Extracting layers from a .PSD file… without Photoshop

Someone who doesn’t want to use either Photoshop (subscription) or the GIMP (ugh) asked how to unload layers from a .PSD file. I found two forum-approved solutions for them, though I’ve not tested them myself.

1) The free ImageMagick will do it from the command-line…

convert -dispose Background “input.psd” -layers coalesce “output.png”

And the .PNGs will be re-stackable in other software. Because they retain the full canvas size, rather than being cropped down to their visible-pixel edges.

2) Apparently the freeware XNConvert can also do that. Once installed “Convert all pages from multipage file” is the menu item that apparently does it, and you tick “Rename” for the output to prevent overwrites. I assume the output .PNGs will be re-stackable into the source picture, rather than cropped to their visible-pixel edges. But the forum post with this info and testing doesn’t specify that.

Note that XNConvert is free but a little intrusive. Make sure to install with Internet connection off, uncheck “Send anonymous usage data” after install, then re-start the software and re-connect the Internet. Or use a permissions-based Firewall such as TinyWall (a ‘nothing gets Internet access unless I say so’ firewall).

Howler 2022

Woof! Project Dogwaffle Artist 2022 is shipping, aka Howler 2022. The Artist version is cheaper and removes the animation and video, but is otherwise the same for painting. Needs Windows 10 or higher, as far as I know, though you can still buy the older versions. Nice prices at present…

A super-optimizer plugin for FastStone Capture screenshots

How to have FastStone Capture screenshot utility auto-optimize your latest screenshot, by calling the Windows desktop freeware Pinga GUI.

1. Install Pinga GUI. Output is more or less comparable to the excellent online service TinyPNG / TinyJPG. As you can see, Pinga knows what compression is about…

2. Open settings for FastStone Capture. Set up your Autosave as shown, and OK.

Capture at 92% is about right for initial quality.

3. Now when you make a screenshot with FastStone it is instantly autosaved, then FastStone exits after opening the saved file for you in Pinga. Simply flick the Optimize button in Pinga and exit. The file is overwritten with the shrunken one.

That’s it. Though if you want you can automated even further by having Pinga ‘autorun and exit’ after launch. Which effectively makes it a seamless no-click optimizer plugin for FastStone Capture.

If you want to turn Autosave off temporarily, click the end button of the FastStone mini-bar, which is the Settings. There’s a one-click button on the Autosave panel to turn it on and off.

Update: the new 0.40 is now nagware, which messes up this sort of automated pipeline. The old 0.39 is here.

Say no to NFTs

Apparently Twitter still exists, and in its dotage it has started pushing the evil NFTs on its users to make some cash. Automatically block NFT users en masse with this handy UserScript for your Web browser.

I hear that Instagram is next to ‘go NFT’, too. Blugh. Between NTF gimmicks and censorship and falling users, a great many of these mega-services seem headed to ruin.

Switch to dollars immediately

“Offering Patreon subs in [£] sterling or euros means you can now be sued” under the EU’s hated ‘GDPR’ legislation, says a crazy but apparently precedent-setting ruling by the UK’s Court of Appeal. Sued even if you have no legal presence in the EU or the UK, which is even more bizarre, as The Register incredulously reports today.

I’d suggest you switch to dollars immediately, for your Patreon, PayPal subs, Substack, SubscribeStar etc.

In the public domain for 2022

Some of the best prospects for graphic novels and/or illustrated storybooks, in the material that has just entered the public domain in 2022…

Author died in 1951 (for nations which use the ‘life + 70 years rule’):

* Algernon Blackwood, the famous horror writer (“The Willows” etc).

* Peter Cheyney was once one of the richest British genre authors but is now forgotten, having written many best-selling “American style hard boiled” crime novels in the 1930s and 40s.

1926 releases in the USA:

* Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness) kept real-life Congo diaries, which are to be found in his Last Essays.

* The Boy Through the Ages, a well-researched book on the daily life of boys from early times to the 19th century, cheerfully written for boys. British but appears to have had a New York edition variously listed as being published by “Doubleday Doran and Co.” or “George H. Doran” in 1926.

* Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, a seminal science-fiction tale.

* Ronald Firbank’s ribald Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli.

* Honor Willsie Morrow, Splendid Journey, a best-selling stark and epic novel of kids taking the Oregon Trail.

* The Catholic writer Achmed Abdullah’s The Year of the Wood-Dragon (1926), “An American boy’s adventures on a journey into the interior of Tibet.” He was the screenplay writer for the famous The Thief of Bagdad.

* A. Merritt’s 1926 book version of his 1924 The Ship of Ishtar, apparently a rip-roaring supernatural fantasy that sold well.

* Everything in the famous pulp magazine Weird Tales for 1926. Inc. “The City of Spiders” by H. Warner Munn, said to be “one of the best tales of giant spiders ever written”. Also “The Return of the Undead” by H.P. Lovecraft’s friend Arthur Leeds, which proved a strong hit with the Weird Tales readers and Lovecraft approved — calling it a “splendid tale of a child vampire” in a fever hospital.

* Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (1926) one of her two novels meant for adults. About an old maid in Canada who finds escape via literature and… “soon her daydreams about the Blue Castle turn into reality”.

* The Velveteen Rabbit, a best-selling young children’s story book of 1926 and published on both side of the Atlantic.

* Enid Blyton’s Book of Brownies skips into the public domain in the USA, with brownies here being an old British word for ‘pixies’ or fairies.