Contact Sheet X

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xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

Contact Sheet X Beta 1 is now available for download at http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net. Everything on the site is pretty well setup including a discussion forum and bug reporting/tracking facilities. It will probably be a two week beta period before it gets blessed as Version 1.

CSX is kind a like new and improved (or, at least, different) Contact Sheet II. It's a completely JavaScript implementation.

More extensions are already being planned.

I will try to post updates here as well as on the sourceforge site.

-X
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

Contact Sheet X (CSX) 1.0 is now available at: sourceforge.net

For additional information on support, etc... visit the homepage: CSX

Or, just leave your comments here.

CSX is an enhanced and extended version of Contact Sheet 2 written completely in JavaScript.
It runs under Photoshop CS2 and the Photoshop CS3 Beta. Future releases will include full Bridge
support and more extensive CS3 integration.

And it's free.

-X
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

CSX Beta v1.1 is now available at:
http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net/Conta ... X-1_55.zip

The big addition is Bridge support. And here's a partial list of what's changed since 1.0:

Code: Select all   Fixed bug with page/file sequence numbers.
   
   Added code to make Output Folder/Page-File Index/File Prefix smarter.
   
   UI opens up in last position.
   
   UI clean up on Mac. (See Folder text fields).
   
   Added new CSXPortfolio-1 template.
   
   Added Template Preview support on Document panel in tabbed mode.
   A template preview will be presented on the panel if a file with
   the same name and a png extension are found in the same folder
   as the template.
   
   Misc. minor changes for CS3 beta (moving target...).
   
   Fixed widget state problems on Source panel.
   
   Added Caption Alignment setting (Left,Center,Right).
   
   Changed alignment of thumbnails to (Top,Middle,Bottom).
   
   Bridge support cleaned up. Added installation note for CSXBridge.jsx.
   
   Moved xtools runtime directory to Application Data on Win XP and
   ~/Library/Application Support on OSX.
   
   Added automatic conversion on Resolution settings.
   
   Improved logging support for CSXBridge
   
   Added full Bridge support (CSX from Bridge, Bridge from CSX).
   
   Changed log file setting to use complete path. Adjusted UI.
   
   Made some mods to the CSX Homepage. It's less lame. But still lame.
   
   Fixed backgrounding problem on OSX.

   Fixed internal rounding errors.
   
   Added automatic conversion of Document Width and Height when the
   Document Units property is changed.
   
   Fixed error where not having C:\temp on was causing errors in xexec.js.


I'm going to be shooting for a v1.1 release on Wednesday, so let me know if you run into any problems before then.

-X
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

The beta has been updated and can be found here.

-X
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

The download is at sourceforge.

-X
null

Contact Sheet X

Post by null »

Hey X.

I posted a topic in the Help Me forum about a problem I'm having with a script. I've been trying to track down this issue and a couple hours ago wondered if somehow app.activeDocument wasn't really what it should be. I put in some alert() calls to display app.activeDocument.name, and sure enough, when the code had problems, app.activeDocument.name didn't match what I expected it to, even though a few lines earlier in the code I had called Stdlib.makeActive() to set app.activeDocument.

So I decided it might be worthwhile to see what you did in CSX to make sure I was doing it right. While scrolling through the code, I noticed that in ContactSheetX.prototype.insertImageIntoSelection, you assign app.activeDocument directly, over and over again:

app.activeDocument = imageDoc;
imageDoc.selection.selectAll();
app.activeDocument = imageDoc;
imageDoc.selection.copy();

(and at least in this function, don't call Stdlib.makeActive(imageDoc), which "short circuits" setting app.activeDocument.)

There must be a reason you did that, right? Is PS flaky about making the specified doc the active document sometimes or something? Any light you could shed on the issue would be appreciated!
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

With CSX, there were some users, usually on the Mac, that were having problems related to the wrong doc being active at the wrong time, similar to your problem, I would imagine. I could on reproduce the problem in rare occasions.

The root cause of the problem seems to be that if you have more than one doc open (and the script is open and closing docs), the position of the mouse cursor may cause an unintended shift of focus from the doc you want to one that you don't want. This is a major problem for me on XP because I default to X-mouse mode which means that focus follows the mouse cursor. I can change focus just by moving my mouse over a window; I don't have to click like you do in normal mouse-focus mode. PS doesn't like this.

I isolated the problem to the block of code that you found in CSX. By repeatedly resetting the active document to the one I want (without any intervening code in between) I was able to guarantee that the document I wanted to be active actually was. The code may seem like overkill, but it was the only solution I could come up with. If you find anything better, let me know.

-X
null

Contact Sheet X

Post by null »

Got it! Thanks for the uber-fast reply. Your explanation totally makes sense and is definitely something I wouldn't have thought of.

Unfortunately I think my initial hunch was a red herring. Upon further investigation, app.activeDocument was actually being set correctly, so I don't think it's an activeDocument issue anymore. But the problem I described in more detail in the topic in Help Me still persists for me: on one particular machine the code almost always bombs whenever it tries to use the Action Manager to retrieve any type of layer property (but sometimes it doesn't), yet it works fine all the time on the machines I have direct access to. I just don't get it!
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

A new CSX Daily Build is now available.
http://ps-scripts.sourceforge.net/Conta ... X-1_79.zip ... X-1_79.zip

In addition to all of the other stuff I've added since 1.1, this drop includes the ability to have metadata in captions. There is a text file in the package that describes how to specify Caption Formats. I'm open to suggestions on how to handle the UI here. I'm not particularly happy with this, but I like it better than the Caption editor in Russel Brown's Caption Maker. This obviously needs more better docs.

For the curious, here is what a caption format could look like:
%Wx%H %Rppi - %E{Format} "%I{Title}"

and the caption would look something like:
1024x768 300ppi - image/jpeg "Big Fish"

There are two significant limitations with the metadata captions:
1) There is only a single line available. That's the way it's going to be for v1.2. v1.3 will have a multiline caption capability.
2) The sheet must be run in Basic mode. None of the other hiperf modes work. I have to have an open document in order to get it's metadata. I will probably add hooks in so that I can use exiftool to extract the metadata or possibly even use Bridge.

Keep me posted on problems.

-X
xbytor

Contact Sheet X

Post by xbytor »

This is the last beta of CSX v1.2. I've finished porting and testing on
WinXP/CS2/CS3 and OSX/CS2/CS3.

Everything looks fine to me. So far.

Check the Release Notes before installing and running.

Check the ChangeLog for the most current list of changes.

The docs, CSX.pdf, have been updated to reflect all of the changes.

Keep me posted on any problems you come across and thanks, again, for any help.

-X