Basic Concept

As you see the centre of PiCo are those two panes that contain the tabs "File View", "Filter View" and "FFL View". One of the panes is always active the other always passive. When you click on one it becomes active and the other becomes passive. The background (of the file list) of the passive pane becomes grey. As you can see in the picture above the right pane is the passive one.

All commands are related to the active pane. Some commands use the directory of the passive pane to place files to e.g FileCopy, Move, Unzip, Add 2 Zip, Extract, Add, Create Lib, List to File and Convert to. For example selecting files in the active pane and pressing Filecopy will copy these selected files to the directory displayed in the passive pane.

Clicking the right mouse button over the file list in Filter View, over the filter list in Filter View, over the FFL list in FFL View and over the window background of the Filter Factory Editor window will pop up a context menu.

PiCo has three differnt views:

• In the File View directories and files are displayed.
• From the combo box you can choose which files should be displayes: All FF Formats (files with the extension 8bf,prm,txt,asf,pff,vfx,vft), all files (*.*), all Filter Factory Libraries (*.ffl), all Photoshop PlugIns(*.8bf), all Premiere PlugIns (*.prm), all Text files (*.txt) and all MediaStudio PlugIns (*.vf*).
• By clicking on those two icons at the buttom of the pane, you can switch to Premiere's or Photoshop's PlugIn directory. If you are using PSP 4 for example and want to use this feature, put all your PlugIns in to a sub directory called Plugins in your PSP directory.
• If you have selected "All Files" in the combo box, you can launch files by double clicking on them or pressing <Return>. By doing that the program that is associated with this file type will showup and display the file contents.
• Double clicking on Photoshop FF Plugs (.8bf), Premiere FF Plugs (.prm), FFWizard or Plugin Manager Text files (.txt), AFS or PFF files will load the filter informations into PiCo's FF Editor, if "in PiCo's Logo" isn't activated. If it is, a preview will be displayed in PiCo Logo box. That way you can use the cursor keys to browse through a filter directory previewing those filters.
• In the Filter View Filter Factory PlugIns that are in the current directory are displayed by their category and name.
• By double clicking on a category in the left list box all filters of this category are displayed in the right list box.
• a "+" infront of the filter name means that the filters is enabled, a "-" means that Photoshop/PSP 4/Premiere/Mediastudio etc. will ignore it. This is achieved by renaming the file extension from "8bf" to "8b-", "prm" to "pr-", "vfx" to "-fx" or "vft" to "-ft". With the Enable/Disable button you can enable disabled PlugIns and disable enabled PlugIns.
• To change the category of filters simply select the filters, select the category you want to move them to (or create a new category and select it) and finally click on the Change Cat button or press <Str +H> or choose Change Category from the Operations menu.
• Double clicking on a Photoshop or Premiere filter will load it into PiCo's FF Editor or show a preview in PiCo's Logo.
• You can also use the commands Convert to, Add 2 FFL, Create Library, FileCopy, Move, Delete and Kill.
• Finally there is a FFL (=Filter Factory Library) View which displays the contents of FFL files.
• You can get in this View by double clicking on a FFL file or hitting <Return> over a FFL File or selecting a FFL file and clicking the FFL View tab. If no FFL file is selected, when clicking on the FFL View tab the first FFL file in the file list is automatically selected. If there is no FFL file in the file list the FFL View won't show up.
• You can add new filters to the displayed FFL file, create a new FFL file from the selected entries of the displayed FFL, search for filters or convert FFL entries to different formats by using the "Convert to" button.
• Double clicking on a FFL entry will load it into PiCo's FF Editor or show a preview in PiCo's Logo.
• See also the General Commands.

• With it you can look at a picture preview of a Photoshop FF PlugIn and edit its file name, filter name, category, author, copyright, slider/map names, slider values, filter code and save it by selecting a format and pressing Save As.
• You can also create new Photoshop filters and save them without using the original Filter Factory.
• You can copy the FF Editor settings to the Clipboard (in FFWizard TXT format) or paste Clipboard text in FFWizard's TXT format into FF Editor.You can even print a filter's code by selecting "Print Filter" from the context menu.
• Furthermore, you are can apply a filter to a loadable BMP file and save the result.
• By pressing Big View a big view of the calculated picture appears, which may take same time.
• Randomize will create random slider values.
• The buttons 1 - 10 are so called Memory Spots. By pressing one the current slider values are saved indicated by the bold button number. When pressing the bold command button again the saved settings will be restored.