs. Configurator is a simple drag-and-drop tool for creating panels that extend Photoshop CS4. It's an important step in the process of making the Photoshop UI much more flexible--much better able to be "everything you need, nothing you don't."
For more info about Configurator, please see my previous post and video demo. In this post's extended entry I've shared some additional odds & ends (read on).
November 11, 2008
All PSCS4 menu items & their scripts
Descend with me, won't you, into the deepest nerd-mines...
In order to support Configurator, we needed to create a rather gigantic spreadsheet ("The Big List") that included the text string for nearly every menu item in Photoshop, along with the JavaScript (ExtendScript) equivalent of each. We also filled in descriptions for many of the items, and Configurator uses these when displaying tooltips.
In case this stuff is useful to you (e.g. you're a scripter and just want to know the brute-force way to execute some menu item), I've posted the XLS and CSV flavors of the list for download. (I say "brute force" because these strings were generated by the Scripting Listener plug-in & in many cases aren't as elegant as what one could write by hand.)
November 7, 2008
Status updates on Configurator, etc.
Lots of people seem eager to get a hold of Configurator and the new Pixel Bender filter gallery for Photoshop CS4 & are asking when they'll be available. We decided to give both tools a little extra bake time, so look for them to appear on Adobe Labs within the next two weeks. Also stay tuned for a Camera Raw update for CS4 that'll include a number of nice little surprises.October 29, 2008
Lenticular adventures in CS4
One of the subtleties of Photoshop CS4 Extended's 3D support is the way it facilitates creation of images for use in lenticular printing. According to Wikipedia,
Lenticular printing is a technology in which a lenticular lens is used to produce images with an illusion of depth, or the ability to change or move as the image is viewed from different angles. Examples of lenticular printing include prizes given in Cracker Jack snack boxes that showed flip and animation effects such as winking eyes, and modern airport advertising graphics that change their message depending on the viewing angle... Recent advances in large-format presses have allowed for oversized lenses to be used in lithographic lenticular printing.
Adobe evangelist Russell Brown has gotten really excited about using Photoshop to enable creation of lenticular prints, and he's posted a great set of tutorials and sample files to help get you up to speed. Even better, he's used the forthcoming Configurator utility to create a panel (see screenshot) that walks you through the steps and actually executes them on demand, right within Photoshop. Super cool.
October 12, 2008
Subtractive Software
Software developer Brent Simmons shares some interesting thoughts on how & why applications grow and grow:
Here’s the schizo thing about software development (at least on Macs):
1. Everybody praises apps that don’t have a ton of preferences and features.
2. Everybody asks for some new preferences and features.
(Okay, not everybody. Not you, I know. I mean everybody else.)
To make it worse:
1. Everybody thinks they’re representative of the typical user, so what they want ought to be a no-brainer.
2. And they act like you put skunks in their fridge if you don’t do whatever-it-is.
(Okay, again — not you. You’re cool. I’m talking about the others.)
The problem is 100 times worse when it comes to deleting features...
It's extremely difficult to remove features from Photoshop. Once you've gotten someone to rely on a bit of functionality, you feel responsible for not letting them down (making me think of The Little Prince). All features, even if many years old and seemingly unchanged, consume effort to maintain, especially when we're modernizing the application architecture (for 64-bit, Cocoa, GPU, better localization, etc.). Even so, we're loathe to pull the rug out from under anyone.
No one uses everything in the app, and yet everything in the app is used by someone. Even if a feature benefits only 1% of customers, that translates into tens of thousands of people--and that's just counting the ones paying for any given version (not those with older copies, and not counting thieves).
Here's a case in point: A couple of cycles back (CS, I believe), we decided that the 3D Transform filter had outlived its usefulness, so we decided to send it to the Restful Menus Retirement Home (offering it on the product DVD, but no longer installing it by default). No one ever talked about using this feature, and yet as soon as we moved it, the tech support calls started piling up. Even a couple of years later, Pete Bauer from the NAPP Help Desk reported that they'd still gotten 25 inquiries within a month. I've started to think that the best way to find out who uses a feature is to try removing it.
Why do I mention all this? Two reasons:
- Maybe we can't remove (many) features--but you can. Configurator is about subtraction. Taken together with Photoshop's ability to remove menu items & to save workspaces that apply custom menu/panel/keyboard arrangements, Configurator helps you assemble versions of Photoshop that are "everything you need, nothing you don't." Most people will probably never get around to creating their own configurations, but because they'll be extremely easy to share, everyone can benefit from them.
- We've bitten the bullet with this release and have sent a number of features into retirement. Extract, Pattern Maker, Web Photo Gallery, Contact Sheet, Picture Package, and PDF Presentation have been removed from the default installation. The latter four have been replaced by the Output module in Bridge CS4, and our intention is to replace Extract with features inside Photoshop (building on Refine Edge & more). All of these except PDF Presentation will remain available as optional installs (to be posted on Adobe.com), but over time they'll be phased out.
There aren't any magic bullets here, and as I say, we're loathe to disrupt existing workflows. We can't sit still, however, and with CS4 we're making progress on multiple fronts.
October 8, 2008
Introducing Adobe Configurator
By now you've probably heard me talk many times about our desire to better manage the complexity and power of Photoshop. The very general interface that Photoshop presents is incredibly flexible, but it can be overwhelming, and it doesn't do much to show you just what you need when you need it. We can do better.
It should be possible to:
- Make Photoshop "everything you need, nothing you don't"
- Navigate Photoshop as task-based pieces (think workspaces on steroids), each showing only what you need for the task at hand
- Let anyone remix the Photoshop UI to fit their needs
- Make it drop-dead easy to share these remixes
Adobe Configurator (screenshots 1, 2), a new utility that's due to ship on Adobe Labs around the end of the month, is a key part of our strategy. Configurator makes it easy to snap together your own Photoshop panels (a.k.a. palettes). Think of Configurator as a box of Legos--an app that lets you drag and drop all the tools and menu items in Photoshop, call actions & scripts, and add widgets (images, videos, other SWFs, etc.). I've posted a 10-minute demo on Russell Brown's site. (If you don't have QuickTime installed, you can watch it on YouTube as well, though the compression quality there is pretty abysmal.)
We've shown a beta of Configurator to members of the press & have been getting great responses:
- Imaging Resource: "Dead easy. But we expected it to be easy. What we didn't expect was just how useful the little panel we built would actually be."
-
TG Daily: "[I]t is very intuitive to use and enables users to integrate virtually any function of Photoshop in a custom panel."
- Outback Photo: "We personally love the new Adobe Configurator 1.0... Using the new Configurator is as easy as gets."
We're putting the finishing touches on Configurator right now, so look for it on Labs in the next few weeks. [Update: It's live now!] (I'll of course post news about it here.) We look forward to hearing your thoughts & using your feedback to move the tool forward.
[Updates: Sorry, I forgot to mention that Configurator requires Photoshop CS4. It's building on top of the Flash panel extensibility system that's new to CS4. We wanted to make sure people could create for that system without having to be coders. If you do write ActionScript, however, you can go much further using Flash and/or Flex. You can create independent SWF panels, and you can incorporate your SWFs into Configurator-made panels via drag and drop, just as easily as I added an image in the demo.]
PS--If you'd like to be able to configure other applications (Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Fireworks, etc.) via Configurator, please make a little noise. We've designed the tool such that the other apps just need to supply an XML file that lists their menu items plus the associated scripting commands, as well as PNGs for their tools. Hearing your interest would help the PMs of other apps raise the priority of supplying those assets & testing Configurator.