SA4 as external editor to other programs

Will the new SA4 play friendly with other Apple programs like iPhoto, Aperture and i believe iMovie, and interact as an external editor and save the SA'd image back to the calling program? Right now, if I set SA3.5 as an external editor to iPhoto or Aperture, when I close SA3.5 it wants to save to my HD rather than back to my iPhoto or Aperture Library. I use both iPhoto and Aperture as my still image library controllers and I would rather have processed images maintained in the appropriate library from which they were called.

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  • Version 4 remembers where you last saved. And that memory is file type specific, since where you save paint presets is probably going to be different than where you save canvas images. So when you save a new canvas image it's going to bring up the save file dialog at the last location you saved at.

    So you could save to your iPhoto Library folder in your Pictures folder. But that's not going to build iPhoto preview images or synch iPhoto or Aperture to the fact that you saved a new image. So doing it is probably not a good idea. You could save to a folder and then drag that folder to iPhoto if you wanted iPhoto to catalog the images.

    There's no specific intelligent synch to iPhoto or Aperture functionality built into v4 at this point. I can look into that if it's something a lot of people would use.
    • The way Aperture and iPhoto work is if you set an external program as an editor, they both send a copy of the image out to the external program. When you shut down the external program, ie SA3.5 and hopefully SA4, they should play by the Apple rules and return the modified image to the calling program. I take it that it is a pointer and that it part of the Core system of OSX.

      It works forward as I can send an image from iPhoto or Aperture to SA3.5 and SA3.5 receives it fine. However, when I quit SA3.5, which is the proper procedure for returning the modified image; not doing a save from within SA3.5, SA3.5 should return the image to iPhoto or Aperture which ever did the send. SA3.5, does not. It simply ask for a location to save the modified image before shutting down.

      I rely on Aperture and iPhoto as my photo library maintainers, mostly Aperture. I do not want to maintain an Aperture Library and a SA library as I have to at present. It is cumbersome to maintain both and a waste of HD space. When I want to export the SA image to printer, web, my iPod, I do that from within the Apple structure as I have total control of the output. Every extra step that I have to do as you are suggesting is not necessary from my thinking.

      So I would dearly like you to delve into X-Code and see where the pointers lie so that if SA4 receives from an external program, then it will simply ignore its own defaults and return the modified image. I do it now and have been doing it since Tiger with Photoshop and every other external editor I have plugged into iPhoto and Aperture. It is also how all the external plugin editors work with Aperture. A copy is sent out to the external and then the modified is returned. It makes organizing the finals so much simpler.

      Thanks John for considering this important request.
      • One thing to think about is that other image editors open an image and then directly edit that image. The Studio Artist model is very different. A Studio Artist source image is never actually edited, it's just a reference used for painting that is never actually touched.

        Are you thinking that you want the image to import as a new canvas? Or as a source with a blank canvas?
        • Ah yes, I forgot about that. Hmmm, that will mean that returning the image to the originating program will simply send back the un-edited version. Well, that scuttles that request. Unless....
          If I place the canvas as my source image just before I hit CMD-Q then that would send the edited image back to the calling program. In a PASeq that would be an easy standard to do as a last line. Then it would not matter if the incoming image was on a canvas. It would be placed in the source, as it works now with SA3.5 and then it is up to me do with it what I want. I would just have to remember to replace the source with my final canvas before the exit.

          And I got thinking that how could this request be implemented from iMovie or Final Cut. I have only just started playing SA3.5 and movie files and I think that both iMovie and FC allow for adding external editors. It would be a tricky thing to allow but I wonder how it could be done. I can see that I would not be allowed to open a stream from SA, but if I was working on the source file could that then be done. Probably only work on very small video files as I see that a large file needs to have in and out streams.
          • It would probably make more sense to import it as a new canvas as opposed to importing as a source and then sending the source back to iPhoto when you were finished. but we don't really have a standard document file model like an editor that opens a file, edits it, and then saves it. Anyway, i'll look into it.
  • If you drag and drop from the finder to the SA4 canvas, that will import the image into the canvas. I just made a few changes so when you do that it now sets up the save as file path to point to the image you imported. So you can drag and drop the image onto the canvas, so some editing, and then when you run save as it sets up the save as dialog with the name and location of the file you imported, so you just click ok. It makes the workflow a little smoother.
  • Not really an answer to your specific request but I find Default Folder X to be an indispensable asset in my work flow. It's a fairly powerful app with the capability to setup folders, defaults and paths to your liking. I'm always saving finished files to one of two folders in different locations from my working files or source files. Default Folder makes it a snap to pop up those locations from its sidebar. It has many more capabilities than I can list here (expanded file previews, meta-tagging on the fly). Here's the link if you're interested: http://www.stclairsoft.com/
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