Skip to main content
Participating Frequently
December 30, 2011
Answered

Call Photoshop Action from other APP?

  • December 30, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 3860 views

Hi Everyone,

Anybody has any experience to run any Photoshop action using a binary .EXE file?

For example, I want to let Photoshop execute a filter action from my own application?

I know that DROPLET can do this, what I did is that I use System("Droplet.exe somefile") to launch the Photoshop action. However, I got enough trouble doing this with the UAC of Windows7, there're intermittently "Droplet couldn't communicate with Photoshop" error showing up, and UAC always prompt you the warning message. I tried lots of ways "Run as Administrators" etc, but the error shows again even though the previous time it worked!

Finally, I think it's time to give up droplet and thinking of other way of doing this.

I just simply want a ".exe" or something that can let my application tell Photoshop to run a simple action (with no parameters). I'm not sure whether PostMessage/SendMessage can do this or not on Windows. If anybody has any idea, please let me know.

Thanks in advance!

By the way, I also learned that Photoshop API is not thread safe, so that an "inception thread" of a plugin in the Photoshop causes unpridictable crashes, and you cannot do that in a separate thread.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Chris Cox

Just call Photoshop with the name of the image file and javascript on the command line.

IIRC correctly, it loads last to first - so you may need to experiment a little.

Or you could make a droplet from Photoshop.

1 reply

Chris Cox
Chris CoxCorrect answer
Legend
December 30, 2011

Just call Photoshop with the name of the image file and javascript on the command line.

IIRC correctly, it loads last to first - so you may need to experiment a little.

Or you could make a droplet from Photoshop.

NEXUAuthor
Participating Frequently
December 31, 2011

Indeed, Running "Photoshop.exe javascript.js" solves my problem. It seems more reliable than using Droplet.

bagonterman
Inspiring
January 21, 2014

Can I get a hint of how you call photoshop from the command line? I would like to create a way of running an action on a folder. I know the javascript for the action. But I don't know anything about the command line. Please advise.

Thanks. Run on Windows.