Genuine Fractals, PhotoTools, PhotoFrame, PhotoTune and FocalPoint are all technically Photoshop Automation plug-ins. As an Automation plugin, you can include any of these plug-ins in an action that you create in Photoshop to speed up your workflow. They can also be included in any batch processing workflow that you may have as well. As an Automation plugin, the plugin will show up in the File > Automation menu.

In previous versions of the onOne Plug-In Suite, to make it easier to find our plug-ins (because quite frankly, you shouldn’t have to know or be concerned with the difference between a Filter and an Automation plug-in or where they live within Photoshop for that matter) we created the onOne Menu which is inserted between the Window and Help menu items in the Photoshop menu bar. However, over the years with changes to both Photoshop and (primarily) the Windows operating system, the creation of this menu has been, how shall I put it… delicate. Fragile. Sometimes flaky and non-existent to be honest. On the Mac OS X platform, it hasn’t been a problem, but not all of you out there use Mac OS X  so we had to find a better, long-term solution to provide a single, consistent and stable place to allow you to access our plug-ins.

Enter the Photoshop CS4 Panel.

You are most likely already familiar with these panels. In fact, you use them everyday. There is a Layers panel, Masks panel, Adjustments panel, etc etc etc. Perhaps the coolest thing about panels is that anybody can create a panel. John Nack has a panel that shows his daily RSS feed from his blog. Julieanne Kost has a daily PS tip panel.

We figured since the onOne menu doesn’t work for everybody in Photoshop CS4 that we would create a panel for our plug-ins. The problem is that while it gets installed automatically when you run the onOne Plug-In Suite 5 installer, it doesn’t actually show up when you relaunch Photoshop. But it’s easy to get it to appear after you’ve run the installer. Here’s what you do.

Simply go to the Window > Extensions menu and then choose onOne. Up pops the new onOne Panel where you can now double-click on any of the product names and go directly into that plug-in. Alternately, if you single-click on a product name, a sub-menu is exposed showing you any preset categories that you have created with that plug-in. Click on a category name and you see the presets in that category. If you double-click on a preset name, that preset will be applied to your photo. Very slick.

The new onOne Palette

Preset categories displayed

So if you have installed Plug-In Suite 5 and you are not sure where all of your favorite plug-ins are located, just go to the Window > Extensions menu and select onOne. You will have a nice new palette with everything in one place. Oh, and by the way, you can dock it alongside your other panels as well by dragging it into either the panel bar or next to a panel that is already open like the Layers panel.

Click here for the DSLR Camera Remote for iPhone Troubleshooting Guide.

The Problem

For those of you shooting with the DSLR Camera Remote and wanting to have those photos be automatically imported into a Lightroom catalog, you may notice a problem similar to the outlined below by reader Brendan:

One problem when I use DSLR remote in tandem with Lightroom:
DSLR uses a watched folder, and displays the latest entry to this folder on my iPhone.
Great so far.
Lightroom also uses a watched folder, but as soon as something shows up in that folder Lightroom moves it to another folder.
Problem being, as soon as the image is moved, it disappears from my iPhone screen.
Not your fault, but it would be wonderful to have the latest image appear on the laptop as well as my iPhone.
It doesn’t seem to be possible to stop Lightroom from moving the image out of the watched folder.

Brendan – you’re right. When the DSLR Camera Remote app on the iPhone displays the photo that you just took, it is getting that photo from the pictures folder you defined or setup in the Server Software. Further, there are no options in Lightroom 2 that will allow you to NOT move a file from a watched folder before importing it into your Lightroom catalog.

Under the Auto-Import Settings dialog box, you have to enter a subfolder name in the Destination portion of that dialog box. If you don’t Lightroom will at least, put in an underscore character. So how do we get around this? On a Mac, it’s pretty straight-forward. Here’s how I was able to get my photos automatically imported into Lightroom 2 while keeping the files where the Server Software and the DSLR Camera Remote on my iPhone expect to see them so I can still get previews on my iPhone.

For this scenario, Folder A is the folder where the DSLR Server Software stores the photos, Folder B is the watched folder as defined in Lightroom’s auto-import preferences. Folder C is where the images will ultimately end up after being (moved and) imported by Lightroom 2.

The Solution

I opened up the Automator application that is included with Mac OS X 10.5 {  ^{1}  } and did the following.

Step 1 – Create a new folder (Folder A)  where you want the DSLR Camera Remote Server Software to store the files. I can be anywhere you want. Create Folder B – this is the temp folder. Create Folder C – this is where the images will ultimately end up via the Lightroom 2 Auto Import.

Step 2 – Launch Automator and from the Wizard-like sheet that appears, choose Custom.

Step 3 – From the Actions category, select Files & Folders and then Find Finder Items.

Drag the Find Finder Items action over into the big empty window space on the right. Under the Where: section, choose Folder A. Be sure to set the Whose: section to be Date Created equals today.

Step 4 – From the Actions list on the left, locate the Copy Finder Items action below the action created in Step 3 above. Choose the location of Folder B – this is where you are going to tell Lightroom 2 to look for the auto-import.

Step 5 – Now you’re ready to save your creation. Go to the File menu and choose Save as Plug-In… in the next dialog box that appears, give it any name that is meaningful to you. Next, and this is important, choose Folder Actions from the pop-up menu for the Plug-In for: section. In the next drop down menu, click once and then select Folder A that we created above.

What’s going to happen is every time a file shows up in this folder from Step 1 (i.e. our photos being captured remotely) it will get COPIED from Folder A to Folder B. Because it’s a folder action, it will run whenever ANY FILE created “today” shows up which is going to be all the time since we’re shooting.

Step 6 – In Lightroom 2, go to the File menu and choose Auto Import and then Auto Import Settings. Define where you want the files to go or if you wish to append metadata, etc upon import.

Finally go ahead and fire up the Server Software if it’s not already going. Grab you iPhone and fire away on  your supported camera. If Lightroom is in the foreground you’ll see the photos show up. Further, the photos are still on your iPhone preview because the originals are still in Folder A, where we are looking.

Folder B becomes empty due to the nature of the Lightroom auto-import behavior. Folder C and it’s sub directory is where the files from Folder B get automatically moved to due to Lightroom’s Auto Import Settings. That’s all there is too it. Pretty simple really, even if you’ve never used Automator before.

When you’re all done, you can delete Folder A as it is now just a duplicate of the files that have already been moved and added to a Lightroom database.

As for Windows, I’m not very well versed there in order to provide any type of solution. But if anybody reading this is, please feel free to drop a comment on your solution.

1. I believe it is also included with Mac OS X 10.4

That being said, we’ve also heard from a couple of you that it leaves white blocks in the corners of the image instead of having that part of the image reflected. We did that to help guide you where to fold, but as it turns out, depending on how you fold the canvas, it can leave a white line on the corner which is not necessarily what you want to have happen. But here are a few tips from Dan Harlacher, our senior product manager, on how you can avoid those white lines.

1. The background color that Genuine Fractals 6 uses for the canvas area is the background color from Photoshop. If you are concerned that the white background color might show after folding, you can set this to be a darker color or a color that matches the edges of your photo. Make sure you do this BEFORE you use Genuine Fractals though, and make sure you’re setting the Background color and not the Foreground color.
2. The second trick is when you wrap the canvas, be sure to wrap it with square corners, not 45 degree corners. If you do this, you shouldn’t see the White (or other Background color) on the corners. If you are outsourcing the printing and/or assembly of your Gallery Wraps, make sure you ask your vendor how they do their folds at the corners.
3. Finally, if neither of these two tips are acceptable for your wrap, the extended margins generated by Genuine Fractals are saved to their own layer in your Photoshop file. Just go to those layers and fill in the corners with the patch or clone tool before printing.

So if you are having an issue with those white corners, give these tips a try.

There are two kinds of textures (and frames for that matter) that PhotoFrame recognizes. There are grayscale textures and there are RGB textures. RGB textures are also sometimes referred to as “realistic” textures. RGB textures can be great as backgrounds as well. First I’ll go over how you create a grayscale texture.

Creating Grayscale Textures

First, you’ll need to start off with an image or photo that you want to use as a texture. I find that organic items like tree bark, grass, dirt, rocks and wood work really well. But man made items like metal and brick can work really well also. Don’t limit yourself…be sure to experiment! If you’d like you can download this file of mine as an example.

Okay, so you’ve got your desired texture file. Open it up in Photoshop. Make any adjustments that you want to like Levels, Curves, Brightness, Contrast, etc that you deem appropriate. Then go to the Image menu and choose Mode > Grayscale.

Save the file out as a JPG file. Choose the JPG quality setting that you desire (80, 100, etc). Be sure to give the new JPG file a name that will make sense to you later.

This next step is optional. You can leave your newly created JPG file with the .jpg (or .jpeg) extension or you can change the .jpg (or .jpeg) to .frm. The .frm extension is a PhotoFrame file extension but PhotoFrame will recognize grayscale frames/textures like this if they have either .jpg or .frm. So it’s up to you.

Note: If you choose to save your file as a .frm, you can’t just rename the file in the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer. Both operating systems will leave a hidden .jpg file extension. To really change the file extension on a Mac, select the file and choose Get Info. Change the name there. On Windows, select the file, right click and choose Properties. Change the name there.

Finally, from within Photoshop, open any image. Launch PhotoFrame 4 from the onOne menu or from the File > Automate menu. Next, go to the PhotoFrame 4 File meu and choose Import Frame. Here choose the .jpg or .frm file that you created earlier. It will be added to the User category or you can search for the frame with the name of the file.

Note: Some users have reported that the User category doesn’t appear right away. You may have to close and reopen PhotoFrame 4 to force this User category to appear in the PhotoFrame library.

When you apply the texture, be sure to change the blending mode from the Background options palette. Trying changing the color from the default white color to black or something else. Blur and Opacity are good options to experiment with as well.

That’s all there is to Grayscale textures! RGB textures are slightly more involved, but fairly straightforward.

Creating RGB or Color Textures

Creating an RGB texture has a couple of extra steps and a couple of extra files involved but it’s still pretty easy to do. Here’s how.

First, open your desired image in Photoshop. Make any adjustments that you wish. DO NOT convert it to Grayscale – this is an RGB texture afterall! Save the file as a JPG file at the quality setting you prefer. Write down or keep track of the file name – this is very important.

Locate the file in the Finder or Explorer and change the file extension of this file from .jpg to .frr.

Note: You can’t just rename the file in the Mac OS Finder or Windows Explorer. Both operating systems will leave a hidden .jpg file extension. To really change the file extension on a Mac, select the file and choose Get Info. Change the name there. On Windows, select the file, right click and choose Properties. Change the name there.

Before you close this file, go to the Select menu and choose All (or press Cmd-A or Ctrl-A). From the File menu, choose New. You’ll get a new file dialog box and the image dimensions will match perfectly to the RGB texture file you started out with. Don’t click the OK button just yet…

Change the color mode in the New File dialog box from RGB to Grayscale. Now you can click okay. Please note, DO NOT paste the image you just copied. We just needed an easy way to get the correct file size.

Now that we have a blank document, we’re going to fill it with black. Press D to set the default foreground color to black. Press Opt-D (Mac) or Alt-D (Windows) to fill the entire document with black. You could also go to Edit > Fill and choose black if you’re more comfortable using menus instead of shortcut keys.

Next, we need to save this black, grayscale file as a JPG. Go to File > Save As and give the file the same name as the RGB image above. Change the .jpg file extension to .fro. Take this newly named .fro file and duplicate it. You’ll probably get a filename like “my_custom_texture.fro copy”. Take this file and delete the “.fro copy” portion and give the file the extension .fri.

See note above about changing the file name.

These two .fri and .fro grayscale files are basically mask images for the inside (.fri) and the outside (.fro) of the frame file (the .frr file).

The last piece of the puzzle is to have these three files in the same location and import the .frr file into PhotoFrame 4 using the File > Import Frames menu. PhotoFrame 4 will detect the .fri and .fro files and figure it all out.

That’s all there is to it! So have fun creating your own textures and don’t forget to experiment and have fun! If you create a texture that you’d like to share with other PhotoFrame 4 users, consider uploading it to the onOne Exchange community site.

The webinar uses Acrobat Connect so if you’ve never used that before, your browser will prompt you to download and install a free plugin for your browser. Once you install it you’ll be good to go!

Layer Masks are a great way to selectively edit, show or hide part of a layer in Photoshop in a non-destructive manner. I love layer masks and PhotoFrame (both the Professional Edition and the Standard Edition) have a feature called Layer Mask Mode that allow you to apply a PhotoFrame frame/edge to the layer mask as opposed to a new layer of its own. If you’re wondering why you would want to do this, one reason is if you want an edge to a photo that you’re going to post to the web. Maybe you’ll put the photo on your site which has a black background and you also want to post the finished photo to your flickr account which has a white background. Adding a layer mask with a frame in it allows you to save the file as a transparent PNG file so that one image can be placed on multiple site and no matter what the background color of the site’s page, the edge will look the same as if it blends seamlessly into the page background.

Now that you know what a layer mask is and why you might want do to it, here’s how you actually do it.

Step 1: Open your file in Photoshop (I’m using CS3, but this also works in CS2). If your layer is flat like most files are the first time you open it, you’ll need to convert the layer from a locked background layer into a non-background layer. You can’t add a layer mask to a background layer — there’s nothing behind that layer to let through, plus it is locked.

So double click on your background layer, give it a new name if you want and then hit the return key on your keyboard.

Your new layer will look like this.

Step 2: Now that you have converted your layer, add a layer mask to it by clicking on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. It’s the third icon in from the left.

By default, adding a layer mask will place the selection onto the layer mask thumbnail. This is so you can quickly start editing the layer mask and not the layer itself. But for this technique in PhotoFrame, you’ll need to click onto the thumbnail of the layer so it is selected. Click on the layer thumbnail so it looks like this:

Step 3: Now let’s go into PhotoFrame. I’m using the Professional Edition, but the Standard Edition works just fine as well.

Once inside the PhotoFrame plug-in for Photoshop, make sure the checkbox at the bottom center of the PhotoFrame window labeled "Layer Mask Mode" IS NOT CHECKED. You don’t want it checked yet so that you can see the changes you’re making to the frame.

Browse through the frames and find the one you like or the combination of frames you like. I’m using one of the frames by Dave Cross that is in Professional Edition of PhotoFrame 3. I set the color of the frame to be black. A quick note about layer masks — in a layer mask, black conceals the layer allowing the layer(s) under it show through. White in a layer mask reveals the layer allowing the layer you’re working on to show. Just remember, when working with layer masks, black conceals and white reveals.

This is what my photo looks like with one of the Dave Cross frames on it.

Step 4: When you’ve got the frame on your image to your liking in terms of shape, combination, size, etc., go back to that layer mask mode checkbox and now click the empty box to activate the layer mask mode. Don’t worry when you see your frame disappear, it’s really still there as you’ll see in a moment.

Now click the Apply button. PhotoFrame will send your frame to the layer mask that you added earlier. When you get back into Photoshop after leaving the PhotoFrame plug-in, your image will have a layer mask on it and look something like this.

Here’s the before image.

So that’s it. If you’re new to Layer Masks, just try this a few times and before you know it you’ll have it down like a pro. One more thing…once you have your PhotoFrame on a layer mask, you can manipulate it all you want using any Photoshop tools and techniques. For example, you can grab the Brush tool, set the color to black, white or some level of gray and then paint out or paint back any part of your photo that the mask might be covering or that you want to cover. Have fun and experiment!