Basic Concept
As you see the centre of PiCo are those two panes that
contain the tabs "File View", "Filter View" and "FFL View". One of the
panes is always active the other always passive. When you click on one
it becomes active and the other becomes passive. The background (of the
file list) of the passive pane becomes grey. As you can see in the picture
above the right pane is the passive one.
All commands are related to the active pane. Some commands use the directory
of the passive pane to place files to e.g FileCopy, Move, Unzip, Add 2
Zip, Extract, Add, Create Lib, List to File and Convert to. For example
selecting files in the active pane and pressing Filecopy will copy these
selected files to the directory displayed in the passive pane.
Clicking the right mouse button over the file list in Filter View, over
the filter list in Filter View, over the FFL list in FFL View and over
the window background of the Filter Factory Editor window will pop up a
context menu.
PiCo has three differnt views:
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In the File View directories and files
are displayed.
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From the combo box you can choose which files should be displayes:
All FF Formats (files with the extension 8bf,prm,txt,asf,pff,vfx,vft),
all files (*.*), all Filter Factory Libraries (*.ffl), all Photoshop PlugIns(*.8bf),
all Premiere PlugIns (*.prm), all Text files (*.txt) and all MediaStudio
PlugIns (*.vf*).
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By clicking on those two icons at the buttom of the pane,
you can switch to Premiere's or Photoshop's PlugIn directory. If you are
using PSP 4 for example and want to use this feature, put all your PlugIns
in to a sub directory called Plugins in your PSP directory.
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If you have selected "All Files" in the combo box, you can launch
files by double clicking on them or pressing <Return>. By doing
that the program that is associated with this file type will showup and
display the file contents.
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Double clicking on Photoshop FF Plugs (.8bf), Premiere FF Plugs (.prm),
FFWizard or Plugin Manager Text files (.txt), AFS or PFF files will load
the filter informations into PiCo's FF Editor, if "in PiCo's Logo" isn't
activated. If it is, a preview will be displayed in PiCo
Logo box. That way you can use the cursor keys to browse through a filter
directory previewing those filters.
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In the Filter View Filter Factory PlugIns
that are in the current directory are displayed by their category and name.
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By double clicking on a category in the left list box all
filters of this category are displayed in the right list box.
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a "+" infront of the filter name means that the filters is
enabled, a "-" means that Photoshop/PSP 4/Premiere/Mediastudio etc. will
ignore it. This is achieved by renaming the file extension from "8bf" to
"8b-", "prm" to "pr-", "vfx" to "-fx" or "vft" to "-ft". With the Enable/Disable
button you can enable disabled PlugIns and disable enabled PlugIns.
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To change the category of filters simply select the filters,
select the category you want to move them to (or create a new category
and select it) and finally click on the Change Cat button or press <Str
+H> or choose Change Category from the Operations menu.
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Double clicking on a Photoshop or Premiere filter will load it into PiCo's
FF Editor or show a preview in PiCo's Logo.
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You can also use the commands Convert to, Add 2 FFL, Create
Library, FileCopy, Move, Delete and Kill.
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Finally there is a FFL (=Filter Factory Library)
View which displays the contents of FFL files.
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You can get in this View by double clicking on a FFL file or hitting <Return>
over a FFL File or selecting a FFL file and clicking the FFL View tab.
If no FFL file is selected, when clicking on the FFL View tab the first
FFL file in the file list is automatically selected. If there is no FFL
file in the file list the FFL View won't show up.
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You can add new filters to the displayed FFL file, create a new FFL file
from the selected entries of the displayed FFL, search for filters or convert
FFL entries to different formats by using the "Convert to" button.
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Double clicking on a FFL entry will load it into PiCo's FF Editor or show
a preview in PiCo's Logo.
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See also the General Commands.
A essential part of PiCo is the Filter Factory Editor.
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With it you can look at a picture preview of a Photoshop
FF PlugIn and edit its file name, filter name, category, author, copyright,
slider/map names, slider values, filter code and save it by selecting a
format and pressing Save As.
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You can also create new Photoshop filters and save them without
using the original Filter Factory.
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You can copy the FF Editor settings to the Clipboard (in
FFWizard TXT format) or paste Clipboard text in FFWizard's TXT format into
FF Editor.You can even print a filter's code by selecting "Print Filter"
from the context menu.
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Furthermore, you are can apply a filter to a loadable BMP file
and save the result.
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By pressing Big View a big view of the calculated picture
appears, which may take same time.
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Randomize will create random slider values.
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The buttons 1 - 10 are so called Memory Spots. By pressing
one the current slider values are saved indicated by the bold button number.
When pressing the bold command button again the saved settings will be
restored.
Hope these comments helped to have a good start with PlugIn Commander.
Maybe not all possibilities are mentioned, so keep on playing with PiCo's
features ...