MikeFromMesa

I am not a long-term Mac user and I don't even know if the term "service" is appropriate for the Mac. I wrote the equivalent of a Windows service, but as a stand-alone program. It was nothing special, but it was objective-c code, written with Xcode (not the automator), that starts, monitors the temp folder that is used to create the temp tif file, notes the names of any new temp tif files and then looks for a corresponding tiff file. When, and if, it finds it, it renames it to tif and starts scanning again. It is nothing very clever, just a simple little folder/file watcher and solves the problem for me. photoLine picks up the returned and renamed file and all is right with the world - or at least that part of it that lives on my Mac.

Thank you.

Wow! That that is really news. I am very surprised. Pleased, but surprised. Thank you for sharing what you heard.

blackest: Sorry for the delay but I have been out camping and only just now returned. > It is less than ideal, very much so, being on a unix base it shouldn't be too hard to pipe data from one program to another and the problem is no obvious way to do it within affinity photo. Remember. The idea of a plugin is to present processing as though the plugin call and interface was nothing more than another dialog box in the original program. It should be quick and it should be seamless. Given that, the idea of piping data from one program to another does not work since the data must be piped both ways. That is, the calling program would have to pass the data to the called program which would then have to pipe data back to the original. Even that is not enough since the data has to replace the original data as though another simple edit had been done. Having the called program return data to the calling program as another image simply fails as a seamless process. When you call a plugin with file1 you do not get file2 as a return. You get a changed file1. > An editin module is not ideal but it should be relatively easy to do, even if most popular plugins worked it'd still be handy. Even this is not as simple as it sounds. The normal way to do this is something like the following: 1) pixel editor saves the current image as a temporary file in the temp file location, 2) pixel editor calls the external editor with the path of the temp file, 3) external editor opens and displays the temp file, 4) user works on the image in the external editor and then saves the changed image, 5) pixel editor, which has placed a watch on the temp folder and file notices the update and loads the temp file ​All of this sounds fairly simple but there are some issues involved. For example, if you send a tif file to an external editor and then save that tif image in that external editor the editor may change the tif suffix to tiff and then the app watching the temp folder and file will not know that the expected file has been updated. This exact scenario is, in fact, what actually happens if you use photoLine and call Elements as an external editor. photoLine sends a tif but Elements, even though it recognizes that it has a tif, will always save the file as a tiff. To solve this problem on my machine I had to write a service to watch for the tif file being updated as a tiff and then change it back to tif. That solved the problem, but it is not the general kind of solution that can be placed into a normal external editor call. The problem is certainly solvable, but it may not be as simple as it at first seemed.

I have to ask what you mean when you say "with a blackpoint override". Are you manually over-riding the black point setting? Or are you saying that the Develop Assistant is turned off? Or something else?

Will the customer beta versions expire like the pre-release betas? I ask because I will be traveling from time to time and will miss the release of the new customer betas. If I can not download the new version I want to know if the previous version, which will be on my machine, will expire and, if so, after how long? Or how long after the release of the next customer beta? Thank you.

I have also noticed some pixilation in some of my dng images, but that is true for both the latest customer beta and the MAS version. I don't work with dng very much and this particular dng was the output from an HDR image from LR6. It opens properly in Elements 13 but both AP versions show serious pixelation issues.' I would be happy to post a link to the dng image if that would help.

The whole idea is to be able to open an image in AP, edit it, then be able to further edit that same image in a plugin. What that means is that the image in the editor, along with its edits, is opened in the plugin, further adjusted and then returned to the editor in a seamless sort of way. Using Reveal in Finder and then Open With fails to do that because (1) it will open the image on disc, not the one in memory and (2) will not return the image to the editor for further editing. For your suggestion to work would require more like the following: 1) Load image into AP, 2) Edit in AP, 3) Save image. If your original image was raw, Export, not Save, image, 4) Since an exported image will not always be the same named image you have in AP you will now have to use Finder to find the image, 5) Select the file you just found in (4) and Open With, 6) Edit in plugin or plugin app, 7) Save image from plugin or plugin app, 8) Reload the image in (7), 9) Further edit loaded image, 10) Save or Export edited image The bolded steps are those you would have to add to be able to use your idea regularly. I am not saying it would not work but there are quite a lot of added steps beyond just having the built-in capability to call an external editor and pass it the file to be edited.

Never saw that post before. My thought was that a specific forum for this sort of thing could be a valuable tool to teach people, including myself, the best way to approach handling difficult images.

All of the postings on this forum have been devoted to issues directly involving the proper functioning of APB first and now AP that no one has posted any photo editing challenges. I understand this because, until recently, AP was still a work in progress but now that the app has been released I wonder if it would not be time to have some separate forum for challenges on how to use AP to correct or enhance existing images. Is anyone interested? Can the Moderators create a separate section of this forum for that task? It seems to me that it would be a good teaching tool.

As you, I don't use the Export Persona. One of the moderators said that it was really for slices and, since I don't do that, I have not really used it. It begs the question as to whether or not the problem exists with File -> Export as well.

I have one of those already dug as I need it all the time. I am perfectly willing to share ...

Perhaps you have Designer on your system? Here is a screen shot of my system trying to launch the latest customer beta:

No worries. Accidents happen and, of course, I always have the latest release to use.

I just downloaded and installed the newest customer beta (1.3.4.26925) but when I launch it I am told that I must have a regular copy of Affinity Designer, not Photo, installed and it will not run. I suspect this is a bug.

This is of some interest to me since I use a Canon and am processing CR2 files frequently. Could you attach some screen shots to show what differences you are referring to? And are you talking about differences between the original raw and the export file or between the adjusted image and the exported file?

OK. Thank you.

I am glad to hear that no one has given up and that there is still work going on concerning this issue. I know I have said it before but if the developers would give us the ability to call an external editor it would solve a lot of these problems for a lot of us.

I just noticed that there is no Location Panel in the Customer Beta. I know that there was no Location Panel in the re-release beta, but is that also true for the Customer Beta? Or is its absence a bug?

Bill, I agree. Now that I understand the problem, as I did not before, I have both more sympathy for the problems the developers face. I would like to think that you are right in that they are looking into this problem to see what solution would be best. I do not know why no one has ever responded, positively or negatively, to my suggestions that they implement an external app interface as that would solve many of the problems. You could use Fusion Express 2 (or photoFXlab) for all of the Topaz plugins and I have had some luck with using photoFXlab (the app, not the plugin) to run other plugins such as Perfectly Clear and Dxo ViewPoint 2. In addition we could use all of the OnOne Suite as well. The thing I keep coming back to is that the developers have done a wonderful job in getting AP to release and, for all of my uses, it is completely stable. I can do everything I need except call all of my plugins, and perhaps they are still working on that. One would like to hope, anyway. Mike

And I guess this explains why the other MAS editors, Acorn and Pixelmator, don't run any plugins. Based on this information I would guess that AP will never be able to run all of the Topaz plugins unless they implement an external app interface and I should be grateful that they do run my two favorites - Adjust and Detail. I will just call another external editor (probably photoLine) if I need to run the others. Perhaps they will provide an external app interface. I just hope they don't decide that the plugin market is a no-win market and drop what does work.

Bill, FusionExpress 2 is an app, not a plugin, and Aperture can run the Topaz plugins because they can launch an external app and it can launch the plugins from its environment. This is why I have been saying for months that if AP would provide an external app interface then we could run the plugins from it. Probably all of them, Topaz, NIK and others, as long as there was a free-standing app that launched the apps. If you search your system you will find Topaz Fusion Express 2.app but no Topaz Fusion Express 2.plugin. The copies on my system are in /Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs/FusionExp2 and /Applications.

That is a much more detailed response than I ever got from one of the plugin companies. Thank you for taking the time. At least it explains why some of the plugins are failing and others are not. Perhaps it also explains why photoFXlab works and all of the plugins work through it as well.

+1

Thank you. That is newer than I have seen. It is also helpful to see that there is no entry for plugin functionality so perhaps I should assume that there is no current plan to try to improve the current plugin interface.