P: Please add the ability for Command-J to dupe layers and layer groups

to who ever is complaining about scripts - this one and others from David work so well that it solves many issues for me. The other ones involve modal adjustment layers. scripting is really powerful, while i haven't put the time aside to learn to make them for myself, i've used ones made already and they make a tremendous difference in my workflow. not every feature request will get addressed by adobe (b/c many are not useful to many users) so scripting can fill in the pieces quite well.

As I said above, the point of this site is for folks to make feature requests for improvements directly to the Photoshop team - and this idea is a good one that's under consideration. A side benefit is that cool users like David Jensen and Shangara are posting helpful scripts to help improve users workflows in the meantime.

The other aspect is, we can't implement everyone's pet feature request. Some changes that are requested are so esoteric that scripting really is the best answer to some users custom workflows.

I think PSD people should listen and listen carefully to what is being said here and in many other topic discussions. And I think they do. After all, we are the people buying their product - their future is in our hands. We provide invaluable feedback through this forum. Simply put, without us - their product would not be in stores and without our feedback it would not be as good as it is today, as I believe most 'bugs' are caught right here. A simple functionality such as allowing a layer set to be duplicated by pressing command J should be one of PSD's basic features - no question, and I trust the next releases will have it included. While we all appreciate input from all those out there finding pleasure writing customs scripts, most of PSD users rely on it's basic functionality. PSD, despite it's monopoly, proven worth the money and our trust over many years. I continue to believe that Adobe is taking our feedback seriously, because the day they stop, it'll to be the day they loose the right to call Photoshop the most intuitive, user friendly and complete image editing program in the World.

Jeffrey?

I would rather not try scripting either...but if I do try, is there a way to STOP duplicating ONLY locked layers or groups - but not selections/unlocked layers/groups with the (command-)option-drag keyboard shortcut?? I can't envision how that could possibly work.

I don't want to give scripting a try. That's the point of the post (YMMV).

Is this a joke on your part?
Adobe provides ExtendScript Toolkit to edit and test Scripts, a Scripts Panel in Photoshop seems utterly unnecessary.

Scripting is a slightly more complicated technique than using Actions (ease of use being one of the advantages of Actions) – if you want to give Scripting a try Photoshop ships with the documentation, just check out the Folder »Scripting« beside the application.

This has got to be a cruel Adobe joke! I just assumed, like millions of other users, the plug-in is for script writers who want to debug their scripts.

Why isn't there an interface to turn the ScriptListner on and off and given a name that would attract non-scripting people to try it, or a Scripts panel on par with Actions?

Maybe everyone already knows about this but scripts can be automatically generated using the scriptlistner

1. Open folder where PS is installed.
2. Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5 (64 Bit)\Scripting\Utilities
3. Place the ScriptListener plugin into your root plugins directory.
4. Restart PS
5. Now almost every thing you do, will be written out to a file on your desktop called. ScriptingListenerJS
6. You can copy and paste the chucks of code into a seperate script to run the given function.

1. Open Extendscript
2. Paste the code into a new file.
3. save the file out as foo.JS

You now have a stand alone script.

Simple solution:
If you select the layers or groups you want to dupe,
you can option - drag right on the layers palette, up or down.
This will duplicate multiple layers very easily.
No script needed. Adobe is vaguely aware of this.

[Personally, I would rather this didn't work this way...
I would like a preference or documented keyboard shortcut so I could stop it!]

Great script, David! I've been looking for a temporary solution to this.