Category Archives: Suite Development

Try Flux Kontext right inside Photoshop

AI/ML, Suite Development

A couple of weeks ago I saw Photoshop trainer Rob de Winter experimenting with integrating ChatGPT’s image model into Photoshop, much as I’d been quietly colluding with Christian Cantrell to do three years ago using DALL•E (long before Firefly existed, when Adobe was afraid to do anything in the generative space).

I suggested that Rob try using Flux Kontext, and he promptly whipped up this free plugin. Check out the results:

From Rob’s site:

This custom-made Flux Kontext JSX-plugin lets you create context-aware AI edits directly inside Photoshop, based on your selection and a short prompt. Your selection is sent to Replicate’s Flux Kontext models (Pro or Max), and the result is placed back as a new layer with a mask, keeping lighting, shadows, and materials consistent.

Register for Adobe Developers Live

Suite Development

Sounds like an interesting opportunity to nerd out (in the best sense) in October 4-5:

Adobe Developers Live brings together Adobe developers and experience builders with diverse backgrounds and a singular purpose – to create incredible end-to-end experiences. This two-day conference will feature important developer updates, technical sessions and community networking opportunities. 

There’s also a planned hackathon:

Hackathon brings Adobe developers from across the global Adobe Experience Cloud community with Adobe engineering teams to connect, collaborate, contribute, and create solutions using the latest Experience Cloud products and tooling.

Like converting Flash to HTML? Hang your shingle here.

Suite Development

After a good run of 5+ years, Flash panel extensions will soon be retired from Photoshop CC & other Adobe apps. They’re being replaced by HTML extensions, and many developers I know are working to port their Flash/Flex-based work over to HTML.

Change brings opportunity, so if you’re a developer who likes doing this kind of work, you’re welcome to list your name & contact info here so that other developers (e.g. those who don’t have the same skills & who might want to hire someone for the job) can get in touch with you.

Create guides in Photoshop with the new GuideGuide panel

Suite Development

Cameron McEfee has released a public alpha of GuideGuide 3 for Photoshop. It’s now built in HTML5 instead of Flash/Flex & lets you save presets & more.

GuideGuide 3’s major new feature is GuideGuide Notation (GGN), a language that makes it possible for you to “write” a grid… [It] allows you to create any combination of guides you can think up. Sidebars, baselines, golden ratio, you name it. If you can think of it, GuideGuide can create it.

[Via Pierre Courtejoie]

Photoshop CC Features Panel now available

CC, Configurator, Suite Development

You can now learn new features of the app right from within the app:

How do you learn what the new features are and how to use them? The answer is the Photoshop CC Features panel where you can access new tools and features and watch videos all within Photoshop CC.

To get the panel, launch Photoshop CC and then open the Adobe Exchange Panel by going to Window > Extensions > Adobe Exchange. You may need to restart PS in order to apply updates.

If you’d like to make a panel like this for your organization (e.g. to train freelancers on your processes & systems), grab Adobe Configurator 4.0.

Build HTML5-based extensions for Photoshop, more

HTML5, Suite Development

Flash will be out & HTML5 is in as the cross-app, cross-platform foundation for extending Creative Cloud apps: 

When Creative Cloud was launched in June 2013, we added support for HTML5-based panels in several Adobe products… Since June, support for HTML5-based panels has been added to more Adobe products. As of now Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and Prelude CC support HTML5-based panels.

A preview of Adobe Extension Builder 3, a new developer tool that supports creating HTML5-based extensions, was launched in June at Adobe Labs.

Starting in the middle of 2014 we will begin removing Flash-based extension support in Creative Cloud products, starting with Photoshop CC. We encourage all developers to start planning and migrating to the new extensibility framework based on HTML5.

Here the excellently named Hallgrimur Th. Bjornsson shows how to create a couple of panels. You can follow more from his team via their blog.

Extend Generator to customize Photoshop

Photoshop Generator, Suite Development

“Extracting my design intent from PSDs felt tedious and repetitive,” writes Photoshop UI designer Tim Riot. “I conceived of Adobe Generator as a means to empower people to quickly and easily access the design data within PSDs. With Generator, anyone who knows JavaScript can create their own way of working with Photoshop.”
With that in mind, Tom Krcha has posted a guide on how you can Script Your First Adobe Generator Plugin For Photoshop. On a related note, developer evangelist Lee Brimelow has created a really deep look at the new feature:

[YouTube]

Stand In: UI prototyping straight from Photoshop

Photoshop Generator, Suite Development, User Interface

The first fruits of independent developers extending Photoshop’s new Generator feature are starting to arrive.
“Much more than image extraction,” writes Photoshop’s Tim Riot, “Stand In takes positioning, styling, state, even motion data, from PSDs and creates prototypes that feel like real apps which you can view on your iPhone. This capability, to fluidly create in Photoshop and seamlessly output designs to any context, is at the heart of the Generator technology.”

New Creative Market Photoshop extension

Suite Development

Check out this promising marketplace browser from design exchange Creative Market:

  • Find the perfect design assets without ever leaving Photoshop… Once you find the perfect asset for your project, it’ll auto-install in a single click. No more unzipping downloaded files, manually installing content, or restarting Photoshop.
  • Free goods each week: Pop open the extension each week to grab new free graphics, templates, fonts, brushes, add-ons and more.
  • All of your Creative Market purchases and saved collections are available inside of Photoshop.

New Russell Brown textures for Creative Cloud members

CS6, Suite Development

Photoshop CS6 subscribers can download a new panel for applying cool paper texture effects.

  • If you don’t yet have it, download the Adobe Exchange panel for Photoshop CS6 (note the Download button up top). Double click the package to install it.
  • Restart Photoshop & then open the panel by choosing Window > Extensions > Adobe Exchange.
  • Search for “paper.”

Here’s Russell’s video demonstrating how to use the package.

A new Photoshop panel for learning CS6 features

CS6, Suite Development

Check out the new Photoshop Features panel:

Created with Adobe Configurator 3, the Photoshop Features panel lets you easily explore, try out and learn the new and enhanced tools and features in Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended. Arranged in a series of tabs, from the panel you can check out the new tools and features, access the timeline tools and capabilities for video and frames, go to video tutorial websites and if you have Photoshop Extended use all the major 3D tools and functions.

The panel is free and exclusively available on Adobe Exchange. To download it you will need the Adobe Exchange panel which currently works with 9 different CS6 applications.

NewImage

[Via Jonathan Ferman]


FilterHub utility enhances Photoshop's filter chops

Suite Development

Harald Heim’s FilterHub looks like a cool way to run filters (enabling multi-layer application of filters, creation of Smart Objects, and more).

NewImage

According to the product page, the panel lets you:

  • Run filters fast and conveniently (e.g. with a double click) without navigating the Filter menu
  • Apply the last effect of any filter (not just the last used one) without displaying its dialog
  • Paint or erase filter effects with the brush tool
  • Favorites list for quickly running your preferred filters and plugins
  • Display either all filters, only third party plugins or filters that match a search string
  • Run multiple filters (from the favorites list) with one click
  • Apply a filter on multiple layers in one pass
  • Even better: Run multiple filters on multiple layers with a single operation
  • Apply all filters to smart objects, even those filters that normally do not support it.
  • If a filter does not support an image mode, the image is converted to a supported mode.
  • Before running a filter it can automatically create a duplicated layer, a merged copy of all layers (stamped layer), a smart object or flatten the image.
  • Visit the homepage of a selected filter (only in Photoshop CS5/CS6)

The panel costs $39.95, or $24.95 for students.

[Via]

A new Photoshop extension detects image manipulation

Image Science, Scientific & Technical Imaging, Suite Development

I’m excited to announce that the company founded by my old boss & friend Kevin Connor, working together with image authenticity pioneer Dr. Hany Farid, has released their first product, FourMatch—an extension for Photoshop CS5/CS6 that “instantly distinguishes unmodified digital camera files from those that may have been edited.” From the press release:

FourMatch… appears as a floating panel that automatically and instantly provides an assessment of any open JPEG image. A green light in the panel indicates that the file matches a verified original signature in FourMatch software’s extensive and growing database of more than 70,000 signatures. If a match is not found, the panel displays any relevant information that can aid the investigator in further assessing the photo’s reliability.

Check it out in action, and see also coverage in the NY Times:

One other neat detail:

Fourandsix will donate 2 percent of their proceeds from the sale of this software to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). The donation will support NCMEC efforts to find missing children and prevent the abduction and sexual exploitation of children. 

Adobe Configurator 3.1 now live

Configurator, Suite Development

I’ve gotten a lovely birthday gift from the Configurator team, as they’ve souped up my Photoshop-and-InDesign-extendin’ baby with a range of great enhancements. PM Jonathan Ferman writes:

  1. Button Icons: In CS6 panels, you can associate your own images with a button object as icons for different states (button up, button down, and mouse over). You can have icons for Command, Script, Script file, Action, and Popup buttons.
  2. Panels for Adobe Exchange: This release offers additional support and features that help you create panels for Adobe Exchange.
    • New attributes allow you to specify the Author and a Description for a panel that is exported as a CS Extension, and attribute names have been simplified from “Extension ID” and “Extension Version” to “ID” and “Version.”
    • MenuName and Author values are required; if they are empty or invalid, you cannot export the panel as a CS Extension.
    • The Create Certificate dialog has been simplified.
  3. Scripting Support: The HTML widget now allows you to invoke predefined and developer-defined functions and scripts, which gives your panel access to the JavaScript API for Photoshop or InDesign.
  4. Additional Color Theme Support: The HTML widget can now detect the user’s change of color themes in Photoshop CS6, so that you can provide light and dark versions of any panel content.

With Adobe Configurator 3.1 your panels can be more customized than ever before and you can distribute them as either free, paid, or private products via the new Adobe Exchange.

Adobe debuts new Exchange panel, site

CS6, Suite Development

Great news for anyone who likes to extend & streamline Adobe apps. Think of it as a mini app store, right within Photoshop & co. PM Jonathan Ferman writes:

The new Adobe Exchange is a Creative Suite extension marketplace. It is available as a panel within a variety of CS6 applications. The Adobe Exchange panel provides a new way to search, discover, and install plug-ins, extensions, and other content for Creative Suite products.

The site enables private sharing within organizations, as well as both free & paid distribution of content:

Anyone with an Adobe ID will be able to submit up to 10 free products to the new Adobe Exchange, free of charge. You can also share products privately. Due to the way Exchange products are packaged it’s a great way for individuals or organisations to share Creative Suite content and it will appear in the user’s My Stuff section of the panel and can automatically provide any new updates. The potential here is enormous. For example, sharing out an InDesign template, swatches and many other Creative Suite generated content, which you can package in minutes with Adobe Exchange Packager. This goes beyond file sharing, as it can install the content in the correct locations for use with Creative Suite 6 supported products.

Anyone looking to offer paid products via the new Adobe Exchange should sign up for the prerelease program. There are no subscription charges for offering paid products while we are in prerelease.

And Russell Brown is hyped:

This new Photoshop Exchange panel is GREAT!
You can search for cool Photoshop panels and install them directly from within Photoshop. I’ve posted two of my MUST SEE panels on this site.
All my panels are FREE!!!

Developers: A new Adobe Exchange is coming

Suite Development

The extensibility team writes,

Adobe is creating a brand new Adobe Exchange, which will enable developers, trainers, and community experts to promote, distribute, monetize and track their CS6 solutions. These products will be made visible to potential CS6 customers within the “Adobe Exchange” panel in most CS6 applications.

They’re looking for launch partners, so check out their full post for more details.

The team has also created a new Adobe Exchange Packager that encapsulates content for distribution via this new channel.  You can get it by signing up for the Exchange prerelease program.

Heads-up for Adobe developers

Suite Development

Adobe is launching a new Adobe Exchange shortly, and

We are actively seeking launch partners for this program and are taking applications now for partners who would like to be added into our beta program.  Launch partners that commit to providing distributable CS6 content in the next 8 to 10 weeks will receive valuable benefits as charter members of the new Adobe Exchange.

You can also sign up for the prerelease program.

FontShop enables live previews inside Photoshop

Suite Development, Typography

Well isn’t this clever:

The FontShop Plugin Beta allows designers and other type enthusiasts to try out FontShop fonts directly inside Adobe® Photoshop® CS5 and CS5.5. You can preview any of the over 150,000 FontShop fonts for free, in the context of your own artwork.

 

Fonts are previewed as bitmaps rather than live, editable text. Text layers are auto-hidden while the bitmap versions are shown.

It seems the plug-in doesn’t yet work properly inside the Photoshop CS6 beta, so you might need to choose the CS5 version of Extension Manager to install it inside CS5.

[Via]

A new color-picking panel for Photoshop

CS6, Suite Development

Check out the latest from Anastasiy Safari:

Did you know that computer-based color schemes do not correspond to fine art ones? Where you expect green to be a complement color to red, the computer gives you cyan. Why is that? Because computers usually use a HSV color model, while classic painters use a completely different color wheel. And it’s available now exclusively to Photoshop in the MagicPicker color wheel panel! Painters, photographers, designers and everyone else can know use their knowledge of classic arts. They can build their unique color schemes based on intuitive, real-world paint behavior.

MagicPicker 2.1 also brings a Photoshop CS6 beta support and a significant speed increase.

The full version costs $14.

Update: Here’s a screenshot:

New Photoshop GuideGuide panel eases grid-work

CS4, CS5, Suite Development

Check it out:

Dealing with grids in Photoshop is a pain.

With GuideGuide, it doesn’t have to be. Pixel accurate columns, rows, midpoints, and baselines can be created based on your document or marquee with the click of a button. Frequently used guide sets can be saved for repeat use. Grids can use multiple types of measurements. Best of all it’s free. Honestly, if you haven’t started downloading it by now, you’re probably a masochist. Weirdo…

[Via Gary Greenwald]

Adobe's sticking with Flex, investigating HTML5, for CS extensibility

Flash, HTML5, Suite Development

PM Gabriel Tavridis shares some thoughts on where things are headed. Key points:

  • The Creative Suite SDK and CS Extension Builder will continue to be developed and enhanced with new features and support for Creative Suite applications.
  • We will make CS Extension Builder available through the Adobe Store at a compelling price point. We want the tool to become broadly available, so that every Creative Suite developer can enjoy its benefits.
  • We will continue our investigation on new technologies (e.g. HTML5) for extension development and occasionally share our findings with the developer community. We want to be transparent with the community and keep you involved in our planning.

All these tools & runtimes are just means to an end–specifically, that Photoshop and other apps get really well tailored to your needs. Your feedback is always welcome.

Stream Web fonts right into Photoshop

CS5, Suite Development, Typography

Extensis has released a free beta of their Web Font Plug-in for Photoshop CS5+. The plug-in (a panel) allows you to use fonts from WebINK (a web font rental service from Extensis) in the creation of website mock-ups in Photoshop. Using the plug-in requires downloading a trial version of the Suitcase Fusion 3 font manager, though it’ll keep running even after the trial period expires.

I haven’t yet gotten to try out the panel, but I’m intrigued. If you have feedback on it or just general thoughts on Web fonts & design tools, please chime in.

Update: Here’s an in-depth overview & demo video.

MAX: Learn to make money extending the Creative Suite

Suite Development

MAX-attending developers, this session sounds worthwhile:

How to Develop and Monetize Your Creative Suite Extensions

Learn how to use Adobe Creative Suite Extension Builder to develop, debug, and deploy extensions that use Flex and Adobe AIR frameworks to extend the functionality of the Creative Suite applications. Find out how to interact with XMP metadata, connect your extensions with data and web services back ends, and port your extensions into multiple Creative Suite applications. Finally, get a peek into what Adobe is doing to help you monetize your extensions and plug-ins.

Adobe Creative Developer Tour announced

Suite Development

Okay, my Suite-enhancing geeks, this one’s for you: The CS Developer Tour is coming to Singapore, New York, LA, and Munich this fall, aimed at helping system integrators, developers, and Adobe Solution Partners get busy extending the Creative Suite. Highlights, according to the site:

  • Extensibility – Efficiently develop and deploy extensions that work across Adobe Creative Suite products
  • Enterprise – Unlock new market opportunities and see how Adobe Creative Suite products can be seamlessly embedded into Enterprise environments
  • CS next – Detailed insight into Adobe’s next major Creative Suite release, early guidance on porting requirements, along with sneak peeks of upcoming features and APIs.

Follow the link above for details & registration info.

CS Extension Builder tryout available

Suite Development

A trial version of the Creative Suite Extension Builder is now available for download.  The team has posted a brief FAQ, but the main thing is that you’ll need a copy of Flash Builder (trial mode’s okay) plus at least one CS application installed.

Here’s a demo showing how to create your first extension in under 5 minutes:

Check out the developer center for demos, info on selling your extensions, and more.  The team also has a YouTube channel, a blog, and a user-to-user forum.

New color-mixing panel arrives in Photoshop

Suite Development

Check out Anastasiy Safari’s new MixColors panel for Photoshop:

It provides an engine for fast and correct color mixing, like oils, acrylics or watercolor. It keeps color history, allowing you to keep a number of swatches (like it’s on real-world palette). In “Mix eyedropper mode” the colors you pick with Photoshop eyedropper are mixed to the current color with one click. It also can be “attached” to my MagicPicker so the two panels act as one, plus more features.(As usual, CS3, CS4, CS5 and CS5.5 are supported).

The panel is on sale for $14.

News for Suite developers

Flash, Mobile, Suite Development

You can control Photoshop using Flash, Flex, and AIR, much like the various Photoshop Touch apps do. Check out developer Daniel Koestler’s detailed write-up for more info.

On a related note, a CS Extension Builder Trial version will be available soon, and you can sign up for notification via the team blog.  Extension Builder is essentially a custom version of Flash Builder that makes it easy to extend Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and other apps.

 

ColorPicker panel for Photoshop improved

Suite Development

I’m pleased to see that developer Anastasiy Safari has enhanced his popular MagicPicker panel for Photoshop.  Of the improvements he writes,

1) Switchable Color Schemes: Mono, Complement, Triad, Tetrad, Analogic. Accented Analogic with easy switching – artist may now choose a color for his work that depends on the main color and quickly switch them – and it’s all inside MagicPicker UI.

2) Attach other panels to MagicPicker and use them together in Compact Mode. It’s very useful in Compact Mode where you have a small portion of the panel visible and it expands very fast to the full state when mouse is over it.

I also improved speed and fixed issues with keyboard focus on Photoshop CS5 and CS5.1. And the panel is now astonishingly faster.

TypeDNA enhances Photoshop font selection; now on Windows

CS5, Suite Development, Typography

I’ve written previously about how the TypeDNA panel lets Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign select fonts by similarity, choose complementary fonts, etc. I’m pleased to see that the $49 tool is now available for Windows (as it was previously Mac-only). As a refresher, here’s a quick demo:

Other developments are in the offing. Founder Darren Glenister is speaking at Google I/O this week, promising to show “some new features that extend Google web fonts direct inside of Adobe CS5.” Check out the TypeDNA site for details about attending in person or online.

Video: Thoughts on the Photoshop Touch SDK

CS5, Mobile, Suite Development

Photoshop engineer Tom Ruark & PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes talk about how the new Photoshop Touch SDK came to be & some of what it enables:

You can read more about the project & see some real-world examples of its use on the Photoshop.com blog. You’ll need to grab the latest CS5 update to enable connectivity, and the three iPad apps that rely on it should be available for download soon. (If you’d like we can notify you when they’re ready.)

Brief thoughts on the Photoshop CS5 Touch apps

CS5, Suite Development, Tablets

Thanks for all the feedback regarding the just-announced Adobe Nav, Eazel, and Color Lava. A few quick thoughts:

  • Please remember that these efforts are just part of a bigger picture that has yet to be revealed. I’ve seen comments along the lines of “Nice, but I want Lightroom for tablets”; “Why are you doing these apps instead of making improvement X to Photoshop?”; “I’d like to see more support for Android”; etc. The feedback is welcome, and none of these things are mutually exclusive.
  • “Nav is one of the most exciting of our three new applications IF you think beyond Nav itself,” writes Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes. “We’re showcasing one of the most powerful pieces of the new Photoshop SDK – the ability to drive Photoshop from a device.” See the rest of his comment for more perspective.
  • You can indeed watch these videos via HTML5 on an iPad. Here’s a link to all of them plus a few I haven’t yet gotten to blog. For some reason embedded Adobe TV vids don’t work on iOS devices, but I’m told a fix is in progress.

Russell Brown demos a couple of useful panels

CS5, Suite Development

Apropos of the blending modes panel I mentioned the other day, Russell Brown has put together a quick video demonstrating some uses for this panel. He also demos a panel that sets the stack mode of Smart Objects (good for running the “tourist remover” trick on video, etc.). Download the panels here.
If design & layout is more your thing, check out Russell’s tutorial on the use of Cameron McEfee’s GuideGuide panel (see previous for info, and download here).

"Tych," a free diptych-maker for Photoshop

CS5, Suite Development

Reimund Trost has created what looks like a cool panel for Photoshop:

Tych Panel is an extension to Adobe Photoshop that automates diptychs and triptychs creation. It supports an arbitrary number of layouts using the compositing feature making it the perfect tool for your photo blog… Tych Panel is released as open source and can be used, modified and redistributed in any way you want.

Check out the demo:

New features in the WYSIWYG DiskFonts panel

Suite Development

Developer Anastasiy Safari’s DiskFonts panel has gotten a major update to version 1.2. He writes:

Now one can organize fonts with favorites and bookmark paths with fonts for later use, right inside Photoshop and other CS3, 4, and 5 apps. There are so many new features and improvements, so I’ll just mention some highlights:

  • Drag and drop of stylized text directly into document
  • iPhone/iPod/Android support (you can view the fonts from your computer on these mobile devices)
  • Fast font rendering with Pixel Bender.


The panel costs $29.

What's "Adobe Player for Embedding" & why would I care?

CS5, Suite Development

You might have seen this name pop up recently among CS5 updates. “APE” is essentially WebKit (the open-source, HTML-rendering engine behind Safari and Chrome) plus Flash Player.  Or, put another way, it’s Adobe AIR (which is WebKit + Flash) with modifications to support Suite extensibility (e.g. things like Configurator).  In any case, you’ll want to download the recent update (if you haven’t already) as it addresses bugs & security issues.

Photoshop extensions: DiskFonts panel, Clarté script

Suite Development
  • The DiskFonts panel for CS5 offers a simple way to type in some text, then see it previewed in all the fonts on disk (not just those installed) on your system.  Running in Photoshop, Illustrator, and five other apps, it’s $29 from Anastasiy Safari (whom you may remember from his very handy MagicPicker panel).
  • Max Penson & Tal Ninio have started PSKiss.com, a site where they’ll offer simple scripts and tools for complicated Photoshop tasks.  First up is PS Kiss Clarté, a script that produces a similar effect to Camera Raw’s clarity control.  According to Max, “It also has negative clarity and a spacial algorithm to calculate the correct filter size according to the size of the image.”

Configurator 2.0 is here!

Configurator, CS5, Suite Development

I’m delighted to announced that Adobe Configurator 2.0–now supporting both Photoshop CS5 and InDesign CS5–is available for download from Adobe Labs.

I characterize Configurator as a “bag of Legos,” letting you remix any/all of the tools & menu items in each application. The idea is to simplify the app interface by making it present “everything you want, nothing you don’t”–and to do it in a democratic, community-driven way.

Highlights in Configurator 2.0:

  • Support for HTML content (thanks to WebKit being embedded in CS5) that can drive the host app (running menu items, actions, and scripts, and switching tools). If you can create simple Web pages, you can create interactive CS5 tutorials.
  • Support for containers (groups switched via tabs or menus, and accordions)
  • Improved layout controls
  • Support for popup windows. These can contain HTML, video, and/or other panels.
  • Localization support (e.g. create a panel in English & have it auto-switch to translated text strings, changing button sizes as needed)
  • Numerous “JDI”-style enhancements (e.g. being able to hide the script/action icon on buttons)

I’ll try to put together a nice, polished little demo soon. In the meantime, if you’re willing to suffer through my scintillating, “wizard of aahs” public speaking style, you can check out this demo I did for developers last month. (Skip right past the first 5:40 or so.)

I’m adding some fairly detailed notes & tips in this post’s extended entry. For that info, read on.

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