Publishing your Extension

Once you've developed and tested your extension, it's time to publish it!

Packaging

There is currently no standardized packaging format for NPS Image Editor extensions so you're free to distribute the files in a .zip or include them as part of an installer such as Inno. It is recommended that you distribute each extension in its own correctly-named folder (e.g. Filter.SimpleSample).

Be sure to include the following files in your package:
extension.ini
Your UI definition file (if any)
Your main DLL file
.NET dependencies such as the .deps.json file
Thumbnail image
Any other dependencies specific to your extension

Do not publish NPSShared.dll with your extension. This file is part of the host and is updated independently of individual extensions. If you include it, it will most likely just take up space, but in the worst case it can cause conflicts with the host's version of the assembly and cause unpredictable behavior.

Installing

Installing an extension simply involves placing the folder in the \Extensions subfolder where NPS Image Editor is installed. This typically requires administrative privileges if NPS Image Editor is installed in Program Files. This can be done manually by instructing your users to extract and copy files, or automatically via an installer like Inno.

For automatic installation, you will need to obtain the NPS Image Editor installation path from the registry. You can do this with the below key:

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\NPSImageEditor_is1

Read the value of InstallLocation to obtain the installation path.