External Editor Configuration
Allow the user to configure their own External Editors.
At minimum once browsing for an external editor through the Edit With or Open With menu items should mean that Capture One remembers that editor and adds it to the dropdown so future use is easier. Ideally under the plugin preferences we should be able to link to external editors (like Nik executables (*.exe)) and even support Photoshop style plugins natively.
Other more inexpensive software (namely Exposure X5) allow full configuration of external editors down to the export format of files through the preferences. Even the dreaded LR has the functionality to configure export to a wide range of external editors, all configurable by the user.
Currently Capture One seems to have picked a random and incomplete set of editors as 'Allowed Apps' under the plugin preferences, I am not sure how it is making the determination but certainly in my case it has made a faulty determination. Why not bite the bullet and let us configure this ourselves.
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You don't say whether you are on Windows or Mac.
For Windows, select an image, right click and select Edit-With ->Pick an App. A dialog box will pop up with the file transition details, configure how you want it and then click on Open. A Windows dialog box will open asking you to select an application. The one one want won't be there, so you will have to browse for it.
Another way to do this is to edit the configuration file directly. it will be in C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Local\CaptureOne\Defaults.BuiltInOpenWithPluginSettings.xml
Open it in a text editor (I like Notepad++ because it understands text file formats and will format appropriately).
The entries are very simple.
There is going to be another selection, looks like this:
<KeyValueSerializableOfStringBoolean>
<Key>c:\windows\system32\openwith.exe</Key>
<Value>true</Value>
</KeyValueSerializableOfStringBoolean>Copy this and paste it below the selection. The replace the "c:\windows\system32\openwith.exe" with the path to your application.
This takes significantly less time then to go through the "Pick an App" gyration. Just make certain Capture One is not open while you are doing this as it's possible to Capture One will rewrite over your edited file when it closes.
Have fun
chris
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Chris,
It is hosted on Windows. Thank you very much for getting back to me. I did have a look to see if I could find a configuration file, but failed to locate it. Thanks for pointing me to the right place. I will give it a go the next time I am at my computer.
Best regards.
Mark.
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Chris,
I tried adding to the file suggested and unfortunately it didn't work. Not sure why, checked the formatting, no joy... I was getting hopeful there for a while.
Capture One is reading the file, I changed some of the true statements to false in the file and this is then reflected in the selected as active entry items in the plugin preferences after restart. But it completely ignores any new app entries I put in the file. It still only lists Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Windows Photo Viewer as allowed apps. Something funny is going on for sure. I edited with Notepad++. Something funny is going on for sure.
Regards,
Mark
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HI,
I have the same problem and tried what Christopher advised, but it looks that C1 somehow is not considering entries from this config file. For example I deleted entries for MS Word and Firefox, but when I open C1 and open edit with I still have this 2 entries.
Btw, I do not have option Pick an app in Edit with, but Browse (running v 13.1 trial). I can open and edit with any application but if I have to do it every time will give up of using C1. Not sure could it be related that I am running trial version?
best
Aleks
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Hello Aleks, I don't think it is because of the trial version, I have the full version of C1 (13.1/20.1) and I get exactly the same behaviour. I am going to stick a support request in as it seems to me that there is a problem of some kind here.
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Hello,
I thought I would let you know that with some help from Capture One technical staff I have a solution to this issue. So, following the below set of steps I have managed to add a set of apps to the dropdown list:
So in this example I am trying to add the Nik Software (by DxO) apps to the Edit/Open With Dropdown list, and more specifically ColorEfex. It is the same process for any other app.
1) First find a Tiff file (or other) in Windows Explorer that you can edit with the app you are trying to add (Nik allows edit of Tiff files).
2) Right click the file and select 'Open With'
3) Select 'Choose Another App'
4) Scroll to the bottom of the list, select 'More Apps'
5) Scroll to the bottom of the list, select 'Look for another app on this PC'
6) A browse window will open, navigate to the app you want to edit the file with, in this example ColorEfex, then select 'Open'.
7) Close ColorEfex, you can just click 'Cancel', you don't have to save the file, the act of getting Windows to open the file with the app is the important thing here.
8) Now the next time you open up Capture One the app you edited the Tiff (or other) file with should appear in the list.
I had to run this process for each of the tools I wanted to be added to the list. It is quite a manual process but it does the job (or it did in my case).
I hope that makes sense, if not drop me a note and I can maybe create some screen grabs.
The likely cause of this in my opinion is that the Nik apps (plugins) have always been launched from other apps (Lightroom) and they were therefore never associated as an image editing application, therefore Capture One did not know they exist.
I still think it would be better if Capture One allowed manual configuration of the 'allowed editors' through preferences. It is nice that Capture One tries to be smart and do it for you, it's a good sentiment but in this case it is a bit too smart for its own good.
Regards,
Mark
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@Mark
You should read the following thread about this issue :
https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360009392158-Issue-C1-20-0-2-and-Open-With-plugin?page=2#comments
Start at page 2 since the first page is dedicated to a bug in the OpenWIth plugin that seems to be fixed now.This topic has been discussed many times since years but unfortunately (and this is very questionable) these discussions belonged to the old forum and everything has been wiped out. Not even archived. All the knowledge accumulated in this forum has been lost (at least for us).
To make it short, requests similar to yours have already been sent to Phase One multiple times since version 9 (at least). It seems that they have definitively decided to do nothing about this. The plugin is just a joke.
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Here is what I sent to the support in december 2015
In Lightroom, you can define the external editors independently so they always appear in the Edit in... menu. You don't have to actually Edit in... an image to define an external editor and once defined, the external editor will be available for all images.
Unless I missed something, if I Edit in... a given image in an external editor that is not initially recognized by C1, this editor will not be available in the Edit in.. or Open with... menu for other images, which is rather surprising to say the least. The newly defined editor should be recorded by C1 and made available for all other images instead of C1 relying on information provided by the OS.
Actually, the newly defined external editor is not even available in the Edit in... or Open with... menus for the image for which I defined it. The only thing that it remembers are the export settings for external editing.
This neither practical nor logical and should be fixed, IMHO. When a user specifies an external editor once, he's very likely to do that again with the same external editor for other images.
Best regards.
And 2 years later2 years ago, I sent you the request below [above]. I'm currently evaluating C1 v11 before upgrading my version 10 and the problem is still there, despite the various discussions about this issue in the forum and despite the requests sent to the support. I don't understand. It's a feature that is easy to program. I could code this in a few hours. It's really awkward to not be able to create an external editor preset like in Lightroom. In C1, each time I have to send a file to an external editor (not always the same), I have to check the export parameters and adjust them if they don't match what I want to do. Also, if the target application is not in the list, I have to browse for the executable.
C1 Pro is not especially a cheap program. At this price level, I'm expecting something more professional for the management of the external editors.
So, don't hold your breath...
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@Samoreen,
I can understand why people are having problems with this (me included until recently). Capture One is relying on Windows associations to make its determination of the apps that are available as 'allowed editors'. Unfortunately this is a recipe for disaster as everyone's Windows file associations are going to be different and based on a varied set of criteria. Other applications I have used in the past have given the user the ability to specifically define the editing apps they want to push files out to, and this seems the most reasonable thing to do as it removes any variability of peoples systems from the equation. Regardless I have fixed the issue now and am content that I can now use my plugins.
This in my mind would make a good Capture One tutorial as it would appear that others have fallen foul of this in the past and are likely to do again in the future.
Have a happy Monday.
Regards,
Mark
PS, I agree with everything you say in your previous posts on the topic.
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Mark said :
> Currently Capture One seems to have picked a random and incomplete set of editors as 'Allowed Apps' under the plugin preferences, I am not sure how it is making the determination but certainly in my case it has made a faulty determination.If you are curious about how the list of allowed applications is built (I posted this a while ago) :
OK. I'm too curious so I spent some time trying to understand how C1 (or its plugin) determines which programs should appear in the Open with/Edit with list. Interesting results...
1. I was wondering why it takes so long when clicking on Edit with or Open with to get the program list displayed. This probably indicates a recurring code that is executed each time we open this menu.
2. So I started a debugging session and traced what was happening. Here is what I found out :
For each filename extension found in any of the folders imported in the C1 catalog, be it related to imaging or not (they can be .doc, .vrd, .mycustomex or whatever), C1 opens the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.eee\UserChoice registry key (eee being the extension). If it finds any program specified here, it will add it to the Open with/Edit with list. For example, I have a few HTM/HTML files stored in some of the image folders imported into C1. These are not images but they have to be there, this is my choice. For these files, HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.htm\UserChoice says that the handling application is Firefox (my default browser). So, Firefox is added to the list. And so on... For a similar reason, my hexadecimal editor appears in the list although it has nothing to do there.
Since I don't have access to the source code, I don't know when the list of extensions on which this (crazy) loop is based is created.[see below] Probably during the initial folder import. If I add files with irrelevant extensions "after the fact", the corresponding app doesn't appear in the list. Of course, this is a partial explanation of the problem since I don't want (and may not) do reverse engineering on this code.
But this is enough to say that this is just first year programming student work.
At least, C1 could look at the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\FileExts\.xxx\OpenWithList key. It would have a better chance to find there a relevant program. But the initial flaw is to consider that all files stored in an imported folder are possibly image files. By the way, it does the same with all sidecar files that could have been created by other applications. For example, C1 tries to find programs associated with .xmp or .dxo files. Which doesn't make sense.
Anyway, this demonstrates that the Windows associations approach in order to maintain the Open with/Edit with list is merely a dead-end.
I found out after the fact that this extension list is hard-coded into the program :
".jpg",".jpeg",".tif",".tiff",".dng",".png",".psd",".psb",".crw",".cr2",".cr3","arw","sr2","srf",".nef",".nrw",".orf",".raf",".raw",".rw2",".srw",".x3f"A very questionable programming practice.
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@Mark,
Thanks for tip. It works perfectly. I tried before opening for edit from image viewers like FastStone and XnView, but didn't work I didn't pay attention it must be opend from Windows application to leave a trace in config file.
@Samoreen
I agree with all your points. It's a pity that C1 doesn't pay attention on users' feedback. You spent significant time to identify what should be corrected and provided direction for improvement, but somehow they don't pay attention on it.
Cheers
Aleks
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Mark, I tried your method and opened a .nef file using Affinity Photo, went back to Capture One and chose to 'Edit With' and still no Affinity Photo present, or any other apps.
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SOLUTION - Nik 5.0 and C1 15.3.0
Julia Seutsova (Capture One)
Jul 18, 2022, 20:19 GMT+2
Hello Charlie,
From Windows Explorer find an image folder, select a file, right click on it. Select 'Open with' > 'Choose another app', then scroll to the bottom of the presented list and choose 'More apps'.
Scroll to the bottom of the presented list again and choose 'Look for another app on this PC' and then find and select the application that was NOT initially listed in Capture One ‘open with’ list of apps – eg. This PC > LOCAL DISK (C:) > Program Files > Nik Collection
When the image is again selected in Explorer, right click and choose 'Open with'. The Nik Collection application is now INCLUDED within the available applications listed. In Capture One the related icon and Application should be now listed under the Edit/Open With menu option and also in the Preferences > Plugins”.Kind regards,
Julia - Capture One Customer SupportWe encourage you to browse our Help Center for detailed product documentation, helpful pro tips, and much more.
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