Inspiring

Question

Any way to edit actions in a text/script editor?

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I need to duplicate a very long action about 5 times and make file-name saving changes to each step, but going through the resaving process 75 times is a pain in the ass. It's a simple action that shows, saves, and hides 75 different layers individually. But the naming of these saved files will be different depeing on the photoshop file I'm using (about 5 different variances). Batch Processing just takes too long to do what my action will do in 10 seconds, so it seems like I'm stuck with using actions. My question is:

Is there a way to edit actions through a text/script editor vs using Photoshop? I could copy/paste/replace text much quicker than going through the actual saving process 375 times.

Actions and scripting

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Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

A late reply for the OP:

Modifying Adobe Photoshop Action (*.atn) Files (I personally have not tested this unknown Java app, execute at your own risk)

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VinayMote

Participant

Try this utility which helped me to change folder names in 2 min....

below utility from blinkenbyte.org

Modifying Adobe Photoshop Action (*.atn) Files

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getdawson

Participant

i need to do the same thing!! did anyone figure out an easy way to do this?

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xbytor2

Inspiring

This will convert an action file to XML:

http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/apps/ActionFileToXML.jsx

You can edit this file with a normal text editor.

This will convert an XML file to an action file:

http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ps-scripts/xtools/apps/ActionFileFromXML.jsx

There are a few cases where this does not work. But they are not very common.

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Infinity_Spiral

Participating Frequently

This was an incredibly helpful toolset- thank you!

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dmpetri

Participating Frequently

Ctrl + Alt (Cmd + Opt on Mac) while click on Save Actions from the Actions panel flyout will give you a txt file. The problem is that I do not know about a way to re-convert this into an atn.

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bsnyder175Author

Inspiring

I tried the command+opt solution first, which spit out a text file containing every every action (rather than the set I had selected) and that was fine. I made the changes, but when I tried loading that text file back into Photoshop's Actions pallet, it was unrecognizable as an action. Just to confirm that it wasn't any faulty scripting, I saved out another copy of my actions and immediately tried to reload them back with that text file (I made no modifications) and again, the text file was unrecognizable. How do I load the text version back into the Actions Pallet? I've tried the Load command from the Pallet and also tried dragging the file directly into Photoshop. No dice.

Xbytor, I visited your 2 links, but don't understand how I implement my action file into that system. Is it something I download? When I visited the links, they were just browser pages filled with what looks like script.

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bsnyder175Author

Inspiring

I did some searching and came across this:

(Photoshop only) Press Ctrl+Alt (Windows) or Command+Option (Mac OS) when you choose the Save Actions command to save the actions in a text file. You can use this file to review or print the contents of an action. However, you can’t reload the text file back into Photoshop.

So, it seems this doesn't provide a way to edit actions. You would think they're be a way to edit actions in a text editor though...

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