NPS codename Obsidian

What is NPS Obsidian?

NPS 3.0, codename Obsidian, is the next major release of NPS. It is a complete rewrite, from scratch, and in a different language (VB.NET 2008 and some C#)

Why "Obsidian"?

Obsidian is a smooth, solid, and sharp volcanic rock. NPS 3.0 aims to provide a smooth user experience, rock-solid stability, and a sharp and usable interface. Plus, the name just sounds cool :)

When will it be released?

Prerelease builds of NPS codename Obsidian can be found on the download page.

NPS 3.0 should be finished at some point in 2010, though I cannot make any guarantees due to school and work taking priority.

New Features

So, what's so great about NPS Obsidian? Just another bloated release of the same old program? Nope. NPS Obsidian has been influenced quite a bit by suggestions from users. These features are planned for the final version of NPS 3.0, and you can bet on seeing them unless something goes seriously wrong.

Zoom

By far the most requested feature for NPS is the ability to zoom in while editing your picture. NPS Obsidian will include customizable zoom and mouse-wheel support similar to that of Photoshop.

Support for PNG and TIFF

NPS Obsidian will support saving in BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, and TIFF formats. Lack of PNG support in NPS 2.1 is a considerable disadvantage for many users.

Freeform Select

Another one of those features that everyone seems to be asking for.

Improved printing

NPS will include an advanced printing dialog that will allow you to preview your document and scale it to fit the page, or even print a poster out of multiple pages.

Customizable, themeable, up-to-date user interface

NPS Obsidian's user interface is sleek and matches the look of modern applications – no more Windows 95-era look. This is made possible, in part, by a new feature in the Obsidian codebase: the Color Resolution Engine. With the CRE, you will be able to design color schemes that blend in perfectly with the rest of Windows, regardless of color scheme settings. A color scheme designer will also be included, thus you are not forced to manually edit configuration files.

More color selectors

NPS Obsidian will include more color selectors, including YUV, Lab, Named Web Colors, and Photoshop-style RGB. At the same time, the NPS Color Picker will include a Simple Mode, for those who would prefer to avoid complexity. And for the truly geeky, a simple color evaluator prompt will be provided, which uses NPS's color resolution engine directly.

The color resolution engine, which can be accessed through the "EVAL" selector present in some builds of NPS Obsidian, allows you to resolve a color by name (from named colors, system colors, RGB, ARGB, HSV, hexadecimal HTML format, and more), as well as the use of directives such as blend(), match_hue(), and invert(). This is used both in color palettes and user interface color schemes, and allows far greater integration with the current user's system color settings.

Improved scrolling with wheel support

You can use your scroll wheel to scroll vertically and Ctrl+scroll to scroll horizontally, like in Photoshop. Of course, this will be customizable – if you prefer Ctrl+scroll to zoom in and out, you will be able to choose this option.

Scanning support

NPS will be able to acquire images from a scanner.

Improved extensibility

With NPS Obsidian, you will not only be able to write more flexible filters, but you will also be able to write file import/export handlers and general add-ins that can create their own menu structures. Old filters from NPS 2.x will still be supported.

64-bit support

NPS will take advantage of the 64-bit architecture if you have a 64-bit operating system.

Tentative features

These features will be included if time and willingness allows. The probability of each item being listed is based on 1/10 being extremely unlikely and 10/10 being near certain.

File browser (3/10)

The File Browser will allow you to view all images on your computer and organize them. This may prove to be unnecessary, due to much of this functionality already being provided by Windows.

Batch image conversion tool (8/10)

This tool will allow you to easily rename, resize, and convert a folder full of images.

Photo gallery designer (7/10)

This tool will allow you to design a photo gallery that you can place on your website. The tool will generate thumbnails and rename files appropriately. The photo gallery will consist of standards-compliant HTML (or XHTML), and will provide many hooks that can be used for styling.

Multilayer and animation support (6/10)

You will be able to work with multiple layers when designing images, as well as creating animated GIFs and videos. This is a much desired feature; however, it may take considerable effort to implement.

Multilingual support (1/10)

NPS will include the ability to change the language of the user interface. Note that the availability of language packs for NPS will be limited by the willingness of users who can provide them.

Notes

Dropped features

A few people have expressed concern about the removal of certain features, namely skinning support and NPI file format support.

• NPI format support
  NPS 3.0 will tentatively include NPI file handling capabilities. If not, a conversion tool will be available for converting to and from the NPI format.
• Skinning support
  NPS 3.0 will not allow you to skin the window borders. However, the user interface will be customizable to fit any color scheme of your choosing, as mentioned above.

Operating system support

NPS 3.0 will run on Windows XP, Server 2003, Vista, Server 2008, and 7. Windows 95, 98, NT 4, ME, and 2000 are no longer supported, and NPS will not run on these configurations due to the fact that the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 requires Windows XP or above.

Will NPS 3.0 still be free?

Of course! NPS will always be free software.

Suggest Features and Improvements

Since NPS 3.0 is still in fairly early development, now is the best time to suggest new features, or ways in which the existing features in NPS 2.1 can be improved. Please post feature suggestions in the comments below.

Additionally, if you are even barely considering helping me out with some of the code, please don't hesitate to contact me.