Advanced PSD Add-on Concepts

Advanced PSD Add-on for Graphics Mill is an additional module for Graphics Mill for .NET which allows you to work with .psd files. The most important feature of this add-on is the ability to read layers from .psd files. Such functionality enables you for example to create personalized graphics, e.g. to build online business card editor.

PSD file is an image which consists of number of layers. We can distinguish three types of layers:

1. Raster layer (this layer is represented by any picture);
2. Text layer (this layer is represented by any text string);
3. Other layers (another layers used by Adobe® Photoshop®, e.g. adjustment layers, etc).

Advanced PSD Add-on can read raster and text layers from a PSD file. You can get the following settings of raster layers:

• Bitmap (or thumbnail) of the layer;
• Name of the layer;
• Dimensions (width and height);
• Pixel format;
• Top left corner position;
• Visibility (whether the layer is visible or not).

Text layer in its turn has the same properties as raster layer (in particular it always includes rasterized text as a layer bitmap). In addition you can get the parameters listed below:

• Text string;
• Text font;
• Text color;
• Text region size;
• Paragraph settings:
  • Left/right margin indent;
  • First line indent;
  • Space before/after paragraph.