Extending Photoshop via SWF Panels: Tutorials

If you’ve got some JavaScript/Flash/Flex chops and are looking for a mental exercise over the little holiday, heads up: Our friend Dr. Woohoo has been busily creating a large series of tutorials on how to develop AIR applications and Flash panels that can communicate with and drive Photoshop and Illustrator CS4.  The first two tutorials are online now.  Drew (the doc) writes:

 

Enhanced Hello World
Follow along with this tutorial to create a Hello World Flash panel for Photoshop. In this exercise, you will create a Flash plug-in within a Flex Builder MXML project. When you run the Flash panel within Photoshop, it will send code to Photoshop that, when executed, will display an alert dialog box with a message.

Integrating your ExtendScripts
In order to communicate to the host application (Photoshop or Illustrator CS4) using the CSXSLibrary SWC, our code is sent as a string message via BridgeTalk, which will then be evaluated once it reaches the host application. Not a big deal if we’re only sending a few lines of code at max, but when our ExtendScript code is lengthy, we would either have to manually wrap each line of code up as a string or use the work-around process we will use in this tutorial to simplify our life.

 

On a related note, Drew recently appeared on Inside Digital Design Radio & TV, talking about how he uses programming to do things like design custom kimonos:

 

Drew Trujillo, Designer–better known as Dr. Woohoo!–joins hosts Scott Sheppard and Gene Gable this week to share his background and an inside look at his amazing design work. Fusing the best of art, technology, and design Dr. Woohoo’s technical and programming background help him to bring his visions to life.

One thought on “Extending Photoshop via SWF Panels: Tutorials

  1. Ok I’ve used configurator so much I love it, only problem is I have a 3-4 hour video that I have to repplay since I have really bad ADHD and photoshop pauses it everytime I make a brush stroke the shorter ones are ok but the longer ones I used to get up and set my alarm and replay it again. I’ve used 2 monitors can’t do it, tried everything and the only way I can learn is that one way… Anyho, I made an swf in flash with a rewind button and it works in the play back great, imputed it into configurator won’t work. Tried everything looked everywhere for a rewind button won’t work… I’m missing a tiny detail and I don’t know what it is but if you can get an actualy swf to unlock itslf.. how? beacuse the buttons there the playback is there, it works fine nearly exactly but the comands don’t work the flv is great but theres a play and a stop button and no rewind button. I don’t have flex because I can’t aford it and i’m not a student… but you can make a plannel in flash I just have no idea how to. if you can help or read this it’ll be helful. Thanks

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