Does AP support command/console parameters?

[longstock]

Does Affinity Photo support command options and parameters? I.e. photo.exe -hdrstack "photo1.tif" "photo2.tif" "photo3.tff"

[R C-R]

No. There has been mention of adding scripting support at some time in the future, but there is no eta for that or promise that it ever will be implemented. Also, since both AD & AP are cross-platform apps with a 'universal' native file format, it seems unlikely that anything platform-specific will be developed to support a command line interface.

[Alfred]

Also, since both AD & AP are cross-platform apps with a 'universal' native file format, it seems unlikely that anything platform-specific will be developed to support a command line interface.

 

Windows users can already use the "--no-dwm-warning" switch, so who knows what other possible command line parameters are lurking in there? :ph34r:

[R C-R]

Windows users can already use the "--no-dwm-warning" switch, so who knows what other possible command line parameters are lurking in there? :ph34r:

I have roughly a thimble's worth of knowledge of Windows stuff like this so I could be way, way wrong but I thought that was an OS level switch, not anything that changed or accessed anything in the Affinity apps themselves.

[longstock]

It's been a pain in the ass everytime I try to do a HDR or focus stack from Lightroom into Affinity Photo as I would have to basically do Select photos in Lr --> Edit in Affinity Photo (external editor) --> Close all the tabs in AP --> open HDR Stack window in AP --> add photos --> click 'Run' every single time!

 

As a software developer myself, I think it would be useful and quite easy if Affinity Photo could expose command line options such as a '-hdrstack' then some one like me could create custom launchers that can be added as Lightroom external editors that then launches AP with specific windows opened and prefilled.

 

I've done some testing and basically Lr calls any external editor (e.g. Affinity Photo) as follow:

photo.exe "photoPath1" "photoPath2" "photoPath3"

If AP could support application launch parameters then I could write dummy 'editors' that will get added into Lr as external editors and call AP with the relevant command parameters.

Here's an example, say if I want to do a HDR stack and AP could provide a '-hdrstack' command then a dummy Lr external editor can just call the following:

photo.exe -hdrstack "photoPath1" "photoPath2" "photoPath3"

New workflow would then just be Select photos in Lr --> Create HDR Stack (external editor) --> Click 'Run' in the AP HDR Stack window

It should then open AP with the HDR stack window open and the photos added and ready to go.

 

@R C-R without going in depth. You can basically launch any applications on any platform via command line. As far as AP goes, it receives the command line options and parameters the same way on both MacOS and Windows. It's just a matter of exposing a command line option and handling it internally which shouldn't require any platform specific code.

[R C-R]

@longstock, I know you can launch apps from the command line & that (usually) you can specify one or more files for it to open. The syntax for Mac OS is somewhat different from your Lr example (see for example this man page), but it is easy enough to do.

 

However, as I am sure you know, there is much more to it than opening files, setting flags, & passing arguments to the app. Among other things, there is no guarantee that the app has been written to be ready to execute something like a 'hdrstack' routine whenever it is called from the command line, or that any & all initial conditions required to open the window & populate it with the files would be met. Consider for example a file that can't be accessed for one reason or another, say because of a permissions issue or because it is flagged as in use by another user or app. In the GUI you could never add it to the list, so currently there is no need for the routine to do any error checking for that. Code for that would have to be added to the routine, plus some sort of user notification or at least a graceful way for it to fail without destabilizing the app.

 

As a software developer surely you must know that error checking & exception handling are often the most tedious & time consuming parts of an app to get right, that it is not feasible to make that completely (or sometimes even mostly) independent of the OS the app runs on, & that even small changes in the core code can require major revisions to the error trapping routines, modifications to dlibs, & so on.

[longstock]

That's fine R C-R. I'm just asking if Affinity Photo offers it now (i.e. command line options for stacks). I am not demanding the app to have that capability nor that the devs should provide it. I do fully understand the complexicity of these things as I write code for a living. I was just hoping for a yes or no answer from some one who's affiliated with Serif. However, that seems to be too much to ask, given the responses (or lack of) I received for my last post.

 

Applications can be launched from command line the exact same way on both Windows and MacOS sanes the difference in executable name. But that's not really relevant here and not something AP needs to care about. The app launch stuff in my previous reply is merely an examply of what I would do in my own code (in Windows) to launch AP in a more streamlined manner from Lr.

 

I can almost guarantee you that AP (or whatever frameworks/libraries it uses) is already doing checks for the things that you've mentioned whenever a file is read from/write to. Which is precisely why "In the GUI you could never add it to the list". But that's not what I was asking here.

 

Since you've had spoken about how AP works in a matter of fact manner. Are you a developer working on it? 

[R C-R]

longstock, I am just a user with no affiliation with Serif or Affinity. I answered "no" in my first post based on what the developers & staff have said in other topics over the last few years.

 

In general, there are quite a few things they consider proprietary & will not discuss but every so often they share some tidbit about the structure of the apps & the native Affinity file format. In the Mac versions, it is easy to see the executable file, the frameworks, the libraries & the plugins, plus all the supporting files. I do not have the Windows versions but from discussions with other users who do, apparently there are many differences, particularly in the frameworks. That should not be much of a surprise considering all the restrictions Apple enforces on MAS apps, on access to system level API's, on inter-application communication, & so on.

 

I cannot say if any Serif/Affinity developer or staff member will reply here -- as I said, there is a lot they will not share -- but it can take several days for them to work their way through all the posts, & to some extent they tend to give lower priority to topics that ask the same things that have been covered several times in other ones, so give it a day or two more & perhaps you will get a more definitive answer from one of them.

[bwana4swahili]

On 7/4/2017 at 9:42 PM, longstock said:

It's been a pain in the ass everytime I try to do a HDR or focus stack from Lightroom into Affinity Photo as I would have to basically do Select photos in Lr --> Edit in Affinity Photo (external editor) --> Close all the tabs in AP --> open HDR Stack window in AP --> add photos --> click 'Run' every single time!

 

As a software developer myself, I think it would be useful and quite easy if Affinity Photo could expose command line options such as a '-hdrstack' then some one like me could create custom launchers that can be added as Lightroom external editors that then launches AP with specific windows opened and prefilled.

 

I've done some testing and basically Lr calls any external editor (e.g. Affinity Photo) as follow:

photo.exe "photoPath1" "photoPath2" "photoPath3"

If AP could support application launch parameters then I could write dummy 'editors' that will get added into Lr as external editors and call AP with the relevant command parameters.

Here's an example, say if I want to do a HDR stack and AP could provide a '-hdrstack' command then a dummy Lr external editor can just call the following:

photo.exe -hdrstack "photoPath1" "photoPath2" "photoPath3"

New workflow would then just be Select photos in Lr --> Create HDR Stack (external editor) --> Click 'Run' in the AP HDR Stack window

It should then open AP with the HDR stack window open and the photos added and ready to go.

 

@R C-R without going in depth. You can basically launch any applications on any platform via command line. As far as AP goes, it receives the command line options and parameters the same way on both MacOS and Windows. It's just a matter of exposing a command line option and handling it internally which shouldn't require any platform specific code.

This functionality would be fabulous!  My other HDR and Panorama packages support multiple file transfers.

I should add that I've been using AP since its release on Windows and have given two introductory courses in its use.  Invariably the question arises about exporting multiple files for HDR, stacking, panos/mosaics, focus stacking, etc. to AP.  I've disappointed quite a few people by saying it isn't possible (at this point).  Thus, I end up doing a bit of preprocessing in say Lightroom, exporting the files I require then importing these to AP.  Not an onerous undertaking BUT simply not efficient!

bwa

Edited February 3, 2019 by bwana4swahili
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