Using The Lightroom Sdk; Writing Plug-Ins For Lightroom - Adobe 65007312 - Photoshop Lightroom Programmer's Manual

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Using the Lightroom SDK

This chapter provides an introduction to the Lightroom SDK:
"Writing plug-ins for Lightroom" on page 11
details of the information file and file-system locations.
"The Lightroom SDK scripting environment" on page 12
Lightroom SDK scripting environment, and provides details of what tools are available to you within
the SDK scripting environment.

Writing plug-ins for Lightroom

The Lightroom SDK allows you to customize and extend certain Lightroom features by creating plug-ins.
For an overview of the plug-in architecture, see
In general, a plug-in consists of Lua-language files (scripts) that define the plug-in functionality, and an
information or manifest file that describes the contents of the plug-in. The information file must have a
specific name, and be placed in a folder with the Lua source files and resource files; the folders may need
to be in specific locations. The type of plug-in is determined by the folder and file placement, and by file
naming conventions.
In the current release these features are extensible:
Menu customization: Plug-ins can add new menu items in the Plug-in Extras menu; see
"Writing a Lightroom
Export and publish functionality: You can create an export plug-in, which customizes the behavior of
Lightroom's Export and Publishing Manager dialogs and export processing. You can add or remove
items from the dialog, alter or augment the rendering process, and send images to locations other
than files on the local computer. See
Metadata: You can define customized public or private metadata fields for Lightroom. Public or
private metadata can be associated with individual photos. You can also define new ways of arranging
the display of metadata within the Library module's Metadata panel. See
Metadata."
Web engine functionality: You can create an HTML web-engine plug-in, which defines a new type of
HTML photo gallery. The engines you define appear in the Gallery panel at the upper right of the Web
module. See
The Lightroom SDK provides an API with which to define a user interface for your plug-in; see
"Creating a User Interface for Your
Plug-in."
Chapter 6, "Writing a Web-engine
Plug-in."
describes the basics of how Lua plug-ins work, including
explains the concepts and terminology of the
Chapter 2, "Writing a Lightroom
Chapter 3, "Creating Export and Publish
Plug-in. "
Plug-in. "
Chapter 2,
Services."
Chapter 4, "Working with
Chapter 5,
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