Hi everyone, I’m happy to announce that my new book on the UXP Photoshop API is available! I’m genuinely surprised I made it in time for the mandatory Black Friday 2023 deal (promo code BF2023), but I did. You can read more about it on my courses website page; it’s 325 pages, with a code bundle with 30 UXP scripts and plugins. Here’s one spread as a little teaser. And the Table of Contents. More screenshots and info in the book’s website. ? Where can I get it? ??? HERE ??? You’ll also find a way to get a 70-page free sample there. ❓ How does this compare to “Adobe UXP Plugins development wi ..read more

Hello, internet, this is a quick memo to inform you all that I am currently working on the 2nd edition of my book “Professional Photoshop Scripting”, covering UXP Scripts and Plugins. It’s a complete rewrite with brand new content, which I am super proud of—I shouldn’t say, but I am. I can’t wait to publish.1 I’m posting here because I’m well past the halfway mark of the necessary work—otherwise, I wouldn’t dare to say. I’ve completed (he checks) eight chapters out of ten/eleven, but the bulk of the content is there; then, it’ll be the usual deadly wrestling match with LaTeX for the book desig ..read more

If you’ve ever wanted a field guide to UXP, this is it. It’s titled “UXP Landscape Guide: mapping your learning journey through Adobe Extensibility”. This one is a longer (~40 min) presentation which goal is to give a sense of what UXP is all about. Mostly to inform the learning journey of people approaching it for the first time, with just a vague idea of the territory’s shape. I’m going through a bit of history, the tech stack, the rationale, the possibilities, stuff to master, stuff to know something about, stuff to stay away from, resources, etc. Thanks for following along! If you find th ..read more

UXP has updated the Manifest to version 5. We’ll see what’s new, what’s changed, how to deal with your plugins’ code and users. I’m going to summarize the most salient/tricky points, and link the relevant documentation for you to dig deeper. Prerequisites and the CC Marketplace Manifest v5 is officially supported since Photoshop 2022 (version 23.3.0), that sports UXP v6.0.2. Developers are allowed to submit Manifest v5 based plugins in the CC Marketplace, and users can install them provided that they’ve got Creative Cloud Desktop v5.7. What happens when you push an updated version of your UXP ..read more

In this installment I’d like to tell you about ReactJS and take the chance to announce a brand new course of mine: Adobe UXP plugins development with ReactJS - Build products and Create a Business in the Creative Cloud Marketplace and Beyond. The usual YouTube video I publish alongside with the article is taking more time than expected to edit, so I’ve decided to publish the written version first ? As soon as it’s ready I’ll add it here! So far in this series I’ve only used Vanilla JavaScript to keep it simple, but in the real world a large part of plugin developers don’t like to reinvent th ..read more

In this episode I’ll show you how to setup Flyout Menus for UXP plugins, while introducing UXP Entrypoints. Feel free to watch the video or read the article, they cover the same ground. Flyouts Flyouts are the kind of popup menus that appear when you click the top-right corner of UXP plugin’s panels. They’re traditionally used to launch info/about dialogs, or directly set Preferences in a remarkably unobtrusive way: the Flyout is easily reachable (stuff in there is always just one click away) and it helps you tremendously in keeping the precious real estate of the UI as uncluttered as possibl ..read more

A long (long) time ago I wrote an essay on Frequency Separation, even if the main subject was disguised in the more approachable title “Notes on Sharpening”. That was early 2009, way before Frequency Separation was cool, then popularized/mainstream, then possibly cool again. I’ve thought to revisit the original article to give the subject a new coat of 2021 paint, plus all sorts of new detours. Spoiler alert: I’m interested in Frequency Separation as a tool for a broader set of manipulations not limited to, nor particularly focused on, beauty/skin retouch. 1. Frequencies I assume that you alre ..read more

In this episode we’ll learn how to build Modal Dialogs for UXP plugins. Feel free to watch the video or read the article, they cover the same ground. ExtendScript history ExtendScript was the language that we’ve been using to script Adobe applications literally forever. It was based on the ECMAScript spec version 3 (a.k.a. ES3), that was cutting edge in the decade 1999-2009. Trivia moment: ECMA stands for European Computer Manufacturers Association, and it’s the organization that standardized the JavaScript language under the name ECMAScript. There’s a terrific interview with Brendan Eich (wh ..read more

In this episode I’ll talk about UI making and Adobe Spectrum Components. Also a quick and hopefully welcome announcement: from now on I’ll publish a written article alongside with the YouTube video, so that you can choose the medium you prefer. Native UIs Let me bring up the slide that I’ve shown in the first episode, that comes directly from Adobe: If you focus on the center/left part, you see that the Layout Engine let’s you write – as we already know very well at this point – HTML and CSS, but those aren’t just displayed in some sort of a Browser context, as CEP would do. Instead, UXP map ..read more

In this episode I approach BatchPlay, the super-powerful Photoshop-only scripting technique that can overcome DOM’s limits. This is part 1, at least one more video will follow. If you find this content useful, please consider supporting me – 2020 is a hell of a year. I don’t have a Patreon page, but I’ve got two fairly cheap plugins on the Photoshop Marketplace, ALCE (Advanced Local Contrast Enhancer) and Double USM (on sharpening). If you happen to buy them, please leave a positive rating/review, it would greatly help. Or, you can If you cannot, or don’t want to, that’s OK anyway. Stay safe ..read more