PSP 2018 - Eye Candy 4000 does not remember settings

[crisps21]

Hello everyone,
I have just gotten used to using PSP 2018 Ultimate for the past 3-4 months.
Managed to get my scripts working in it again... I was using the really old PSP X before that but then it suddenly stopped working on Windows 10 so I had to force myself to adapt to the new version.
Now I'm really getting frustrated because every time I run the scripts for adding names to my tags (signature tags used in forums), it does not remember the settings for EyeCandy 4000 and goes back to the last used script.
For example, if I recorded the script using Eye Candy Gradient Glow in Black... but I have just run a script using the Glow in white, it will run ALL scripts with white unless I go manually in the Eye Candy settings and change it to black.
Also, if I open PSP 2018 and have not run any scripts requiring the use of Gradient Glow... it will use a really ugly yellow glow around the names which probably is the 'default' setting in it!!
PSP X never used to do that
What can I do to fix that?
Please help!!!

[JoeB]

PSP scripts cannot remember or change the settings of third party plugins. When you create a script in PSP that calls a plugin then the script hands control of that plugins behaviour to the plugin itself. And that plugin will open with whatever the plugin developers dictated to be the default behaviour of that plugin. Some plugins' default behaviour is to open with no effect selected, some will open with the first filter effect selected, and some will open with the last used effect filter selected. Eye Candy will always open with the last used effect filter selected. If you want a script to run Eye Candy with a specific filter effect selected then you have to be sure that this effect was the last used effect selected in the plugin.

[crisps21]

Thanks for replying JoeB.
I'm surprised you say that because in PSP X I used to run these scripts ALL the time without having this problem
Anyway, I'll have to go to the extra trouble of changing the 'last used' to the one I want unless I find a solution to it.
Thanks.

[JoeB]

Thanks for replying JoeB.
I'm surprised you say that because in PSP X I used to run these scripts ALL the time without having this problem
Anyway, I'll have to go to the extra trouble of changing the 'last used' to the one I want unless I find a solution to it.
Thanks.

I'm afraid you must be mis-remembering something. No version of PSP has been able to create a psp script that could change the settings of a third party program that the script calls. Scripting hasn't changed just because versions of PSP have changed, because scripts are written in Python programming language, not PSP code. You were probably just lucky that when you ran the scripts the plugin was already defaulted to the last used settings that you also wanted to have applied when the script called the plugin.

So there is no "solution" to it. PSP scripts simply cannot be written to change the settings of third party plugins once that plugin has been activated by the script.

[LeviFiction]

EDIT:

JoeB I think we might be wrong, see my reply.

[JoeB]

I agree with you JoeB, I don't see this as being changed.

But just to be sure I tried recording the KPT plugins in PSP8 and PSPXI (I don't have PSPX) and both returned the same kinds of data that we see with PSP2018. Just gobbledygook. So unless that gobbledygook actually means something and recent versions have been ignoring it, I don't see any difference that would have allowed saving of Plugin data.

It should be noted that some plugins do return their data, this is how Photoshop records its actions. I wonder if we can get the developers to weigh in on this. Why they aren't able to record and play back plugin settings.

I'm thinking that, with regard to your last point, perhaps the difference is that Photoshop Actions are - I believe - written in JavaScript. I certainly don't know enough about programming in any language to do anything more than speculate, but perhaps the JavaScript actions scripts are able to not only read and interpret the data returned by the plugin but also continue to interact with the plugin once it is activated and pass that data back to the plugin. I don't have a clue if Python could be written to do this - assuming, of course, that there's any possibility that my speculation is correct. But I would suspect that it could be possible given that Python is also a powerful and flexible programming language. Just speculation, of course.

[LeviFiction]

First, language has nothing to do with it. the scripts are written in python, but the commands are handed off to PSP and are not run directly by Python. So calling a plugin from Python inside PSP is still run by PSP. Same with Javascript. And actions aren't written in javascript, believe me I wrote an actions reader. Javascript was only dded to Photoshop as a full scripting language after actions had been there for a while, javascript is closer to what PSP does with its scripts.

I think this might be a recent development in PSP. Okay, this requires a lot more testing. But let me go over what I just did.

1) I added the KPT plugins to PSP8, PSPXI, an PSP2018.
2) I then recorded using the KPT Noize plugin in all three.
3) I then compared the returned result from all three scripts.

PSP8 had 1 options parameter, that returned a list with a 4 item tuple. The fourth item in the tuple was a string.
PSPXI also had 1 options parameter that containe a list with a 4 item tuple. The fourth item in this tuple was a second tuple this contained two values a 1 and a string.
PSP2018 returned the same thing as PSPXI.

So, at some point between PSP8 an PSPXI the plugin command returned its parameters a little differently. So there were changes, though small.

4) I then compared the strings in these items and they were all a perfect match.

5) Then I recorded another script with different settings in KPT Noize.
6) Then I ran KPT Noize several times with different settings to make sure it wasn't remembering previous settings if run silently.
7) When I ran my original script it gave the exact same result as when I had first recorded it in PSP8. I tested this on three different images of varying sizes. The noize pattern was always the same. Like it had recorded the settings.
8 ) So then I ran the second script I had recorded, and again, I was able to get pixel-perfect recreations of the noize recorded for that script.

In other words, the script was playing back the exact noize settings they were recorded with.

9) So I moved over to PSPXI - tried the scripts I recorded with PSP8 - again pixel perfect recreations.

10) I then moved over to PSP2018 - the script I recorded in 2018 resulted in the same thing it originally did. Running the PSP8 scripts however, resulted in the same settings that PSP2018 used. There was no variation for the second PSP8 script like there was with PSP8 and PSPXI. So, I ran the KPT noize plugin again, changing the settings and here's what I found. The script I recorded with 2018 still resulted in the original settings recorded being run. But the second PSP8 script resulted in the KPT Nozie's last used settings. Which I found very odd. It made no sense that the first scripts all performed beautifully, but the second script behaved poorly.

I took a second look and the second item of the tuple is different, get this, only in PSP2018. For the other two scripts between PSP8 and PSPXI that value is exactly the same.

So I tried one more thing. I changed the value of the PSP2018 script to match the value in the PSP8 script. The result was that PSP2018 used the last used setting in KPT Noize. I changed this back and the script executed with the originally recorded settings. Taking this a step further I replaced the value in the PSP8 script with the one from 2018. The result was the script running with the saved values from the PSP8 version.

So, PSP can save the settings from a plugin. It's what all of that gobbledygook is about. But I can't figure out why it doesn't work with some plugins that it should work with. Acknowledging, of course, some plugins do not return setting data.

[JoeB]

Thanks for putting in the time and knowledge to find out how PSP can sometimes use the settings data from plugins and apply them when the plugin is called. I did assume that that the gobbledygook was the settings but just assumed that PSP couldn't apply them to the plugin once the plugin was activated, particularly because that seems to have been the result with the tests we have done. In fact, I recall having to completely remove the gobbledygook from a script or the script would fail completely in at least one circumstance I tested (can't remember the specifics now).

So could you confirm - or correct - what I think you have said:

1) That versions of PSP, perhaps those pre-dating X1, can record and apply the settings of some called plugins, and/or

2) Even if some versions can do so, it doesn't work with all plugins, and/or

3) It could be possible for the PSP developers to code PSP to correct whatever change was made in later versions that stopped PSP from being able to properly record and/or properly apply the settings of at least some plugins.

[crisps21]

I'm afraid you must be mis-remembering something. No version of PSP has been able to create a psp script that could change the settings of a third party program that the script calls. Scripting hasn't changed just because versions of PSP have changed, because scripts are written in Python programming language, not PSP code. You were probably just lucky that when you ran the scripts the plugin was already defaulted to the last used settings that you also wanted to have applied when the script called the plugin.
So there is no "solution" to it. PSP scripts simply cannot be written to change the settings of third party plugins once that plugin has been activated by the script.

I'm definitely not misremembering things, but there was only one plugin EyeCandy 4000 Gradient Glow that returned the required settings when I ran the scripts.
I have different settings of Eye Candy saved in different scripts and I copy the required script in a folder when I make a signature tag and add names to it.
I have always double-clicked a script and it opened up an instance of PSP X and brought up the tag, added the name to it, edited the name using the required plugins and saved the finished tag.
I used to run 2 or 3 instances of PSP X with 3 DIFFERENT scripts running in 3 different plugin settings and not once did I experience any problems with having to go to 'Last Used' setting!!
I have used EyeCandy 3.1 Glass, HSB Noise, Gradient Glow, Bevel, Shadow etc.

[LeviFiction]

crisps21 - if you're using old scripts that might be the reason you're having problems.

While it's not obvious in my rambling post above, I noticed that the script I created with XI failed to execute with the saved settings in PSP 2018. I had to replace a specific number in the old script with the number produced by PSP 2018 to get the script to work.

Let me show you. Here is a small portion from the 2018 Script, very specifically the beginning of the "DefaultProperties" parameter for the plugin.

Code: Select all

'DefaultProperties': [(1148461088,1417180244,0,(1,r'''IUJlZ2luIW1DRU5vaXNlOjpSR0JzY

And here is the same line from my PSPXI script

Code: Select all

'DefaultProperties': [(1148461088,1413830740,0,(1,r'''IUJlZ2luIW1DRU5vaXNlOjpSR0JzY

You can see the first number "1148461088" matches perfectly in the two scripts. And the "(1,r'''IUJlZ2luIW1DRu5vaXNlOjpSROJzY" portion also matches. But the second number is different between the two. PSP2018 on my computer returned "1417180244" and in the PSPXI script returned "1413830740". I had to replace the number "1413830740" with "1417180244" to get the script to work properly in PSP 2018.

So, here's what I recommend. Record a script with the plugin run, and compare your old script to the new one. If you also see those beginning numbers change, change them in the old script to match the numbers in the new script.

Or try re-recordding the different settings you had before. Whichever one works best for you.