Edit layer in external application / run Photoshop plugin on layer

Hi! I’m new to the forum, and quite new to Krita. I’m an Adobe CS 6 refugee and since this year I have decided to move to Open Source software for my photography. However, I have some plugins in Photoshop that save me quite some time, that I would like to use. Fortunate for me, they can be used as stand-alone programs, but I quickly got tired of exporting a layer from Krita, starting the plug-in, edit, saving the file, and importing the modified layer into Krita again. So, I wrote a Krita plug-in that does that for me, and I’m here to share it. To be honest, I might have overlooked existing methods to do this, since I’m new, but then it was a good practice run with the Krita API.

The plugin can be found here: GitHub - rjmoerland/krita-edit-layer: A Krita plug-in that runs an external application on a single paint layer

After installing the plugin,you can find the script in the Tools/Scripts/Edit Layer Externally menu. On first use, the plug-in should ask you if you want to configure it. In case it doesn’t, or if you would like to reconfigure the external editor, use the Tools/Scripts/Configure Edit Layer Externally menu item. See below:

First run the menu action Tools/Scripts/Configure Edit Layer Externally. Browse to an executable file with the file dialog that opens. If the executable needs any command line parameters or switches, you can add them in the dialog that opens after selecting a file. You can leave the box empty if no switches are required. Close the command line switch dialog with OK and the plugin is configured. You can reconfigure at any time by choosing Tools/Scripts/Configure Edit Layer Externally again.

Note: it is probably wise to not choose Krita itself as external editor, as that resulted in Krita hanging (on my Windows machine). Also, doesn’t make a lot of sense to choose Krita as editor, I guess.

• Select a paint/clone/file/group layer
• Go to Tools/Scripts/Edit Layer Externally
• Export the layer according to what your external editor needs
• The external editor is opened. Modify what you need
• Save over the temporary file
• Close the external editor

Krita will load the external layer, and incorporate it in the document as a new layer above the source.

• The plugin requires the file format to remain unchanged between saving and loading of the layer. For example, when working in a 16-bit integer environment, the layer is exported as a PNG. When saving, it should remain a PNG file.
• The dimensions of the layer (width x height) can change, but the layer is not scaled upon import. The anchor point of the layer is the top left corner of the bounding box of the content.

I have only tested this on Windows 10 with Krita 5.2.5, and 8/16 bit RGB images mostly, though I had some success with the 32-bit floating point RGB format as well.

Feedback on performance on other platforms, but also on Windows is welcome!

Edit: I would like to thank the people in this thread, since it was very helpful to get started.