Morgantao´s New tool for custom organizing and managing FF library!!!!

Another thing I forgot to mention is that the tool is compiled under Windows, and I have no idead if or how it will work on Mac...
Maybe all it takes to make it a Mac version is compile the source on a Mac, but I just don't know. If any of the Mac people here know how to port C# to Mac, the community would benefit from it. Otherwise Mac people will need to run it in windows mode.

I'll do that, right after the code is uploaded

And here is the answer fr om Morgantao to the above post I have done

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Morgantao wrote: SpaceRay, my previous post was just a disclaimer of sort The subfolders idea is just like you said, you can have a folder named bricks, and in it have old, new, red, rough, broken etc. The idea is that if you choose the BRICKS folder itself, you will see all the filters that are inside the subfolders too, but if you click a subfolder like OLD, it will only show the filters that are old bricks. Again, this will not be a part of this version, but I wouldn't be suprised if someone here in the forums will add this. About section (2) in my prev post, you wont have the small thumbnails below the 600x600 default preview like you have in the library. Also, you won't have a way to see more than one picture at any time. Again, I wouldn't be suprised if someone adds this feature, so you can see tumbnails of your filters like you do in the filter browser inside FF. As you said very well in your post, SpaceRay, the tool will update the filter list when you load it, so if you download more filters they will show up in the catalog. There will probably be an option to remove filters you have deleted from the catalog, but it won't remove filters unless you tell it to. Also very important is the backup ability. The catalog will be saved as a database file togather with the tool. You can always copy and backup the database file to a safe place, so it won't get deleted. For those who wonder, the tool is coded in C# so it's very customizable. I hope to release the tool ASAP, but I only see my brother in law once a week, and we only work on the thing like 30-40 minutes at a time (Our wives get jealous ) .

And more here

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Morgantao wrote: Right now the database will be saved to in the same place the tool itself is. There won't be any install process, you just copy it wh erever you want and run it. It can work from a flash drive, if you choose to take your catalog with you.

no rough ETA?

I've waited 5 years so a month or two is nothing
A bit selfish though they could have put off there divorce till after the release

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Morgantao wrote here: Well everybody, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news, My brother in law, who's doing the actual programing for the tool SpaceRay is refering to, is a father His first born is a daughter, named Noya

Well as you say this is a very good news for him and his wife and now they are a family.

Please, give my congratulations and I wish the best for all 3 and that she grows well and all can be as happy as possible.

By the way, Noya is a very nice name.

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Morgantao wrote: The bad news is, there's no way that he'll be able to keep working on the tool for the time being I will let you guys know when we make some progress, but it will probably take a month or two before we can get back on the horse

Although this is bad news, is not as bad as you could think because the reason for happenning this is from a GOOD news that have happened to them, and this is more important I think than this tool although some of us can perhaps be a little bit desperate to get it

I really do not mind if it will be for one month or two. We have been waiting ALREADY 4 years for this from FF INC., so I can wait, no problem.

Yes, no problem at all waiting some more months. Anyway it will be great when it is ready.

Good news everyone!
Tomorrow you will deliver a swarm of nuclear mutant killer wasps, by hand!... No wait, wrong forum

Here's a Pre-Alpha Preview of the new tool:
FilterForge Catalog helper thingy

Before you get too excited, here's a few things you have to know:
Any individual using the tool provided here does so at their own risk. I, nor anyone else provides no warranty, expressed nor implied, and the tool is provided as-is. Scared ya, didn't I

You need .Net 4.0 framework installed to run this tool. It's freely available from MicroSoft.

The search bar at the top of the window doesn't work. Don't even try If you have anything typed in the search bar, just erase it.

Right now there's no way to remove\delete a filter or a folder from the catalog.

Adding filters may take some time. Adding 8725 filters took around 10 minutes on my machine, during which time the tool seems to be frozen and Windows happily tells you the tool is not responding. Just give it time. Adding 8 additional filters took a fraction of a second.

The filters are organized in from oldest to newest in the online library. That means that filters that were uploaded to the online library today will be at the bottom of the list. There's no way right now to rearange the filters.

The catalog arrives with just the default filters that ship with Filter Forge. You can add filters wit the "Add FFXML files" button at the top left of the window.

You have to be online to see the previews of the filters.

You can see the default preset at 600x600 pixels, but the remaining 8 presets are thumbnail only.

You can change a folder name by clicking it and pressing F2.

To add a folder, press the Add Folder button at the bottom left of the window.

You can see which folders contain the filter in the "Folders:" field. To add\remove a filter to\from folders, click the Add\Remove Containing Folders button, located on the far right of the "Folders:" field.
Clicking that button will open a new window, with a list of all your folders. Each folder has a chackbox next to it. If you check the checkbox, it adds the filter to that folder. Uncheck to remove the filter from the folder.

Name is the name of the filter as it appears in the library.

Filter ID field corresponds to the number of the filter in the library.

Author is... You guessed it, the author of the filter. No suprise there.

Factory keywords and Description are the keywords and the description found on the online library, as written by the author.

In User Keywords field you can add free text. Use it to add your own keywords to help you find what you're looking for.

Rating lets you rate the filters 0 to 5 stars.

There's no save button. You don't need it. The tool saves everything automatically.


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Please play around with the tool and write your impressions, comments, bug reports and requests. If you have any complaints feel free to write to your local congressman.
The feedback you give me will help make the tool better.


Hail mary, God save the queen! That was a long post

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Morgantao wrote: The filters are organized in from oldest to newest in the online library. That means that filters that were uploaded to the online library today will be at the bottom of the list. There's no way right now to rearange the filters.

Will be possible later (in another version) to organize them by alphabetical order as it happens inside FF, or perhaps also in another different way you may think?

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Morgantao wrote: Adding filters may take some time. Adding 8725 filters took around 10 minutes on my machine, during which time the tool seems to be frozen and Windows happily tells you the tool is not responding. Just give it time. Adding 8 additional filters took a fraction of a second.

Well, after selecting the librarystructure.xml file that has about 1200 filters, it has taken 1 minute or less, and is true that it shows "not responding" and then goes back active again, BUT in my case after this when going to click on the new filters ALL FROZE and got an error. BUT no problem, next time I opened it again, all was right and all the filters has been imported right.

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Morgantao wrote: You can see which folders contain the filter in the "Folders:" field. To add\remove a filter to\from folders, click the Add\Remove Containing Folders button, located on the far right of the "Folders:" field. Clicking that button will open a new window, with a list of all your folders. Each folder has a chackbox next to it. If you check the checkbox, it adds the filter to that folder. Uncheck to remove the filter from the folder.

I suposse that this also means that you can ADD the SAME filter to MANY folders and not to just one of them, or am I wrong ? I have not tried it yet.

UPDATE:
There's a new version of the tool FOUND HERE.

The search bar now works! You can search by Filter name, Author name, Description and Keyworkds (both default AND your own).

Loading filters is now much faster, and you can start working while new filters are added. No more "Not responding" from Windows.

Please note that you will lose your database from the previous version, as the database is now a little dofferent. Be warned, this may happen in the next few versions, as we're experimenting with the best and fastest way to make the database.
Remember this is not even in alpha stage, so bear with us

GOOD AND BAD NEWS

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Morgantao wrote: UPDATE: There's a new version of the tool

Very good news and congratulations for having already a new updated version with the search activated wand working, and the better filter loading.

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Morgantao wrote: Please note that you will lose your database from the previous version, as the database is now a little different. Be warned, this may happen in the next few versions, as we're experimenting with the best and fastest way to make the database.

ALL the database AND the configurations, and the folders you make, and the keywords you could add will be ALL LOST

So if this is true we really CAN´T start to use it really, ONLY can we see how it is working and tell if there is something wrong and CAN´T begin really to build a folders list and organize the filters, as you will loose all the work you have made on the next version.

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Morgantao wrote: Remember this is not even in alpha stage, so bear with us

I bear with you

OK, you are right, I can´t be dissapointed or bad about this at all, because is true that this is JUST a test and is NOT in any way even the beta version, an much less the final version, so I understand it right and will just make some test and give my possible suggestions and questions about it.

SpaceRay, thaks for the help testing

First let me say that sorting the filters aphabetically, by author or by date added to the online library will be possible in a later version. I can't say if it will take 2 days or 2 months, but it will be possible, as you requested.

Second, we're working on adding thumbnail view to the filters, the way we have it in FF. It may take a few days because we need to create an image caching system, but it will be done. I originaly didn't intend to have this, but since you asked...

Third, The next version will load filters even faster than now. It took 10 minutes the first time to load the entire online library, and now it takes about 1 minute, but that's not fast enough, we want to cut it to a few seconds!

Now let's talk about the issues you talk about in your new posts
1) Losing the catalog is a byproduct of trying to make the tool better. It shouldn't take us much more tries to get it right, but for now, don't get your catalog super organized. Just test everything and give us feedback.

2) Arranging the folders the way you organize the controls in the filter editor is a great idea. I should have thought of that myself. Good thing I have SpaceRay to watch my back
I will see how soon we can get on that.

3) Subfolders could be tricky for several reasons... Also, we have a limited amount of screen space, so adding a new column may be stretching it.
However, SpaceRay, look at your example:

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PHOTO EFFECTS ----Lighting effects ----Contrast effects ----Sharpening effects ----Color Effects ----HDR effects

This could be a great way to do this in the meantime. Once you can move the folders around, you can add an empty folder called "PHOTO EFFECTS", and put all the folders you want under it.
I'm not saying we'll never have subfolders, but it will take some time.

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I want to thank SpaceRay again for the time and effort testing the tool.
Just a question... Is anybody else here trying it? I want to get as much feedback as possible, so everybody should tell us what they think.
So please, download the tool and give it a try. If you don't like it just delete it.

My screen resolution is also sufficiant for another column, but as you say I must consider those who have smaller screens. In fact, if I made this as an online tool, I would have to constrain everything to 960 pixels wide....

Perhaps I can do a video tutorial of the program to show everybody how it's used.
As you have probably noticed, it's not rocket science to make it work...

I hope everyone will be able to understand my accent

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Morgantao wrote: Next update is coming soon!

Good news !!!! Thanks AND all the 7 things will be included already in this update ? If yes, very well done and congratulations

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Morgantao wrote: A few new things in it: 1) Filter importing is even faster!

Well , before for me that I have around 1200 filter did only take a very few seconds so I did not have any problem with this but is good to have it even faster.

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Morgantao wrote: 2) You don't lose your catalog this time

Good news, BUT what happens with the NEXT time you make an update to the filter ?
Will be possible that you could lose again the catalog ?
I know that as you have said this is a alpha test version, and understand it very well, but want to know if in the process to the final version, and the future updates could it be possible to lose again the catalog? Perhaps you do not know yet.

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Morgantao wrote: 3) Deleting folders is now possible.

I did not notice that you could not delete them

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Morgantao wrote: 4) Moving folders up/down - possible.

GREAT !!! This is a very important and useful thing to have and to be able to really organize the folders right.Lovely.

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Morgantao wrote: 5) Sorting filters by ID / Filter name / Author name.

Sorry, what is different this from searching by ID/Filter name or author ? How would you be able to sort them ?

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Morgantao wrote: 6) Image caching. Filter previews only downloaded once.

GREAT !!! This is a very useful thing to have too as it will be much faster to load the list and the filters and will not have to take them from internet each time and slow it down on the preview. Only for new filters will need to download it once. VERY GOOD.

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Morgantao wrote: and last but not least, especialy for you, SpaceRay, 7) Filter thumbnails!

EXCELLENT, THANKS REALLY VERY MUCH. In my personal opinion all the above would be somewhat useless and much less important IF you did not have filter thumbnails and be forced to remember always the name of the filter AND the CORRESPONDING effect it gives. Probably you have better memory than me, but I am bad at this.

AND all this will be in the same update ?? Please, give my great thanks to your brother-in-law for all this work and for the great thing that he is making, and of course also to you too

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Morgantao wrote: I hope there will be no more losing the catalog. I can't tell you for sure that there's 100% no way this would happen again

Thanks for the news, I agree that is not possible to know 100% sure if in the future there could be something that forces you to change the program and make it incompatible with previous catalogs.

Congratulations again for both of you for ALL the work you are doing with this.

BACKUP TOPIC

How will work the backup of the catalog and folders configuration ?

Do you just make a copy of the .xml file and that is all and then to restore it back you replace the one available with you own one?

Or there will be an import/export catalog ?

Hi again everybody,
here's the latest version of FFCat.

As I have mentioned before, in this version there are several updates, here I will explain a bit about them.

1) If you want to use the catalog from the previous version, all you need to do is change the file extension from catalog.XML to catalog.FFC and you won't lose your data.

2) You can delete a folder by clicking on it and pressing DEL on your keyboard.

3) To move a folder up/down the list, all you need to do is click on the folder and press Shift+up/down arrow.

4) On the top filter's panel there's a little triangle button. Clicking on it will allow you to choose how the filters are ordered: by Author, by name or by ID.

5) In case of a crash, an error log will be created, so you can post it here or email it to me. That way we can fix any bugs.

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Assuming no catastrophic bugs are found, I think it's safe to say you won't lose your catalog anymore. This is a good time to start organizing your filters for real.

I have decided not to include the source code yet, as I have to research the differences between the different open source licenses, so the tool can stay free, no matter who uses it.

Well, I have finally began to make my OWN special custom organization and management of the filters in many different folder with names that I can remember and are really meaningfull to me and ALSO that I can arrange them in virtual subfolders.

Here is a preview of how is it going until now

I will add many more when I continue organizing my filter libary, this is just the beginning.

I forgot to put that I must congratulate for the good idea to search directly the FF filters library when you click on the "Import FFXML filters" button.

So this way is MUCH easier and does not get any confusion and do not need to search it

HOW the FF Catalog updates the Filters?

I mean if I have now loaded the my own filter library collection inside the FF catalog, how do I put inside new filters that I can download in the future?

I think and suposse that it would be in the SAME way, again I would only choose any filter in the folder and it will load again all the filters BUT will only add the new ones that are not already in the catalog ?

Help Guide suggestion

Although I know the keys for using the catalog, it would be useful to have a simple text to show what are the shortcut keys to use the catalog. This can be in a separate readme file apart or could in some way inside the program.

Thanks very much for the good and detailed answer you have given

Although I have the video tutorial twice, it seems that surely I have missed some parts and did not see or noticed that you have ALREADY told about this of the search bar, and also about the update of filters, SORRY, I will watch the video again and pay more attention and see it better and do not miss this information.

I agree with you that is NOT good to release the source code in the wild, EVEN if you have a good licence, and also I recommend that if anyone from the forum request the source code, it MUST be someone you know and you trust, you can´t give it to anyone from the forum.

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Morgantao wrote: 1) I don't have the Admin only error you are talking about on my system, or on any other system I tried. You can always make a shortcut to the .EXE file that runs as Administrator, but I would love to hear from others if they also encounter this problem. Unfortunatly, nobody really seems to use this tool other than you, which makes identifying the source of the problem harder. Do you have a file that is called error.log inside the folder of the tool?

This is curious, as the previous version did work without problem, but now if I double click on the FFcat.exe file nothing happens, and there is no error.log generated because I think that for this to happen the application should have started at least to be able to make the log.

This not a problem at all for me, I did mention because it could happen probably to others and could be a problem for them

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Unfortunatly, nobody really seems to use this tool other than you, which makes identifying the source of the problem harder.

I do not know WHY nobody else seems to be using this tool which is very useful and interesting, perhaps because this is not yet the final version, BUT anyway at least they could make a comment or something . I am sorry for you that you are not getting the support for others.

How can this be possible when many have been requesting this in so many years
Yes, I know they want it INSIDE Filter Forge, BUT this will not happen until probably the end of this year of next year, so this is a good and useful alternative NOW an is very well done.

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Morgantao wrote: I like how you structured your folders. One suggestion I might have, and it's totaly up to you if you want to adopt the idea, instead of having the CAPITAL folders empty, you can have in them everything in their subfolders. That way if you know you want a photo effect, but not sure from which folder, you will see all of them togather. It's an easy thing to do, you just add a checkmark on the capital folder.

YES, thanks, this is a very good suggestion, now I have thought about it after I was organizing the filters for each folder, and as you say it would be very easy to do as you say, and I was not going to do it because if there are too many filters on that category it could be again a mess, BUT then I thought that I could do it and if I do not like it, nothing happens, just do NOT click on the capital letters folder and this solves it.

So I agree with you and will make it as you have suggested, it is only a checkbox more.

Thanks for the good suggestion.

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SpaceRay wrote: I have missed some parts and did not see or noticed that you have ALREADY told about this of the search bar, and also about the update of filters

It's no problem, it's near the end of the video and with that funny computer generated voice it's easy to miss.
As you have missed this, so could others, that's why I mentioned the search bar and filter updates here too.

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SORRY, I will watch the video again and pay more attention and see it better and do not miss this information

LOL, if anyone should appologize, it's me, as I should have added a text manual togather with the tool. It would have taken me less time than the video tutorial, and I think people would find it more usefull also.

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I recommend that if anyone from the forum request the source code, it MUST be someone you know and you trust

Any of the old timers here seem to be trustworthy enough to me. They have contributed so much to the online library and the forums, that I don't think that they're lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on us, the unsuspecting junior filterrers

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GOOD NEWS ! Surprise! Today I have tried to start FFcat.exe and IT WORKED without having to use "Run as administrator"!!! I have not done anything to solve it, so it has fixed by itself

Actually I hacked into your computer last night and fixed the code for you

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Once you have found the filter you want, THEN you can´t open this filter inside FF... I mean if you double click on it nothing happens. You need to go FF and type the name in the FF search bar.

SpaceRay, Thanks for mentioning this.
I think that adding a "double click to open filter in FF" feature will be very nice. I haven't thought of that

In the mean time, you can just look at the filter ID, and search for it inside FF. It will be the only result you get
For example, if you want to use Images Bands Collage, just search inside FF for 10332.

I don't remember saying anything about having the FFCat load the filter inside FF, but that doesn't mean I didn't say that
My memory never was too good... It drives my wife crazy

I hope next update will have the double click to open filter in FF, a PDF manual included with it, and an icon for the program.
Also I hope next update will actually have USERS!

WOW!! THANKS very much Carl for being here. Great that someone ELSE that comes to this thread

Yes please, try it and see how well done it is, and how useful it is for organizing and customizing the great FF filters.

I have a more advanced folders now that is GROWING MUCH , and I think there could probably be a problem if I continue separating all the filters in lots of folders Because there is still many more folders to add to the list.