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Silly-V
Legend
July 25, 2018
Question

Anyone have experience with difficult-to-decompile .exe droplets?

  • July 25, 2018
  • 5 replies
  • 5835 views

Hi!

I would like to crack open the .exe droplets provided to us by Kornit Digital company, in order to make our own ones which suit our color management better.

They provide a series of .exe droplets which are activated from within their Quick-P designer software.

Once the droplet actions run their course, they are automatically removed.

When these actions run, we can see the entirety of the action in the Actions panel of our Ps CS 5.5 (on Windows), but of course we can't twirl open any triangles or see the settings in the actions as they run. It is possible to see the file's histogram, but we really just want the .atn file so we can do our own tests and see how our file stacks up against theirs.

First I tried to use xbytor's decompiler script to get the .atn file from the droplet, but unfortunately it always just ends up hanging. However, it works just fine on a droplet that I create myself from Ps.

So, I am asking if anyone has any experience with difficult-to-decompile droplets, or if there is a way to crash Photoshop in such a way that the batch droplet action stays in the Actions panel and I can actually save the .atn file from there.

Thank you, whomever find this relevant.

This topic has been closed for replies.

5 replies

Legend
July 28, 2018

The license does not grant any exemptions for personal or non-commercial use so far as I can see. In accepting the license you accept the rules it gives, which might be in excess of normal copyright law (which also has fewer exemptions than people tend to assume).

Legend
July 28, 2018

Did you read the license for your product? In accepting the license you are forbidden from doing what you seek, as is common with much software. "Purchaser is not permitted to directly or indirectly, modify, enhance, adapt, translate, make improvements, create derivative works of, disassemble, decompile, reverse engineer, reduce to any human or machine perceivable form, or circumvent any technological measures that control access to or permit derivation of the source code of the Software or any part thereof; copy, sell, assign, lease, rent, transfer, assign, distribute or sublicense the Software or Documentation or to use the Software or Documentation in a time-sharing arrangement or in any other unauthorized manner nor permit any other party to do any of the foregoing, or make use of the Software as a stand -alone, including in any way which is not an integral built in part of the Products. Further, no license is granted to Purchaser in the human readable code of the Software (source code). This Agreement does not grant Purchaser any rights to patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, KORNIT’s Intellectual Property Rights or any other rights with respect to the Software or Documentation other than those specifically stated herein." (https://www.kornit.com/product-use-terms-conditions/ )

Kukurykus
Legend
July 28, 2018

I thought the same after his post, but if he done that for personal use there wouldn't be problem? It's for his company though but I think it is not a problem untill he does not extract more than some small part to create own on its basis.

Legend
July 28, 2018

Yes! I did it!


Create a script.

var tmp_name = "XXXXXXXXXX"

var d = new ActionDescriptor();

var d1 = new ActionDescriptor();

d1.putString(stringIDToTypeID("name"), tmp_name);

d.putObject(stringIDToTypeID("new"), stringIDToTypeID("actionSet"), d1);

executeAction(stringIDToTypeID("make"), d, DialogModes.NO);

var d = new ActionDescriptor();

var r = new ActionReference();

r.putName( stringIDToTypeID("actionSet"), tmp_name);

d.putReference(stringIDToTypeID("null"), r);

executeAction(stringIDToTypeID("delete"), d, DialogModes.NO);

Launch photoshop.
Set the PlayBack Option to pause for 60 seconds.
Start the Droplet
Call the script.
The selection in the Actions palette is set to Droplet Set.
Quickly call up the save action menu.

Kukurykus
Legend
July 28, 2018

It doesn't work. I created droplet by 'Automate / Create Droplet' where I only chose where to save droplet and Action Set with one Action that sets levels). I launched Ps, set pause for 60 sec, dropped a .jpg image outside of Ps on created droplet, then from ESTK with targeted Ps I ran script. Selection wasn't set to Droplet action (actually action that was in action panel that Droplet used), but to first item of that action, so Levels. When I opened Action dropdown menu I couldn't save Action Set as it wasn't selcted so 'Save Actions...' item was grayed. After 60 seconds elapsed Levels were applied to image, then empty 'XXXXXXXXXX' set was created and deleted.

I'm not sure but maybe his droplet creates own Action Set with Actions and commands, so it is why it doesn't work for me? Can you tell me what should I do it worked?

Legend
July 28, 2018

This works in both CC2018 and CS6. The script must be run manually from the Scripts menu. There must be more than one command in the Action

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 25, 2018

Set your prefs to capture a detailed history log, then run the action/droplet.

Silly-V
Silly-VAuthor
Legend
July 26, 2018

Detailed history log? Hmm! I don't know tooo much about these things, but I'll try to see what you mean.

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 27, 2018

Hi again Vasily, it looks like this:

However I just tested and was disappointed, it only logs the play step of the action, not each step performed…

So what about the history panel? That should show the steps, even if they are not saved as metadata or logged to text. The performance prefs have a max. of 1000 history states that can be listed. You will only see the general step, not what settings were applied in that step.

Legend
July 25, 2018

Can I look at any such file?