I think it would be great if studio artist internally supported a user submitted preset/PAS repository. Something akin to what Filter Forge does for it's filter settings. I know there is a forum group or two for sharing, but I believe it would be more organized/user friendly, and help add value to the program. A method of rating presets would also help find out the types of settings/effects the majority of people find most useful. Maybe also supporting a short description stating originally intended use.
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I would encourage any Studio Artist users who want to share custom presets they may have made to either post them on the Preset Sharing Group here on the users forum. Or they can email them to me. Or they can attach them in a help desk incident report and they will work their way through tech support and eventually to me as well as the specific person in charge of our Preset folder design.
We specifically had User Collections in all of the Preset folders we've released in the past for old Studio Artist versions prior to the most current Preset folder we started shipping with V4.04. So our goal is to move back to that in the future, specific collections of user developed shared presets for anyone to use. As a part of the factory preset folder.
I have all of the old ones archived (all the way back to V1), and we're going to take everything posted on the Preset Sharing Group here on the forum as well as everything old that people submitted to us in the past and include them all in a master 'kitchen sink' Factory User Preset folder in the future.
Some people want a very limited set of presets, some people want everything ever created, so we have to balance that out. We will probably have different factory preset folders you can choose from in the future, more limited ones for people getting started or for trial versions, and a kitchen sink one for people who do want access to literally everything.
Making it easier for people to just automatically share presets among one another is something we have been discussing. There are a lot of things we could do to make it easier. So we hope to address this issue in the future better.
But what about today.
There are already some features available for custom notion and documentation for presets that most people either don't know about, or just choose to ignore. Either from laziness, or they feel the features are too difficult to use. And when i say lazy, i mean people who work here as well as our customers.
Preset help Tips
You can use the help tip associated with a preset file to add your own custom help notion to any preset.
So the custom help tip in the 'A Gradient Brush' paint preset shown below says 'Pen pressure controls the size of the brush'. So it's a textural help reminder added by the designer of that particular paint preset that you can use pen pressure to modulate the size of the paint brush as you manually paint with it.
You use the menu command shown below to edit the current preset's help tip text.
After editing the Current Preset Help Tip using the dialog associated with that menu command, you need to actually manually save the now edited preset file. If you do not, your help tip edit will not actually make it into the preset file on your computer disk. So it's like adjusting any slider associated with a preset in the Editor. Unless you specifically save the edited preset, the edits go away if you reload what is out on disk. Or switch to a different preset.
Hint: You can option click the current preset icon to overwrite the current preset file with any editing changes you may have made to it. When you do that, Studio Artist will ask you if you are sure you want to update the current preset file on disk.
Press OK if you indeed do want to overwrite it with your editing changes, which could include a new help tip.
Custom Preset Help Pages
There is a whole mechanism already in V4 for making custom help pages for individual presets. That could be displayed in the integrated Help Browser in Studio Artist V4. Those custom help pages are html pages, and can include png images, text, and active command links that would automatically load the preset if the active link in the custom help page is clicked with the mouse.
It was our hope when we added that feature to V4 that people would use it. Both to document their own custom presets, or some of our factory presets, and also to share those custom html help pages they generated with others. That idea never really took off. Most people are probably totally unaware of that feature. And it requires that you use a hmtl editor to make the custom help pages, so it's probably too technical for a lot of users.
If you click on the Custom link at the top of the help palette inside of Studio Artist 4, you can read all about this feature and how it works.
Craig actually made a set of custom help pages for his very useful CD_hand_drawn_media paint preset collection of natural media paint presets designed for manual painting.
These custom help pages Craig made for that specific preset collection of his are included in the custom folder inside of your Studio Artist 4 folder.
You need to have that specific CD_hand_drawn_media collection folder inside of your current Preset : Paint folder, or the active links in those custom help pages that automatically load the presets referenced in the custom help page will not work when they are pressed. This is because those active link commands reference specific preset files by path name references.
For more information on how the Studio Artist V4 Preset folder is organized, check out this tip.
This tip also includes a section on custom html help pages.
Eric, there are several hundreds of user generated presets in the preset sharing group. Others are scattered in the discussions. One way to find the diaspora is to search for .zip files, because the Mac presets must be zipped to work as an upload. (its a resource/data fork thing).
Agree there could be better organization, and possibly more participation, as I believe four users have contributed 85-90% of the presets. Then again unlike FF there is no ranking system and no reward other than the joy of helping others get what they can from the program.
the organization issue is more about the format of a Ning site there simply is not a way to create a VDB like on the FF site.
Still it beats AM where the user has to pay for additional presets-double edge sword as users also get to sell preset collections.
Simply streamlining and more or less automating the submission/download process would likely increase the number of presets that people share. Without a standardized process it is more or less a chaotic pouporri as far as non-built in presets go. There may be a workaround as far as the limitations of the server though. Depending more heavily on the program itself and providing a tab to communicate with the site using server embeddded resources and database files in order to serve up the material in an organized and meaningful fashion. True... it would mean more custom code, but at least if it is done properly the possible future migration to another server would be possible with minimal disruption. I am not actually a fan of FF's website for resource management, but rather prefer the software side management features. The website is lovely for more in depth information, but I usually prefer the more compact method provided in the software itself. The less I HAVE to leave the software to accomplish what I want... the better.
I am not suggesting that there are not already an impressive # of resources avalable. I am simply suggesting that SA might benefit from a more systemized approach as programs like FF and also a lesser known application "Smart Photo Editor". In the case of that application It's user submitted filters are the main selling feature since they have made it so simple.
I am capable of digging in, organizing. and adding my own settings/descriptions. I brought the discussion up more to encourage making things more accessible and streamlined for all users of all skill/experince levels. SA offers amazing power and flexibility, but a lot of people are going to just get lost when they look under the hood. With me terminology was a pretty large barrier at first. Time and effort have allowed me to become more familiar though I doubt that everyone takes the time. Either due to laziness, or just having more immediate concerns. Still, from a software developer's point of view... having the user base increase the value of their software to a broad amount of users is generally a good thing.
There may be other more pressing concerns or reasons this would make for a bigger headache than I realize. At least I now know it is being thought about though.