[magick-developers] 8BF plugin enhancements?

[Dodger]

Has anyone brought up the possibility of developing either a in-product
feature or an API extension (something like Image::Magick::8bf if made for
Perl) that would be able to use 8BF plugins programattically?

Something like this would be easiest in Windows, since all the 8BF support
is there. However, theoretically, following some of the same logic as WINE
uses, an Intel-architecture Linux PC should be also able to run such,
especially those that do not require an outside DLL.

It would also, by proxy, add a lot of functionality to the GIMP, since the
GIMP can access Perl and other language routines and those routines can
access ImageMagick and if ImageMagick were able to use Photoshop, Painter,
Illustrator, ImageReady, and so on's plugins, you could do so much.

For instance, I have a technique I call a Reality Filter that, in Photoshop,
requires the use of a huge number of plugin filters (over 50 of them). Some
of them are settings in the Impressionist plugin megafilter for ImageReady.
SInce Photoshop's actions are limited in their abilty to store filter
setting data, and cannot do things like save a file except with a set name
or control Impressionist's (and many other 3rd party plugins') settings (the
filter opens but I have to manually select the settings in the right order
and not miss a step), even with Photoshop's actions It takes me about two
hours to completely apply the effect (it's worth it, but I'm a Perl
programmer, and thus virtuously lazy).

If the GIMP were able to use 8BF plugins, I'd have the ability to program
all this in Perl and almost totally automate it. Moreover, since the
technique doesn't require any manual selections and works on an entire
image, I'd be able to completely automate the process in a single Perl
script without even the overhead of having to look at it (and thuis display
it) while it happens.

I think that the plugins are the biggest advantage that expensive stuff like
Photoshop has over the GIMP (there are others, like Marketing and noticeably
better support for tablets in PS than in GIMP, but they are balanced by the
GIMPs and ImageMagick's wonderful price tags and an open-source approach to
both).

PS -- to see some of what I have done with ImageMagick, take a look at
http://www.gothic-classifieds.com in the GC pictures section. It requires a
membership (free, provate, no selling addresses to spammers) and, due to the
JavaScript DHTML on the user end, two of the functions (resize image,
thumbnailer) require IE4 at this point (I'm working on it, I'm working on
it! Making a draggable, resizable box that tracks its own co-ordinates and
updates hidden form fields isn't easy in MSIE DHTML, and that's cake
compared to Mozilla DHTML B^)


--
Dodger