Saving a TGA from an Export plug-in

Question

I am new to Photoshop plug-in development and I'm still finding my way around the API.  I am writing an Export plugin, I would like to first save the current image as a TGA file, if possible I would like to let everything run just as if the user selected File->Save and selected Targa.  Then before the plug-in completes, I want to do additional processing on that TGA file to generate other data.  I have been able to save a bitmap using windows GDI+, but I'm hoping there is some API code that I can make use of directly.
Thanks!

Answer 1

Hi chansarinyamas,
Like I said in my original post, I'm new to Photoshop plugin development, so I don't have a lot of answers for you, at least, not authoritative answers.  Still, I installed the Photoshop SDK and looked through the samplecode projects.  In particular I modelled my plugin on the samplecode/export/outbound project.  It is a bit clunky and I have had a lot of trouble creating a new project, or even extracting that one from the sample folder, as it is not a self contained sample.  It relies on shared code and tools elsewhere in the sdk folder.  I recommend you pick a sample project close to what you want to accomplish, duplicate the folder and work on it from the inside out.  As you gain familiarity with the way Adobe has things set up, you can write more on your own.
As for C#, I don't think that's going to work.  The Photoshop plugins are DLLs, and everything is based on C or PASCAL calling conventions (can't remember which.)  Anything in C# is going to be managed code, so unless you want to spend time figuring out how to write a CLI (Common Language Interface) layer your C# DLL (can you even target a DLL from C#?) won't be able to interface with Photoshop.  I agree that it would be nice to have the C# UI editor available, but I don't think you're going to get that to work.  Once again, I'm not an expert in this, so a lot of this is based on assumption.
Good luck.  For my problem I finally gave up and used a third party library, Dev IL.  Unfortunately I could not link the project directly, so I had to manually load the dll library, extract the routines I needed, and call them.  I'm not at all happy about it, but it works.  At least until I have time to investigate PS Plugins more, or someone makes a helpful suggestion here.
-R