Well, there will never be an alpha 05 release. Oh well, there is one actually. And it’s here. What I mean is that from now on the release archives will be named after the release day. This is because now I use an Automator script to compile both projects (ChocoFlop and ChocoImageUnits), create a disk image (with date in name) and upload it to FTP. You can still see the the alpha 0.x numbering if you look at the bug reporting site. By using date-based uploads I can easily release updates without doing much by hand. I can even release some in the folder over there without linking from the website (if some tester has to try something specific for example).

Release alpha 05, a.k.a. the 2005-09-29 brings quite some improvements. At lot of them have to do with the way filter parameters are showed. You now see the names of each parameter, the window is resized accordingly and most of all you can now finally drag handles around for filters that need center or offset points. This release also fixes some remaining bugs with duplicating/merging layers. Now that I can drag handles around I’ll be able to add support to visual perspective/resize tools.

The ImageUnits now have a correct name (it was a missing attribute in the filters themselves, so make sure you replace the filters).

You can get it from the Download Page.

Ladies(?) and Gentlemen, please welcome the glorious alpha 04 release of ChocoFloppy. Yes, you can call it ChocoFloppy because the zip file is about 500kb and would fit on a floppy if you had one

This release fixes mainly bugs with merging layers (which was quite a mess because it deleted the wrong layers after merging!). Also you can now finally apply a filter after it has been live (uses the same merge technique). “Revert to saved” is now correct (didn’t clear the layers and other document data before). The tool box has been slimmed down following huge popular demand. And finally help menus point directly to the forum, the bug report system and the new wiki.

You can get it from the Download Page (It’s the only way it works, I tried the FSM installation thing with alpha 03 and it didn’t work, so back to the roots!)

Today I was looking into the possibility of adding help into ChocoFlop. I don’t know for you (you, dear public, that is). But I never look into manuals. I widely prefer chaotic experimentation (helped by mouseover tips) and only searching about one or two specific features that seem too unintuitive to be guessed. The usual content table and such things tend to turn me away. That’s why I decided to setup a Wiki for ChocoFlop. This uses the nice php MediaWiki suite. Thanks to my beloved hosting (dreamhost) this was a one-click thing. From the next release on the help menu will point there.

This might be a bit premature but better soon that never. I probably won’t be adding much documentation there myself anytime soon because the appearance of ChocoFlop might change quite a lot by the time it reaches release time. In the long run this will allow enthusiast users to publish some tricks in the form of “howDoIDoThat”. I’ll probably add some articles also that are more general, like “WhyIsHighDynamicRangeSoCool”, with some images to demonstrate how to make use of it in ChocoFlop.

Now, back to bug hunting.

I just released alpha 03. Not many changes but mainly fixes. The most outstanding problems showed up when adding filters on the seleciton. You can now apply any filter to the selection and the preview/result will be fine. Some geometry deformation filters still have problems though in preview mode (tiling effect). Also I added a convenience link in the selection menu to “Blur Selection”. Basically it enters quickmask mode, adds a gaussian blur filter and when done exits.

You can get it from the Download Page (or you can pray the Flying Spaghetti Monster until the new release appears in your Applications folder, but I recommend the first option).

Sorry about that, the first alpha version just did not have the Growl framework included. It only worked on my machine because I just had the growl framework installed in the system. The new alpha 02 fixes this (nothing else).

Update: I uploaded a new version (still named alpha 02), that is able to detect whether growl is installed and/or running and launch safari to download it if needed.

As the download pages says: I hope you know what alpha means. I wrote enough warnings both in the Readme and on the download page so just go there: Download Page.

I look forward to hearing comments (encouragements? flames?) from you, the real people, out there. Don’t forget to comment in the forum about this. I created a thread called alpha 1 for that sole purpose.

I was supposed to keep that for later but I couldn’t resist. I digged a little into the documentation of OpenGL shading language required to write CIFilters. It turns out it’s much simpler than what I initially thought. Basically if you know C, there are only a few methods to learn and some practice to get manipulating vectors. The most important thing I missed in Quartz composer is that you can actually write OpenGL code in it, directly and test it in real time. It’s a bit unstable though but it allows for very fast tweaking and searching for new effects.

So yesterday I wrote my first very own first CIFilter and packaged it as an Image Unit. By putting it in Library/Graphics/ImageUnits I was able to access this filter from other Core Image applications (I tried in imaginator for example). I think it’s a great thing we finally have a simple standard outside the photoshop one to create filters and share them between many apps.

The first filter I wrote is called “Leaf Distortion”. It’s more useful as as transition effect than in graphics manipulation I guess. Nevertheless I put it in the “distortion” category since that’s what it does.

First a screenshot of the effect:

And here is the Quartz Composer version. I previously posted an embedded quicktime file but this seems to cause problems with other browsers (FireFox or Windows browsers) and I don’t have much time to care about it. Just click on it if you are running tiger and it will play directly. For those who don’t know quartz composer, visit this: on my own blog (most of the site is in french but this is in english).