Just wanted to do a quick little status update on ImagePlay to let people know the delay in release isn’t due to lack of development, but an abundance of it. There are a number of major new features going into this next release (you can look back through the blog to read about them) and they all need to get stabilized.

Here’s just a short list of new features with bug zapping to be done:
* Undo/Redo
* “Packaged” project format
* Filter Layer drag handles

To add to the growing list of features, I’ve finally got the basics of a freeform Draw effect working. This will make custom masking much easier.

Thanks to the new package project format I’m working on, I’ve been able to implement QuickLook support fairly easily. Additionally I’ve added QuickLook support to the Project Browser, just like in the Finder you can slap the space bar or right click. It’s not much use on the older flat files which don’t have full previews, but definitely a nice feature of the newer files.

Currently I’m going to limit previews to 512x512 to save space. But for those who are especially space conscious (or using a system pre-Leopard), there will be an option to turn off embedded QuickLook previews.

For the next release of ImagePlay: The redesigned “Starting Points” window that displays when ImagePlay starts up. The interface has been simplified with emphasis being placed on the project templates. The “Blank Project” is functionally the same as choosing File> New Project.

Non-scientific stopwatch comparison of the old binary single-file format vs. the new package format. Project contains 4 layers, total file size is about 23MB.

Load:
Package: 6.39 seconds
Binary: 22.18

Save As:
Package: 12.16
Binary: 14.24

Curiously there doesn’t seam to be much difference in the Save times. There may be something I’m overlooking in the implementation here as the load/save performance of the old format should be hinging on the same essential bottleneck.

So far, ImagePlay has had two file formats for projects, they have been called Legacy (0.1) and Binary (0.2+). The main difference between these formats was the internal markup structure. The Legacy format used an HTML-like syntax for tags, the Binary format moved to a more efficient structure. But they share one thing in common, they both use a single self-contained file.

Currently I’m working on moving from the single-file format that these formats used, and into a new package/bundle format. For those who are not familiar, packages/bundles are an idea used widely in MacOS X. They are essentially special folders which appear to the user to be one file. This makes it much easier to manage a group of files, especially if small pieces of data must change within each of those files.

Moving to a package format will make the load/save process in ImagePlay more efficient, and thusly increase performance. Instead of having to write out one monolithic file each time the user saves, only the altered pieces will be written. The ability to save to the old single-file format will probably remain in some fashion, it’s still the easiest way to pack up the included templates, so I’ll still need it for one.

Along with the new file format will come another idea which I’ve been wanting to implement for a while; non-destructive data transportation. That is to say, the idea that you can drop an image file into your project, then extract that image, and get the original image data intact. And with the switch to a package format, advanced users will be able to accomplish this without even needing to start up ImagePlay.

* Filter Layers now have resize handles. They work as one would expect, allowing you to adjust the width/height easily. Holding a modifier key resizes relative to the filter’s center.

* A new effect in the works, Selective Luminance. (Being shown in the development interface.) It allows you to select a hue range, and adjust the saturation of that range. You can also do the inverse and affect everything except the desired hue range.

This is just a quick update on the development of ImagePlay. These features are all working and slated for the next release.

New features of the Project Browser: List View Multiple Project folders (Local & Networked)

New for the Project Workspace: Sidebar (on the left, replaces the Control Board) Live effects previews (the overlay with an X and Apply button) Framing (the dark transparent border around the workspace), gives you a better visualization of how your project will look when exported, printed, etc. The Info window also sports a revamped interface with the option to show details for the entire project (and layers), or only show details for selected layers.

I’ve decided to try out a new interface in ImagePlay 0.4. The Control Board will now be integrated into the project window instead of being a floating window. This will solve a couple of sticky situations on the back-end. From an end-user perspective it means the control board won’t be popping in and out of the screen to accommodate various dialogs. So it should make for a cleaner interface overall.

A quick sneak peek at some more niftiness coming down the pipe for ImagePlay 0.4

First up, the new Preview “window.”. It’s actually just a filter layer with some interface elements wrapped around it. Thanks to the flexibility of the rendering engine and filter layers it actually didn’t take much to get it up and running. Certainly much better than the previous dialog.

The Undo History window which is slowly taking shape.

And there’s more to come.

I’ve been working on a couple new features for ImagePlay 0.4, I think the most popular is going to be the Undo system. Each project will have its own Undo History. It’s still in the infant stages at the moment, only handling a few basic actions. The screenshot below shows the Undo History window, that lets you jump back/forward through the actions by just clicking at a point in the list, which is very handy. I think it could be made to look a bit nicer, but I’m not sure exactly how yet.

The other major new feature, which is in the very early stages (I haven’t even moved the code into ImagePlay yet) is the ability to do free-form drawing. This would be most useful (to me anyway) when masking-off images. Right now I plan on implementing it so that it will show up just like any other effect in the list. You’d add a “Draw” effect to the layer in question, and then click an edit button and be dropped into an interface to let you draw all over the layer, and maybe even edit/rearrange draw objects just like you can with layers. But that’s still a ways off.