Script-Focused Image Editor: Progrimage

Abstract

Image editors are powerful tools but can be more difficult to work with than code for some specific tasks. They are great for art, but not always as good for precise image manipulation. This is where code-based editors are more effective. There are some image editors that support scripting, however, some image editors are complicated to use, with no available documentation. Other image editors have scripting hidden within submenus making it difficult to find. Furthermore, some image editors implement scripting in a way where they only a basic “run” button and lack the use of tools and interactive filters. To achieve the goal of creating a scripting tool for image editing that will be user-friendly and accessible, this exploratory study examines: “How well can scripting be implemented in an image editing application when scripting is the main focus?” The objective of this study is to create an easy-to-use image editor that allows users to create scriptable tools and image filters without having to search for the ability to do so. The proposed application, Progrimage, uses a scripting language called Lua which was designed to be beginner-friendly. Progrimage is designed to have a dedicated button to create a tool and to create a filter that can be used for drawing and manipulating objects, processing image pixels, creating layers, and more. With this image editor application, scripting has high priority. Applying a user centered design approach, Progrimage will allow users to create their own tools and filters and is intended to increase user satisfaction, and intensify learnability and user adoption.