PhotoFlow keyboard shortcuts

The latest versions of PhotoFlow comes with few handy keyboard shortcuts. The list of implemented shortcuts is still rather small and, more importantly, the shortcuts cannot (yet) be customized, however this is a first step toward a better usability of the program.

The currently available shortcuts are all related to operations with layers:

• Ctrl+Shift+N: add a new layer
• Ctrl+Shift+G: add a new layer group
• Ctrl+Shift+D: delete the selected layer(s)
• Ctrl+Shift+C: copy the selected layer(s) to the photoflow clipboard
• Ctrl+Shift+X: cut the selected layer(s) to the photoflow  clipboard
• Ctrl+Shift+V: paste the layer(s) from the photoflow  clipboard
• Ctrl+Shift+O: open an existing preset (will be inserted above the selected layer)
• Ctrl+Shift+S: save the selected layers as a preset
• Ctrl+Shift+M: switch the current layer to "mask view mode"
• Ctrl+Shift+L: switch the current layer to "layer view mode"

Under OSX, the Ctrl modifier key must be replaced with Cmd.

The complete and up-to-date documentation of keyboard shortcuts can be found at any time in the PhotoFlow wiki.

How to run the PhotoFlow GIMP plug-in under Linux using the AppImage packages

Yesterday I have briefly described the new PhotoFlow GIMP plug-in. In this follow-up, I will show how to run GIMP and the PhF plug-in under Linux using the AppImage packages.

The latest GIMP and PhotoFlow AppImages can be downloaded respectively from here and here (you need to grab the most recent version). In the following I will assume that the AppImages have been downloaded into the $HOME/Applications folder, but any other folder on your filesystem is equally good...

In order to start the GIMP AppImage and let it find and use PhotoFlow for opening the RAW files and/or run as a filter on the existing layer data, open a terminal and type the following:

    export PHOTOFLOW_PATH=$HOME/Applications/photoflow.AppImage
    $HOME/Applications/gimp.AppImage

Of course you need to replace the paths of the photoflow and gimp AppImages with their actual paths and full names on your system...

The first line with the environment variable assignment is used to tell GIMP where to look for the PhotoFlow executable. The second line starts GIMP from the AppImage. You can also pass a file name as parameter to the GIMP AppImage, just like with the standard GIMP. The PhF plug-in also allows to directly open .PFI files with GIMP, in case you need to do so...

The new PhotoFlow GIMP plug-in interface

Recently I have been working on a complete re-write of the PhotoFlow GIMP plug-in interface.

The new plug-in code is a simple wrapper that saves and loads the image data into temporary floating point TIFF files, and then invokes the standard photoflow executable with those TIFF files as parameters.  It also saves and retrieves the accompanying PFI files with the processing parameters that get stored in the GIMP layer meta-data.