Photoshop Peripherals

[Argyle]

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I came across AutoHotKey.  This seems to be exactly what I needed.  Essentially, AutoHotKey allows you to script macro events.  So the plan was to use it to detect the knob rotations as keypresses, then script that to output the proper opacity percents back into Photoshop.  It took a while, but it worked like a charm.  I had to write my own script for it since none existed.  If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll post it up.

etc...

If you could post information on that, or your own scripts, that would rock!  This looked enticing enough that I picked a used one up on eBay at a great deal and would love to add the use of this wheel to my workflow routine!  Thanks again for posting this up.

[Arne]

I use an Airbrush pen. It has a wheel on it, which I map to opacity. I map pen pressure to brush radius, and put the brush sizes/hardness/modes in Tool Presets.

Because I've mapped pen pressure to brush radius, I don't have to change brush size that often. By controlling pen pressure I can get into nooks and crannies. I mostly change to a larger brush when I need to block in. I constantly color pick with one of the tablet buttons to blend (brush not fully opaque), and since I have opacity control on the pen's wheel I can go completely opaque if I need to.

I'd really like to see more controls on both the pen and tablet though. I use the slider on the tablet for zoom now and it works badly. I had to disable the left slider because I'm left handed and bump into it. It would've been better if they just had one control panel which you could snap onto the side of the board or something.

[flaber]

This is rather interesting idea, and the more i think about it, the more it entices me.

i will suggest this to some of my friends in engineering with me. For our 4th year project occasionally they let students suggest projects to work on.
I can see atleast 3 slides, RGB, or HSL (as i like to use in MSpaint). alittle led screen to display the color mixed, some buttons for pressure, or some buttons for some hot keys. a slider for zoom. very cool.
take the tools bar and make it physical.

ill see if i can convince people to think about working with this.

[Indigo]

alrighty guys, now you've done it... I've started researching into making my own HID usb input device for photoshop... turns out it's not all that complicated once you found a suitable interface.  Here are the parts I'm looking at...

50-pin HID Interface:
http://www.u-hid.com/

Arcade buttons: (can insert paper icons under the plastic cover)
http://www.ultimarc.com/ultralux.html

Slider Potentiometers:
http://www.robotshop.us/phidgets-slider-sensor-2.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=base&utm_campaign=jos

knobs:
http://www.ultimarc.com/SpinTrak.htm


I think what it would end up being is 3 vertical sliders, 2 knobs, and maybe 6 programmable arcade buttons.

I would consider making a HSB slider set as well, but currently i have no idea how I could map input devices to those software sliders without assignable keyboard shortcuts for them.  I could have missed them, but I dont think photoshop has any for that.  There are only two other solutions I could think of for this - either write a photoshop plugin which allows HID input to control them, or somehow have the input click and move those sliders like you would do with a mouse.  Any ideas on this?

[WM]

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...  There are only two other solutions I could think of for this - either write a photoshop plugin which allows HID input to control them, or somehow have the input click and move those sliders like you would do with a mouse.  Any ideas on this?

If i were you I would go with making a plugin; the second option sounds a little inefficient and slapped together, if you ask me.

And what are your plans for the layout of the device components? I think Jakten has the right idea:

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[Tourist]

Another option is the category of 'tangible user interfaces'.  Wikepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangible_User_Interface

Something like this:



The reactable from http://www.reactable.com/

They're mostly for music, but you could probably adapt them to graphics as well.

Tourist

[Indigo]

WM:  from what I hear, writing photoshop plug-ins is a nasty business.  I certainly wouldn't be able to do this myself.  If anyone interested in this project that has the know-how to do this sort of thing, I'd love if you could contribute.  JakTen's mockups are certainly a good layout for the most part.  I'd probably have 3 verticle sliders on the left, with two knobs (stacked vertically) on the right, with a row of programmable buttons lining the bottom.  I'll draw up some stuff.  but really - RGB?  Artists use that?

Tourist: unfortunately, that's a bit out of my small budget for this simple project.  I'm not looking for anything revolutionary - just useful.

I've been looking at more components and the idea of using touch-strips rather than sliders is kinda interesting.  It has it's pros and cons

Pros:
Could have a toggle switch, so one touch strip could control multiple functions in-software.  This can't be done with physical sliders - once you switched the slider to control another function, it would automatically effect the value in accordance to the slider position.  In other words, there would be no memory of where the sliders once were when switching between functions.

Cons:
There is no visual representation for what value the slider is at with this method.  I can't look down and say "oh, thats about 50%" - with the physical sliders I dont even really need to look, just feel.  If I wanted to get into pretty complex electronic engineering, I guess I could line up a series of LEDs and have them light up in according to the position of the slider value..  that'd take a lot of work.

[EyeCraft]

Oh cool to see this idea being revived!

Why not have a mix of physical slides and touch slides?

Since the touch slide is multi programmable, why not just have 1? A general purpose slider, if you will. Then have 3 physical slides for more concrete, single purpose jobs where you want tactile feedback.

I'd offer to help, but I don't really have the time at the moment... and I've never looked at PS plug in coding before 

I was thinking you could somehow use the brush controls to modify its colour. I know you can map a control to it interpolating between the two colours you have selected. Maybe theres a way to kind of hack the related code to get controls to modify individual HSV elements of the colour painted. Just a weird thought I had. Pointless to speculate without really having a look at PS plug in code, though.

[Indigo]

it seems there may be an easier way than coding a PS plugin.  PS scripts seem to allow HSB slider changes.  I could assign the mini-scripts (a total of 6 for up and down on each slider) to 6 different hotkeys in photoshop - then map the slider to those keys.  It wouldn't be able to know the exact value of the slider - so you'd have to map slider increments to multiple keyboard presses (which will not give you an accurate depiction of the value compared to the position of the physical slider), which is much better suited for a knob than a slider.  Seems like a round-about way of doing it, but probably the easiest.

[Gil]

A photoshop plugin for MIDI control would be awesome. Imagine something like an Akai MPD24 hooked to photoshop:



6 sliders, 8 knobs and 16 buttons