In The Mod: Web Site
In The Mod's web site enabled the user to step through a curated list of artwork from historic and contemporary artists, examine the visualization of the palettes and how they related to each other. Artists included: Jean-Michel Basquiat, Gary Baseman, Josef Albers, Paul Cezanne, Salvador Dali, Mark Rothko, Jeff Soto, Jared Tarbell, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O'Keeffe, Roy Lichtenstein and many more.

 

In The Mod, the site and tools, were dedicated to understanding the color palettes and hidden relationships of (in)famous paintings by using Color Analytics and Visualization techniques. There were eventually 5 variations of the application: The web site; The Prototype; In The Mod: Your Images; In The Mod: Flickr; and In The Mod: Webcam. All four included the ability to download the color palettes in formats compatible with Adobe's Creative Suite, Processing, openFrameworks and vvvv. The videos and descriptions below explore each variation.

One night when I was downloading color palettes from my In The Mod: Color Analytics (ITM) site, I decided there were too many steps involved when it came time to get the color palettes from ITM and into Illustrator. The objective was to streamline the process, ideally making it a single click process.

 

After working with ExtendScript (Adobe's version of JavaScript for the Creative Suite) in Illustrator for some time, I dug deeper into the documentation and found a very, very basic example of creating a window and loading a SWF into it. In separate, small and incomplete chunks the documentation hinted at the ability to establish two-way communication between the code in the Flash SWF file and ExtendScript methods. After a considerable amount of hacking, enhancing the features in baby steps, from loading a SWF to calling a methods back and forth until I eventually was able to have my SWFs communicate fluidly with Illustrator.

 

This was a dramatic leap forward! Think of the possibilities of combining the strengths of Flash and the 3rd party ActionScript Libraries to the features and functionalities of the Creative Suite.

 

The first version of my SWF plug-in prototype loaded essentially the same SWF I was using for the ITM website, with a tighter and more compact UI. Just like the website version, this SWF communicated with my PHP and MySQL database flawlessly. Now I could search the ITM database from my plug-in within Illustrator, select the color palette I loved and then save that palette to the Swatches Panel with a single click. It was beautiful!

To take it a step further, I created a separate channel for Flickr – using Kelvin Luck's incredible ActionScript Flickr wrapper API. The Flick channel enabled the user to search Flickr from within the SWF plug-in, select the image, view the color palette and then save it to the Swatches Panel as well.

 

The potential was there. Excitement was in the air in the winter. Then Apple released Leopard which changed the rules of how applications drew windows which meant that I could no longer refresh the display of the SWF plug-in. Type in a new word and trails appeared. Display new search results and the screen was tripping out. It was tragic.

The Next Generation: PatchPanel + SwitchBoard
A short time after this obstacle popped up, John Nack reached out to me and asked if I would like to kick the tires on a new set of skunkworks projects Adobe was working on. The projects turned out to be PatchPanel and SwitchBoard which were the first officially sanctioned Flash plug-in and AIR application CS SDK tools for developers. 

 

Both were Flex SWC libraries that allowed Flex developers to create either SWF plug-ins or AIR applications that communicated with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. SwitchBoard was the library you would use when you wanted to create stand-alone applications using Adobe’s Flash or Flex Builder (which is now called Flash Builder). PatchPanel was your choice if you wanted to create SWF plug-ins that ran in either CS3 or CS4 of the previously mentioned CS applications.

I ended up creating a range of scripts, plug-ins and Air applications that drove Photoshop and Illustrator separately and together as an über-application. This was followed up with multiple tutorials online including a set for Adobe's developer site for Photoshop, at MAX and at several other workshops and conferences.
 

In The Mod: Your Images
In The Mod: Your Images was a stand-alone application – which used SwitchBoard – and a plug-in for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop – using PatchPanel – that enabled the user to load images from their computer and have the colors from the image(s) analyzed and visualized. In addition to saving the palettes in the formats previously mentioned, the plug-in could save the color palette directly to the Swatches panel in both Illustrator and Photoshop.

In The Mod: Flickr Edition
This stand-alone application and plug-in for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop enabled the user to search Flickr for images and have the colors from the image(s) analyzed and visualized. In addition to saving the palettes in the formats previously mentioned, the plug-in could save the color palette directly to the Swatches panel in both Illustrator and Photoshop.

 

This stand-alone application and plug-in for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop enabled the user to use the live feed from their webcam with the ability to capture the current frame and have those colors analyzed and visualized. In addition to saving the palettes in the formats previously mentioned, the plug-in could save the color palette directly to the Swatches panel in both Illustrator and Photoshop.