Briefly, I would like to show a moderately complicated Photoshop action in a forum. Saving the .atn file is easy, but it is encrypted by adobe.
I found a 25,475 line .jsx file which will apparently convert it to XML but is unusable without any usage or documentation
http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/apps/ActionFileToXML.jsx
What is the easiest way, other than read action word, type word in text editor, to get the 6 inches of action (as seen in Photoshop) into plain text?
GORY DETAILS:
I have a large number of files which I inadvertently damaged by using perfectlyclear on them. It enhances some of the areas but pathologically destroys all darkish areas by converting them to pure black and near zero contrast. When printed, the pictures look like somebody took a black magic marker and redacted large areas. They are damaged beyond use as-is.
The Photoshop fix is to
duplicate layer
select color range, click on a black area, set fuzziness to ~12, range=100%
select expand 4, feather 3
make new mask channel
select backward (original) layer
delete (nukes blackened area under mask)
save as PNG with transparency
This leaves a PNG file with the redacted areas transparent and with feathering around them. By placing the original file beneath it, the original non-blackeded areas are shown.
I would like to document this modest solution in an ImageMagick forum but can not believe how far adobe has gone to lock my action into adobe-only tools. I want to jailbreak this and all of my other actions.
NOTE: There is a one line usage in ActionFileToXML.jsx: "This script reads an ActionFile and converts it to XML" and no documentation of any type. An alert I stumbled upon states that it will only work in CS2/3/4 and I have CS6. It has a 2007 date on it.
I have read that this .JSX is adobe's version of JavaScript and that you run them from inside Illustrator (which I don't have).
I want to figure out how to decrypt my actions and write a useable script:
USAGE: decrypt.atn.to.txt.pl encrypted.atn [-o text_file_name] <enter>
Supply fully qualified path to a .atn" file and it will be deciphered
into a useable .txt file with the same path/basename and a .txt
extension unless you use the -O option which will attempt to write to
the file name you supply.
Perhaps, I could even make a CPAN module?!
Good thing the .JSX writer had the foresight to include 0.0039% documentation or the program would be completely useless! :)
SOLUTION == and STEP by STEP instructions:
The link:
http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/apps/ActionFileToXML.jsx
points to a gigantic adope extend-script. Reading the file, line 3 has the ~only documentation:
// This script reads an ActionFile and converts it to XML.
The filename already tells you this: ActionFileToXML.jsx
Without wading through 25,000 lines of largely uncommented, 8-year-old code/data/??? it is completely unusable.
What the link poster failed to include was the PACKAGE containing the other 300 files which includes the README.txt, INSTALLATION.txt, /docs, etc.
The PACKAGE supplying context, install, usage, etc can be found at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ps-scripts/files/xtools/v2.2betas/
How to Decrypt adope's .atn file, step by step:
download README.txt and xtools*.zip from http :// sourceforge.net|projects|ps-scripts|files|xtools|v2.2betas
READ README.txt and unzip zip to any place you like (and REMEMBER where you put it). NOTE: evilnet explorer will by default hide it under some mile long, incredibly ugly file path where you may never find it so use FIREFOX: set tools -> options -> general -> downloads to Always_Ask_Me (or set a reasonable download directory)
Photoshop -> actions, click on action set you want to decipher and click the "arrow box" to the right of actions -> save_actions and put them where you can find them
Photoshop file -> scripts -> browse and navigate to where you stashed ActionFileToXML.jsx and execute. This pops up a GUI as shown at http :// ps-scripts.sourceforge.net|xtools.html
Navigate to where you hid you .atn file, the XML file box will be populated with the same path/file_BASE_name and an XML extension as a default. Adjust name/location to suit
hit PROCESS and in a delightfully brief period (in my case), it was done
Get ready to marvel at the succinct efficiency with which adope stores an action like [select->color_range, localized, fuzziness=14, range=100%] (56 bytes written by hand) in only 3635 bytes of unfathomably labyrinthine XML with no default values left underspecified. It look a lot like IRS regulation fine print! ;)
The main difficulty in trying to make sense of the XML is that it is written in some funky interpreter psycho-code which bears absolutely no resemblance to the keys/clicks you actually used to create it.
One of the steps I was attempting to elucidate was was simply layer (I NEVER ToucheDER) -> layer_mask -> hide_selection. It is diabolically obfuscated as (and I quote):
<ActionItem key="TEXT" expanded="false" enabled="true" withDialog="false" dialogOptions="2" identifier="TEXT" event="make" name="Make" hasDescriptor="true"><ActionDescriptor key="make" count="3"> <DescValueType.CLASSTYPE key="1316429856" id="1316429856" symname="New" sym="Nw " classString="Channel" class="Chnl"/><DescValueType.REFERENCETYPE key="1098129440" id="1098129440" symname="At" sym="At "><ActionReference key="1098129440" id="1098129440" symname="At" sym="At " count="1">
make .. new .. channel .. at .. mask .. hideSelection? Huh?
I had to scratch my head and fiddle around with the Channels panel options before I found the menu solution.
According to the generous and personable developer, Xbytor (who patiently answers emails from agitated would-be users), this XML can be hacked (carefully), translated back into a .ATN file and used by Photoshop. A very powerful possibility.
Brian
Related
I wart to create a web app where a user enters certain data via a form and then receives a custom rendered image. The image is from a smart object in a psd. It's kind of like a mock-up which definitely requires needs some photoshop filters to be properly rendered.
This should all happen in real time and should be doable from my understanding since the rendering of a single images doesn't need much computing power
I've done some research and haven't really found a solution the matches my problem. Is it necessary to run Photoshop on a server and then remotely run a photoshop script and then upload the generated image somewhere else?
I've used The After Effects Plugin Template by DataClay in the past which offers similar functionality but for video.
Looking forward to hearing your ideas.
Thanks
You can use the Dataclay plugin to handle still image exports out of After Effects. Make a single-frame duration composition in After Effects and rig the layers with the Templater plugin. Then use the PNG Sequence output module to render out a single frame.
From Dataclay's forums:
Exporting
A few extra steps are required to correctly render a project file as a PNG sequence using Templater. By default, a file rendered as a PNG sequence will have the frame number appended to the end of the file name, i.e.:
filename.png00000, filename.png00001, filename.png00002, etc.
In order to designate where in the filename the frame number should be added, we’ll need to use the output column. First, add a column named output to your data source. Next, add a filename with a set of brackets with five # signs to designate where the frame numbering should be added. For example:
filename[#####] would result in filename00001.png
or
[#####]filename would result in 00001filename.png
I want to make a small "library" to be used by my future maxima scripts, but I am not quite sure on how to proceed (I use wxMaxima). Maxima's documentation covers the save(), load() and loadFile() functions, yet does not provide examples. Therefore, I am not sure whether I am using the proper/best way or not. My current solution, which is based on this post, stores my library in the *.lisp format.
As a simple example, let's say that my library defines the cosSin(x) function. I open a new session and define this function as
(%i0) cosSin(x) := cos(x) * sin(x);
I then save it to a lisp file located in the /tmp/ directory.
(%i1) save("/tmp/lib.lisp");
I then open a new instance of maxima and load the library
(%i0) loadfile("/tmp/lib.lisp");
The cosSin(x) is now defined and can be called
(%i1) cosSin(%pi/4)
(%o1) 1/2
However, I noticed that a substantial number of the libraries shipped with maxima are of *.mac format: the /usr/share/maxima/5.37.2/share/ directory contains 428 *.mac files and 516 *.lisp files. Is it a better format? How would I generate such files?
More generally, what are the different ways a library can be saved and loaded? What is the recommended approach?
Usually people put the functions they need in a file name something.mac and then load("something.mac"); loads the functions into Maxima.
A file can contain any number of functions. A file can load other files, so if you have somethingA.mac and somethingB.mac, then you can have another file that just says load("somethingA.mac"); load("somethingB.mac");.
One can also create Lisp files and load them too, but it is not required to write functions in Lisp.
Unless you are specifically interested in writing Lisp functions, my advice is to write your functions in the Maxima language and put them in a file, using an ordinary text editor. Also, I recommend that you don't use save to save the functions to a file as Lisp code; just type the functions into a file, as Maxima code, with a plain text editor.
Take a look at the files in share to get a feeling for how other people have gone about it. I am looking right now at share/contrib/ggf.mac and I see it has a lengthy comment header describing its purpose -- such comments are always a good idea.
For principiants, like me,
Menu Edit:configure:Startup commands
Copy all the functions you have verified in the first box (this will write your wxmaxima-init.mac in the location indicated below)
Restart Wxmaxima.
Now you can access the functions whitout any load() command
XRef table at offset 666027 has /Prev entry as 0, which seems to be wrong, how to handle such pdfs, how to get the actual /Prev in such cases?
Please look into attached pdf http://www.filedropper.com/hackermonthly-issue-11
Acrobat opens it 'as usual' but then wants to save it on closing. This is an indication it "repaired" the file; probably by enumerating the objects in the file and ignoring the xref tables.
Technically speaking, the file is damaged and there is no right way to "handle" it. Opening then saving it with Acrobat may work for some files, but is it not totally fail-safe; Acrobat still has to guess which objects are still valid and which are not.
The PDF was originally created with Adobe InDesign CS5, which is not known to generate faulty PDFs, and one can assume the tool that was used to add the annotations damaged the file. A cursory glance at the end of the file confirms this: the startxref offset is off by a couple of bytes, and when fixing this with a hex editor, you will only find the previous startxref (for another annotation) is also off by a couple of bytes – at which point I gave up and did not check further. So whatever tool you used to annotate the PDF, don't use it anymore.
I'm using odt file as some kind of template and Libre Office as tool to create this template. It usually works fine except one thing.
Let assume our odt file has a paragraph of text.
There is my text.
XML file may or may not look (seems random) like this (messy, not very good thing for for parsing or as a template):
<text:p text:style-name="P7">There is</text:p><text:p text:style-name="P7"> my text<text:p text:style-name="P7">.</text:p></text:p>
Sometimes it's (again seems random) like this (expected result, makes sense after all):
<text:p text:style-name="P7">There is my text.</text:p>
Is there any way to get rid superfluous xml tags? Or at least can user see a raw document in LibreOffice/OpenOffice to manually remove redundancy?
The key is to provide easy tool for a user, to detect and fix artefacts like this.
Have you tried Ctrl-M? If all formatting is defined in styles and style formatting is not manually overridden, it should not disturb the formatting but should remove redundant tags.
A tedious user process would be to cut and paste-special as text and apply style again.
Finally, a macro would definitely do the trick.
I am writing a program in Delphi which should get the date and time of the picture which was taken with photo cam and then it would rename the file to include the date+time it found.
So far i have achieved that by opening file as binary and searching for a special order of bytes. These bytes were then followed by the date and then time. So i've come to a problem. Actually few problems.
Because it reads the file 1 byte after another, reading a file is a slow process. If the date was found, it is usually at the start of file, it doesn't take long, however if 'special byte order' was not found, it will read the whole file. So my method is way too slow.
The special byte order may change in some pictures (i have no idea why) even if it was taken with the same camera. So my program sometimes fails to find the date in the file even though it is there.
Windows explorer has no problems finding date in all of the pictures, so i was thinking maybe there are some kind of special functions which could get me what i need?
How do i get the information i need from the picture so it works with all the formats?
Thanks
I think you only need to look at the EXIF information. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif
There are some open source tools which accomplish that, but I don't know of anything Delphi specific. If you're not scared of Java, you can have a look at the source code of this open source project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jexifviewer/ to see how they evaluate the date field.
You can then optimise your reader, to only look at the relevant area. You might want to keep in mind that the Endianness in Java is different to Delphi.
Jules is right about Exif data; you might want to try this Delphi library:
http://delphihaven.wordpress.com/ccr-exif/
This is an amazing site to view Exif data.
http://regex.info/exif.cgi
If it is a graphic file (as in your case), to open it with a dialog box, place a TOpenPictureDialog component on the form.
Also place the component TLabel, for displaying the date of creation of the file.
In the button's place the following code:
if OpenPictureDialog1.Execute then Label1.Caption := DateTimeToStr(FileDateToDateTime(FileAge(OpenPictureDialog1.FileName));
In order to open jpeg and png files in the code, in the line uses you need to add the name of the two libraries, JPEG, PNGImage.
If you have the full address of your file, you can write the code above instead of the code above:
Label1.Caption := DateTimeToStr(FileDateToDateTime(FileAge('full address to file')));
If you only need the date, without the file creation time, then instead of the DateTimeToStr command, use the DateToStr command.