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button in the bottom-left corner of the window. Assuming Picture Window Pro is installed in the default location, set the command line (including the quotes) to:Integrating with other Applications
Drag and Drop
Programs such as Windows Explorer and various digital asset management programs and raw converters can act as a source for drag and drop. Picture Window can act as a target for dropped image files in several ways, depending on where you drop the images.
Dropping images into the main image area
If you drop one or more image files anywhere in Picture Window's main image area, the files are opened one at a time as new top level images, just as if you had used File Open to open each one independently.
Note: If Picture Window is busy, the file opens are delayed until it is no longer busy. Busy means that another file open is currently in progress, a recalculation is in progress, a batch operation is in progress, the transformation dialog box for the current image is open, or a modal dialog box is open.
Dropping images into File Open
If a File Open transformation dialog box is currently open, the dropped files are appended to its file list instead of being opened. Note: you still need to drop the files into the main window and not the File Open dialog box. Adding files to the file list lets you process multiple images using the same workflow or perform batch operations on a series of files.
Raw Converters
Many popular raw converters and image editors can export images to programs such as Picture Window as part of a unified editing work flow. This lets you do preliminary processing in the raw converter and then hand off the image to Picture Window for further editing. As a rule, this works by exporting a TIFF file and then launching the external program, passing the name of the TIFF file in the command line. Since programs may change the way they integrate with external image editors, please check your documentation if the instructions below do not work.
Adobe Lightroom (commercial)
In Lightroom, select Edit/Preferences and click the External Editing tab. These settings determine what happens when you select Lightroom's Photo/Edit command to launch an external program to edit the current image. For use with Picture Window, make sure you export as TIFF. Note that only Photoshop Elements can be designated as your primary external editor, but other programs can be set up as additional external editors.
DxO PhotoLab (commercial)
In DxO PhotoLab (or the older DxO Optics), click the small blue drop-down next to the Print button in the lower right corner of the screen and select Export to Application. You can then select Picture Window as the application and 16-bit TIFF as the file format.
Capture One (commercial)
In Capture One, use either the Image/Edit With... or File/Export Images/Variants... command, and select 16-bit TIFF as the output image format and Picture Window as the application.
ON1 Photo Raw (commercial)
You can export TIFF files to Picture Window Pro via File/Send to another application...
Raw Therapee (free)
Set up Picture Window as an external editor using the Preferences/General/External Editor command. To get to Preferences, click the button in the bottom-left corner of the window. Assuming Picture Window Pro is installed in the default location, set the command line (including the quotes) to:
"C:\Program Files\Digital Light & Color\Picture Window Pro 8\PWP 8.0.exe"
The button to send the current image to an external application .png){kind=small}
is located at the bottom-left of the preview panel (or you can use the Ctrl-E keyboard shortcut). When using this feature, Unfortunately, Raw Therapee processes your image and saves it as a 16-bit TIFF to a temporary folder which makes this command more or less useless. These intermediate files do not get automatically deleted when you close Raw Therapee, so you need to clean them out manually from time to time.
Another alternative that places the TIFF file in the same folder as the RAW file is the use the File Save button and then select 16-bit TIFF as the file format and select the folder to save to. Then open the image with Picture Window.
DarkTable (free)
DarkTable does not support external editors directly so you need to export your image(s) and then open them with Picture Window.
Command Line
You can pass arguments to Picture Window when you launch it to cause it to open one or more image or script files when it starts up. Just specify the pathnames of the image or script files you want to open as arguments. If any of the pathnames include spaces, make sure you enclose the pathname in quotes so they can be parsed correctly.
If a pathname corresponds to an image file, the file is opened when Picture Window starts up. If a pathname corresponds to a script file, the script file is run when Picture Window starts up. If you include multiple pathname arguments, they are processed in left-to-right order.
Windows Explorer
You can open an image or script file from Windows Explorer either by double clicking it or by dropping one or more files on the Picture Window application icon. If Picture Window is already open, the files are opened in the current workspace. If Picture Window is busy, the file opens are delayed until it is no longer busy. Busy means that another file open is currently in progress, a recalculation is in progress, a batch operation is in progress, the transformation dialog box for the current image is open, or a modal dialog box is open.
File Associations
Double-clicking on image or script files to open them only works in Windows Explorer if the image file type (such as tif or jpeg) is associated with Picture Window. Here is the procedure to establish a file association:
•Right click on an image or script file of the type you want Picture Window to open, and select Open with from the popup menu.
•Select Choose another app at the bottom of the applications list.
•Check the box: Always use this app to open xxx files where xxx is the file type.
•If Picture Window shows up in the application list, select it. If not, select Look for another app on this PC from the bottom of the list and then navigate to the folder Picture Window is installed in (typically C:\Program Files\Digital Light & Color\Picture Window Pro 8) and select the Picture Window executable file: PWP 8.0.exe.