Picture Postcard Workflow: The PPW2025 panel
History
A concise history of the Picture Postcard Workflow and the accompanying panel can be found on this web page. The original PPW panel was designed by Dan Margulis to support execution of his workflow, and programmed by a "team of his Italian friends" as the page states. Development of this panel started as early as 2009. Many enhancements were built over the years, until 2018 when the last major release (5) was published. From around 2020, support degraded gradually, and no more new features were added to it.
From time to time, members of Dan's colortheory forum offered to take over the code or even rewrite the full panel from scratch, so that support could be recovered and new ideas implemented. Somewhere late 2024, Dutch programmer and photographer Bart Mellenbergh really took the challenge and started this enormous task. After a few months of programming (Bart) and testing (myself) the first public version was announced on the colortheory forum on March 2, 2025. The new panel was named "PPW2025", then version 0.0.3. Code is written in UXP, which Adobe considers "the modern way to create plugins and scripts for Adobe Creative Cloud." In other words: PPW2025 is as future-proof as possible.
What happened next
The first reactions were very enthousiastic. People called it "a wonderful gift" and a "welcome development". Dan himself wrote: "I join in the general thanks, because it seems that the PPW panel has arisen phoenix-like from the ashes, and will be usable for years to come." Soon discussions started whether the new panel should fully mimic the old panel (this had been our initial objective) or that we would focus on enhancements and new features.
But first, our major concern was stability and quality. For such a complex piece of software, with all its user options and settings, it is next to impossible to validate all possible paths and permutations. It follows that many bugs must still be hidden in the code - obviously we want to trace and eliminate them.
Working on both goals - fixing bugs and implementing small enhancements - resulted in the second official release of PPW2025: version 0.1.0, announced on April 15, 2025. We removed buttons that we considered obsolete or for which better alternatives exist. We added some useful features here and there. We fully implemented the ctrl-Z (undo) option for each panel action. We included panel documentation that is now directly accessible from within the panel (see the white-on-blue question marks in the screenprint). And last but not least, we solved many problems. (Well, let me be fair: Bart did all these things. I did the occasional testing and provided some ideas.)
Version 0.1.0 can be obtained for free. Members of the colortheory forum can find the package in the Files section of the forum here. Alternatively, it can be accessed from my own website. Feel free to download and install. Just be aware that you may hit the occasional start-up problem; don't hesitate to inform me if you do!
The current version of PPW2025
What will happen in the future
We have plans to make the panel better and more powerful!
- First, not all functionality of the old panel is available in PPW2025. For example, the old panel offers the possibility the configure generic preferences, so that's something that needs to be done for the new panel as well.
- Second, new actions that may fit in the Picture Postcard Workflow have been developed since 2018. They may get their place in the new panel.
- Third, for some actions we know variations. They may somehow be integrated in their existing counterparts. Think of the MMM Finetuned action: it would be nice if it could be accessed from the MMM button on the main panel.
- Fourth, we are receptive to improvement suggestions. Tell us what you wantand we'll consider your wish.
We expect the panel to remain free, as it has always been.
Gerald Bakker, 18 April 2025
Picture Postcard Workflow
