Writing plug-ins for PS Elements

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:14:08 -0500, "Bob"
wrote:

I work for a very small company and they can’t afford the full Photoshop so they bought Elements instead. The problem is that Elements doesn’t have the FileInfo option. I’ve found a plug-in that will do this but it costs as much as the full Elements program itself so that’s out of the question. Since there are about a dozen users, this is quite a bit of money for my company. I’ve
found an external program that will modify the IPTC but the users find it clumsy.

I’ve been asked to write a plugin for Elements that somewhat mimics PS’s fileinfo
but with some personalized characteristics.

I’ve spent the day searching the net for learning how to write PS plugins (Windows environment) and what I’ve found is that I need PhotoShop SDK which used to be free and now you first have to be an ASN member ($195) then another
$295 to buy the SDK (but only if Adobe deems you worthy) which I’ve read is nothing
more than a few PDF’s. On top of that we’ll need to buy a C++ compiler but that’s only about $100 and we can handle that.

My company also wants me to write another plug-in that will FTP the images back to the company from the field so the users can do everything from within one environment (the users are not too computer savvy so I need to make it as simple as possible for them).

Here are my questions:

Is the PS SDK absolutely necessary? If so, are there any legal way of obtaining older copies (free or low cost)? Must be absolutely legal and legitimate.
What is included in the SDK?
Can you recommend a site or book for learning to write PS plug-ins? The types of plug-ins that I’ve been asked to write are non-graphics oriented (the GUI doesn’t count).
I’ve found very few online plug-in code sources. Are there sites out there that I’m missing? I learn best by example.

Thank you for your time.

I would have thought that the interface would be freely available. Normally, a development environment jsut makes the interface more user friendly. Ask adobe the direct question on where to get the interface spec. Also, a little Googling might turn it up.

Have you considered the GIMP-?–free, open source, write anything you want for it
**************************
Mark Herring, Pasadena, Calif.
Private e-mail: Just say no to "No".

"Mark Herring" wrote in message

…
I would have thought that the interface would be freely available.

It’s not. Look at Adobe’s web site.

I’m interspersing my comments amongst two posts, the original from Bob and a response from Mark.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 12:14:08 -0500, "Bob"
wrote:

I work for a very small company and they can’t afford the full Photoshop so they bought Elements instead. The problem is that Elements doesn’t have the FileInfo option. I’ve found a plug-in that will do this but it costs as much as the full Elements program itself so that’s out of the question. Since there are about a dozen users, this is quite a bit of money for my company. I’ve found an external program that will modify the IPTC but the users find it clumsy.

I’ve been asked to write a plugin for Elements that somewhat mimics PS’s fileinfo
but with some personalized characteristics.

I’ve spent the day searching the net for learning how to write PS plugins (Windows environment) and what I’ve found is that I need PhotoShop SDK which used to be free and now you first have to be an ASN member ($195) then another
$295 to buy the SDK (but only if Adobe deems you worthy) which I’ve read is nothing
more than a few PDF’s. On top of that we’ll need to buy a C++ compiler but that’s only about $100 and we can handle that.

I think getting the SDK is the correct way to go, in spite of the $500 price tag, provided, and this is a big if, you are experienced at writing C, or feel you want to dive into coding in a big way. Your company is very likely to be approved for the SDK – ask Adobe before joining ASN.

I think it’s your responsibility to present this as a well-formed proposal. You may be able to recoup some of that investment over time by selling your plugin as shareware, or use it as a goodwill freebie to increase traffic to your company’s site. If management says no, then move on to either off the shelf components or something like the GIMP.

Scripting is another possibility, though I do not know if Imageready supports it. The scripting SDK is still free at the Adobe site so this could be a win.

My company also wants me to write another plug-in that will FTP the images back to the company from the field so the users can do everything from within one environment (the users are not too computer savvy so I need to make it as simple as possible for them).

Have you tried typing in an ftp-style URL in the file open dialog? This works surprisingly well in Photoshop – for example you can type in http://www.xxxx to load a curves file remotely. Another possibility would be to use web folders – this would cost nothing and might work right out of the box.

Here are my questions:

Is the PS SDK absolutely necessary? If so, are there any legal way of obtaining older copies (free or low cost)? Must be absolutely legal and legitimate.

It is absolutely necessary.

What is included in the SDK?

The SDK is now split into several components, and file format is a separate addition to the SDK that costs more. This will be of concern to you possibly for your FTP file plugin.

Can you recommend a site or book for learning to write PS plug-ins?

No book, but there is a public email group Put subscribe in the subject line to join.

The types of plug-ins that I’ve been asked to write are non-graphics oriented (the GUI doesn’t count).
I’ve found very few online plug-in code sources. Are there sites out there that I’m missing? I learn best by example.

As do all of us. Modulo this being the wrong way to go – your efforts are probably best either by advocating the $500 or $600 budget to get you on line with some proper tools, spending somewhat more money to have a consultant write them for you, or taking Mark’s suggestion below and switching to GIMP, which would be a zero cash outlay solution that involved a large amount of work for you, which your management might (incorrectly IMHO) react favorably to.

Thank you for your time.

Mark Herring wrote:

I would have thought that the interface would be freely available. Normally, a development environment jsut makes the interface more user friendly. Ask adobe the direct question on where to get the interface spec. Also, a little Googling might turn it up.

Bob had it right. The interface is not freely available. Adobe requires an up-front fee to join their developers assn, and then an additional fee, once they have vetted your intended use of the SDK. This appears to be a reaction to vendors who have duplicated the host side of the pluign interface in their own products, as well as a general tightening up of Adobe’s bottom line. I myself preferred the original policy, but OTOH Adobe’s stock is doing very well.

Have you considered the GIMP-?–free, open source, write anything you want for it

This is certainly another possibility. Furthermore GIMP is based entirely on the GNU toolset, so there would be no outlay for the development environment, and Bob would have total control over every aspect of the program.

OT, but GIMP might benefit from a name change. Originally it stood for "Grayscale Image Processor", or some such, which is now inaccurate since the program now handles color. Any cachet the name might have had went out the window when Pulp Fiction came out.–

Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
www.geigy.2y.net

I wonder if scripting might work?
"1.2 What is scripting?
A script is a series of commands that tells Photoshop to perform a set of specified actions, such
as applying different filters to selections in an open document. These actions can be simple,
and affect only a single object, or complex and affect many objects in a Photoshop document.
The actions can call Photoshop alone or invoke other applications. Scripts automate repetitive tasks and are often used as a creative tool to streamline tasks that
might be too time consuming to do manually. For example, you could write a script to generate
a number of localized versions of a particular image; or to gather information about the
various color profiles used by a collection of images."

"Bob" wrote in message

I work for a very small company and they can’t afford the full Photoshop

so

they bought Elements instead. The problem is that Elements doesn’t have the FileInfo option. I’ve found a plug-in that will do this but it costs

as

much as the full Elements program itself so that’s out of the question. Since there are about a dozen users, this is quite a bit of money for my company. I’ve
found an external program that will modify the IPTC but the users find it clumsy.

I’ve been asked to write a plugin for Elements that somewhat mimics PS’s fileinfo
but with some personalized characteristics.

I’ve spent the day searching the net for learning how to write PS plugins (Windows environment) and what I’ve found is that I need PhotoShop SDK

which

used to be free and now you first have to be an ASN member ($195) then another
$295 to buy the SDK (but only if Adobe deems you worthy) which I’ve read

is

nothing
more than a few PDF’s. On top of that we’ll need to buy a C++ compiler

but

that’s only about $100 and we can handle that.

My company also wants me to write another plug-in that will FTP the images back to the company from the field so the users can do everything from within one environment (the users are not too computer savvy so I need to make it as simple as possible for them).

Here are my questions:

Is the PS SDK absolutely necessary? If so, are there any legal way of obtaining older copies (free or low cost)? Must be absolutely legal and legitimate.
What is included in the SDK?
Can you recommend a site or book for learning to write PS plug-ins? The types of plug-ins that I’ve been asked to write are non-graphics oriented (the GUI doesn’t count).
I’ve found very few online plug-in code sources. Are there sites out

there

that I’m missing? I learn best by example.

Thank you for your time.

"Bob" …

…

I’ve been asked to write a plugin for Elements that somewhat mimics PS’s fileinfo
but with some personalized characteristics.

I’ve spent the day searching the net for learning how to write PS plugins (Windows environment) and what I’ve found is that I need PhotoShop SDK which used to be free and now you first have to be an ASN member ($195) then another
$295 to buy the SDK (but only if Adobe deems you worthy) which I’ve read is nothing
more than a few PDF’s.

This is Adobe’s latest way of encouraging third party development and thereby strengthening their platform. Don’t you feel encouraged?

On top of that we’ll need to buy a C++ compiler but
that’s only about $100 and we can handle that.

A development system need not cost you anything. mingw32 (http://www.mingw.org/) is perfectly capable of building Photoshop plugins for Windows, unless you want a GUI – it’s what I use for all my Windows plugin builds. For the Mac platform there is the excellent MPW, a free download from http://developer.apple.com/tools/mpw-tools/

My company also wants me to write another plug-in that will FTP the images back to the company from the field so the users can do everything from within one environment (the users are not too computer savvy so I need to make it as simple as possible for them).

If you want to pursue the plugin route, that sounds like an Export plugin.

Here are my questions:

Is the PS SDK absolutely necessary?

Yes, if a compiled plugin is required. The alternatives might be (as other posters suggest) a higher level approach such as scripting or automation, or a plugin construction kit such as FilterMeister (http://www.filtermeister.com/) – which is not free either.

If so, are there any legal way of
obtaining older copies (free or low cost)? Must be absolutely legal and legitimate.

If you’d bought a pre-7.0 version of Photoshop (e.g. ebay) you would have found the SDK on the CD, assuming the license is transferable.

What is included in the SDK?

It’s a few PDFs and a few header files and some sample code; everything you need to build plugin binaries for the major platforms. You may be interested to know that any reasonably recent SDK release (e.g. 4, 5, 6) can be used to build plugins for all versions of Photoshop from 3-7 and CS (obviously some of the recent obscurities added to the API will be missing, but I have never found this to be a problem). Such plugins are also more or less supported by many other Photoshop compatible host applications.

Can you recommend a site or book for learning to write PS plug-ins? The types of plug-ins that I’ve been asked to write are non-graphics oriented (the GUI doesn’t count).
I’ve found very few online plug-in code sources. Are there sites out there that I’m missing? I learn best by example.

There are several complete plugin projects available as source (GPL) from my site, http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/

In particular, I can provide GPL source to a plugin which manipulates IPTC data – contact me by e-mail if interested.

Toby

Thank you for your time.

"Toby Thain" wrote:

If so, are there any legal way of
obtaining older copies (free or low cost)? Must be absolutely legal

and

legitimate.

If you’d bought a pre-7.0 version of Photoshop (e.g. ebay) you would have found the SDK on the CD, assuming the license is transferable.

What is included in the SDK?

It’s a few PDFs and a few header files and some sample code; everything you need to build plugin binaries for the major platforms. You may be interested to know that any reasonably recent SDK release (e.g. 4, 5, 6) can be used to build plugins for all versions of Photoshop from 3-7 and CS (obviously some of the recent obscurities added to the API will be missing, but I have never found this to be a problem). Such plugins are also more or less supported by many other Photoshop compatible host applications.

Son of a gun! I happen to own PhotoShop 6.0 and never looked at any of the CD contents. All I’ve ever done was to install PhotoShop and put the disk away. Today I found the SDK (thanks to you!). The PS SDK compared to Java is quite sad. I find it very hard to believe Photoshop gets away with charging $500 for a few PDF’s, header files and sources. After using Java’s SDK and its vast libraries I guess I’m spoiled. I guess I now have to learn C++ (at least I’m already proficient in ‘C’). Does anyone have any source code examples of simple input panels that they can email me?

Thanks again for all of your feedback.

"Bob" …

"Toby Thain" wrote:

…
If you’d bought a pre-7.0 version of Photoshop (e.g. ebay) you would have found the SDK on the CD, assuming the license is transferable.

Son of a gun! I happen to own PhotoShop 6.0 and never looked at any of the CD contents. All I’ve ever done was to install PhotoShop and put the disk away. Today I found the SDK (thanks to you!). The PS SDK compared to Java is quite sad. I find it very hard to believe Photoshop gets away with charging $500 for a few PDF’s, header files and sources. After using Java’s SDK and its vast libraries I guess I’m spoiled. I guess I now have to learn C++ (at least I’m already proficient in ‘C’). Does anyone have any source code examples of simple input panels that they can email me?

You don’t have to use C++. There is plenty of C source to plugins at http://www.telegraphics.com.au/sw/

Toby

Thanks again for all of your feedback.