Shotgun Engine for Photoshop CC Shotgun Integration for Photoshop CC By: Shotgun Software Latest Version: v1.0.17 (beta) For our version numbers, we follow the Semantic Versioning standard. System Name: tk-photoshopcc

Overview

The Shotgun engine for Photoshop contains a standard platform for integrating the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit apps into Photoshop CC. Once installed, it allows you to run the same apps that you have in Maya, Nuke and other applications. The Shotgun engine for Photoshop consists of custom Adobe CEP extension that allows the engine and apps to communicate with Photoshop CC. The full Photoshop API is exposed to app developers, which means that you can rapidly build Photoshop functionality using Python and Qt without having to compile anything or understand the details of how to build and deploy a Photoshop plugin.

Supported Application Versions

This item has been tested and is known to be working on the following application versions: CC 2015.5, CC 2017. Please note that it is perfectly possible, even likely, that it will work with more recent releases, however it has not yet been formally tested with these versions.

Documentation

The Shotgun engine for Photoshop CC provides a platform for integrating Shotgun into your Photoshop CC workflow. It consists of a standard Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit engine and an Adobe CC extension built upon Adobe's Common Extensibility Platform (CEP).

Once enabled, a Shotgun panel becomes available in Photoshop CC. It displays information about the current Shotgun context as well as the commands that are registered for the apps installed in that context.

Interface Overview

The Shotgun extension panel uses the same color palette and basic layout as native Photoshop CC panels. It is comprised of five components:

1. Context Header - Thumbnail and fields for the current context.
2. Favorites Shelf - Designed to show the most commonly-used apps for the current context.
3. Command List - All non-favorited commands for the current context.
4. Context Menu - Additional context-related commands and debugging tools.
5. Logging Console - A console overlay that displays logging output for debugging.

Installation

Installation of the Shotgun Engine for Photoshop CC follows the same protocol as the other Shotgun integrations. For information on installing engines and apps, see the Administering Toolkit article. In addition, you can reference the default toolkit config as an example of how to configure the integration.

Enabling the extension

Once the extension is installed, it will need to be launched via the extensions menu in Photoshop CC.

This will only need to be done once and the Shotgun extension panel can remain in the Photoshop CC layout without having to be enabled on subsequent launches.

Once enabled, and on future launches, the extension panel will display a loading screen while the Shotgun integration is bootstrapping.

This screen typically displays for a few seconds before the current context is determined and the commands are displayed.

Interface components

The following sections outline the components of the Shotgun Photoshop CC integration.

Context header

The context header is a customizable area which can display information about the current Shotgun context.

The context is determined by the currently-active document. Once the context is determined by the engine, the header will update to display the context's thumbnail field detail. The field information is controlled by a hook. For information on how to customize the field display, see the Context Fields Display Hook section below.

It should also be noted that since Photoshop CC is a multi-document interface, the context, and therefore the Shotgun extension, will update as you change the active document. It is important that artists understand this behavior, especially when working in multiple Shotgun contexts simultaneously.

Favorites shelf

The favorites shelf is similar to the menu favorites available in other Shotgun DCC integrations such as Maya and Houdini. This section of the interface makes the most commonly used Toolkit apps readily available and easy to find just under the context header.

The shelf displays the favorited commands as buttons that, when moused over, transition from grayscale to color and display their name in the label at the top. Tooltips for the buttons will show by hovering the mouse above them.

Clicking one of the buttons will trigger the callback for the registered command to execute.

For details on how to specify command favorites, see the Shelf Favorites section below.

Command list

The command list shows the other "regular" commands that are registered for the current context.

Typically, apps installed within a pipeline configuration will register one or more commands that are displayed here. If the commands are not identified as favorites, and are not identified as context-menu commands, they will display here.

The command list buttons behave in a manner similar to those in the favorites shelf. The only real difference is that they display as a list with the full name to the right of their icon.

Context menu

Any commands registered as context menu commands will show in the Shotgun extension panel's context menu.

Like the other command areas, these commands will change along with the context. Commands such as Jump to Shotgun and Jump to Filesystem will always be available here.

Logging console

The logging console shows all of the logging output from both the CEP Javascript interpreter and Toolkit's Python process.

If there are any issues with the extension that require support, the logging console output is extremely useful for helping the Shotgun support team debug the problem.

Configuration and technical details

The following sections outline some of the more technical aspects of the integration to help configure the integration to the specific needs of your studio pipeline.

PySide

The Shotgun engine for Photoshop CC relies on PySide. Please see the official instructions for Installing Pyside.

CEP extension

The extension itself is bundled with the engine and the engine handles installation automatically on the first launch of Photoshop CC. The extension is installed on the artist's local machine in the standard, OS-specific CEP extension directories:

# Windows
> C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\CEP\extensions\

# OS X
> ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/CEP/extensions/

Each time Photoshop CC is launched, the engine bootstrap code will check the version of the extension that is bundled with the engine against the version that is installed on the machine. This means that after an engine update, assuming a new version of the extension came with it, the installed extension will be automatically updated to the newly-bundled version.

Configuring favorites

The Favorites Shelf can be configured to display any of the registered commands for your installed apps. To do this, simply add the shelf_favorites setting to the tk-photoshopcc section of your environment configuration. Here's an example:

shelf_favorites:
    - {app_instance: tk-multi-workfiles2, name: File Save...}
    - {app_instance: tk-multi-workfiles2, name: File Open...}
    - {app_instance: tk-multi-publish, name: Publish...}
    - {app_instance: tk-multi-snapshot, name: Snapshot...}

The value of the setting is a list of dictionaries identifying a registered command provided by one of the installed apps in the configuration. The app_instance key identifies a particular installed app and the name key matches the command's display name registered by that app. In the example above, you can see four favorited commands: the file open and save dialogs from the tk-multi-workfiles2 app as well as the standard Toolkit publish and snapshot dialogs. These four commands will now show in the favorites shelf.

Context fields display hook

The engine comes with a hook to control the fields displayed in the Context Header section of the panel. There are two methods in the hook that can be overridden to customize what is displayed.

The first method is the get_entity_fields() method. This method accepts an entity type representing the current Shotgun context. The expected return value is a list of fields for that entity that should be queried for display. The engine itself handles querying the data asynchronously.

Once the data has been queried from Shotgun, the second method in the hook is called. This method, get_context_html(), receives the context entity dictionary populated with the queried fields specified by the get_entity_fields() method. The expected return value is a string containing formatted HTML to display the queried entity fields.

The default hook implementation is a good reference as to what is required by these methods.

It should be noted that the engine will always display the entity thumbnail if one is available.

Photoshop API

The engine exposes the Javascript API for Photoshop CC to Python. The full docs for this API can be found here.

The Photoshop API object is exposed as engine.adobe. The examples below show how it is possible to directly manipulate the Photoshop DOM from within Toolkit apps and hooks. The standard Toolkit apps also contain working examples of how to interact with Photoshop documents.

Examples

Load a file:

f = adobe.File('/Path/To/File.jpeg')
adobe.app.load(f)

Set the ruler units to PIXELS:

pixels = adobe.Units.PIXELS
adobe.app.preferences.rulerUnits = pixels

Export the current doc for the web with default options:

temp_thumb_file = adobe.File(out_path)
save_for_web = adobe.ExportType.SAVEFORWEB
export_options = adobe.ExportOptionsSaveForWeb()
adobe.app.activeDocument.exportDocument(temp_thumb_file, save_for_web, export_options)

Export each layer as a separate file:

doc = adobe.app.activeDocument
layers = doc.artLayers
layers = [layers[i] for i in xrange(layers.length)]
original_visibility = [layer.visible for layer in layers]

save_for_web = adobe.ExportType.SAVEFORWEB
export_options = adobe.ExportOptionsSaveForWeb()

for layer in layers:
    layer.visible = False

for layer in layers:
    layer.visible = True
    out_file = adobe.File("c:/layer.%s.jpg" % str(layer.name))
    doc.exportDocument(
        out_file,
        save_for_web,
        export_options,
    )
    layer.visible = False

for (i, layer) in enumerate(layers):
    layer.visible = original_visibility[i]

Environment variables

To aid in debugging, there are a set of environment variables that change some of the engine's default values:

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_DISABLE_AUTO_INSTALL - Prevents the startup process from attempting to automatically install or update the extension bundled with the engine.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL - The Python heartbeat interval in seconds (default is 1 second). The legacy environment variable SGTK_PHOTOSHOP_HEARTBEAT_INTERVAL is also respected if set.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_HEARTBEAT_TIMEOUT - How long, in seconds, Python waits for Photoshop to answer its heartbeat (default is 0.5 seconds). The legacy environment variable SGTK_PHOTOSHOP_HEARTBEAT_TIMEOUT is also respected if set.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_HEARTBEAT_TOLERANCE - The number of heartbeat errors before quitting (default is 2). The legacy environment variable SGTK_PHOTOSHOP_HEARTBEAT_TOLERANCE is also respected if set.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_NETWORK_DEBUG - Include additional networking debug messages when logging output. The legacy environment variable SGTK_PHOTOSHOP_NETWORK_DEBUG is also respected if set.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_PYTHON - The path to the Python executable to use when launching the engine. If not set, the system Python is used. If Photoshop is launched from a Python process, like Shotgun Desktop or via the tk-shell engine, the Python used by that process will be used by the Photoshop integration.

SHOTGUN_ADOBE_RESPONSE_TIMEOUT - How long, in seconds, Python waits for a response from Photoshop (default is 300 seconds). The legacy environment variable SGTK_PHOTOSHOP_TIMEOUT is also respected if set.

App Developer notes

• Because the python process is separate from the Photoshop CC process, there is some work done within the engine to try to make the app windows show above the Photoshop window in as clean a manner as possible. One gotcha with this setup is the default option to use native OS windows for QFileDialog. If you are developing an app for use with this engine, be sure to set the option to not use the native dialog. See an example of this in the tk-multi-pythonconsole app.

Transitioning from the previous integration

For instructions on how to transition from the legacy Photoshop integration, please see this document. If you run into any trouble or have any further questions about this transition, please contact support@shotgunsoftware.com.

Installation and Updates

Adding this Engine to the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit

If you want to add this engine to Project XYZ, and an environment named asset, execute the following command:

Updating to the latest version

If you already have this item installed in a project and you want to get the latest version, you can run the update command. You can either navigate to the tank command that comes with that specific project, and run it there:

> cd /my_tank_configs/project_xyz
> ./tank updates

Alternatively, you can run your studio tank command and specify the project name to tell it which project to run the update check for:

> tank Project XYZ updates

Collaboration and Evolution

If you have access to the Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit, you also have access to the source code for all apps, engines and frameworks in Github where we store and manage them. Feel free to evolve these items; use them as a base for further independent development, make changes (and submit pull requests back to us!) or simply tinker with them to see how they have been built and how the toolkit works. You can access this code repository at https://github.com/shotgunsoftware/tk-photoshopcc.

Special Requirements

• You need Shotgun Pipeline Toolkit Core API version v0.18.18 or higher to use this.

Configuration

Below is a summary of all the configuration settings used. These settings need to be defined in the environment file where you want to enable this App or Engine.

automatic_context_switch

Type: bool

Default Value: True

Description: Controls whether an active document change causes a context change.

shelf_favorites

Type: list

Description: Controls the registered commands that show up in the favorites shelf in the Shotgun panel. This is a list where each item is a dictionary with keys 'app_instance' and 'name'. The 'app_instance' key connects this entry to a particular app instance defined in the environment configuration file. The 'name' is a command name to make a favorite.

debug_logging

Type: bool

Description: Controls whether debug messages should be emitted to the logger

context_fields_display_hook

Type: hook

Default Value: {self}/context_fields_display.py

Description: Hook which controls how context fields are queried and displayed in the context header.

Release Notes

Welcome to the release notes for this Engine. Below you will find an overview of all the changes we did for each release. We try to be as detailed as possible and include all bugs we have fixed, features we have added and things that may have changed. If you have questions about a particular release, don't hesitate to contact our support team!

v1.0.17

2017-Mar-17

Converts active document paths that are unicode into utf-8 strings. This will better handle file paths that contain special characters.

v1.0.16

2017-Mar-16

Renames "context_follows_document" engine setting to "automatic_context_switch" to match that of the Houdini and Maya engines.

v1.0.15

2017-Mar-15

Adds "context_follows_document" engine setting.

Details:

Setting this to true will disable context changes when the active document is changed in Photoshop. Note that context changes will still occur as a result of loading a file with the workfiles app.

v1.0.13

2017-Mar-13

Fix for a bug related to context cache clearing on initial startup of SGTK.

v1.0.12

2017-Mar-09

Fix for a context cache bug that resulted in data missing from the cache when it shouldn't have been.

Details:

The complete fix for this bug in v1.0.11 will require v0.9.2 of tk-multi-workfiles2 in addition to the engine update here. This is a minor bug, though, which is tied to an edge case that most artist users will never encounter.

v1.0.11

2017-Mar-08

Refactors context caching to resolve inconsistent behavior during CEP extension restarts.

v1.0.10

2017-Feb-24

Engine startup active document fix, context header polish, and adds a getter method to the Adobe bridge class for getting the active document path.

Details:

The AdobeBridge getter helps resolve the issue surrounding attempted lookups of active document paths when the active document is "new" and has not been saved. The new getter properly handles that situation and returns None, rather than raising a RuntimeError and causing nasty log messages to be printed.

v1.0.4

2017-Feb-16

Panel console polish

v1.0.3

2017-Feb-07

Corrects the path delimiter used when adding to PYTHONPATH from javascript.

v1.0.2

2017-Feb-06

Reduces lag in py console and uses rpc when logging from py to js

v1.0.1

2017-Jan-31

Clickable command rows and minor polish.

v1.0.0

2017-Jan-30

Passed QA and ready for release!

v0.0.1

2017-Jan-20

First release candidate for the tk-photoshopcc engine!