Participating Frequently

Question

Creating a note/annotation in Photoshop

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 20, 2017
5 replies
6305 views

I am working on a script that needs to be run on every file I work with. I have an action that does what I need it to, however I would like a way to document in the photoshop file that the action has been run. Since the action might need to be done multiple times per file, it would be ideal if the note would store some information so for future reference I can see what folders the action has been run on and how many times the action has been run.

The action works just fine, I know how to make the action call up the script I need. I can create all the variables I need to fill the note with the information I want. I just cant find the script for creating a note/annotation and filling the note with the desired text.

Is this even possible?

Actions and scripting

This topic has been closed for replies.

MFreemanRKSAuthor

Participating Frequently

sorry about radio silence, been on vacation from work. I am looking into all of your responses. Thank you so much for all of your help thus far, I'm sure something in here will do what I need!

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

What about storing the information you want in a custom metadata field that can either be read by another script, creating a custom metadata panel, or by looking at the raw file data?

Jarda Bereza

Inspiring

Parsing file like this easy to write but bad thing may happen.

You should first to read lenght of PSD header then length of subsection and so on and pick only needed data instead parsing all.

Adobe Photoshop File Formats Specification

Check xbytor script which reads actions files and can convert them into XML ect.

There are methods for reading binary files.

Jarda Bereza

Inspiring

Is there way, how to read annotations?

Pedro Cortez Marques

Legend

Until now, I couldn't find a way of read annotations. Only deleting and creating them.

Although, the annotation can be passed to a photoshop PDF and converted in the PDF localized notes! This means there is a way of retrieving the annotations content but on an another level that is not scripting.

R

r-bin

Legend

Hacker way )

When the file is saved (if the anotations changed you need to save the file, you do not need to close it), you can open the binary document file through the script and find the "8BIMAnno" tag. After it you will find the structure from which you can pull out the number of annotations, and by the tags "txtC" and "txtA" pull out the text and the author of the annotations.

Kukurykus

Legend

Do you need metadata information separate for every file (stored in these certain files), or you need one other text file where are gathered informations about all processed files? So one note per each file nested in their metadas, or one note for all files saved somewhere on disk?

MFreemanRKSAuthor

Participating Frequently

creating a note in the photoshop file using the note tool would be ideal. Current work around I have going is just making a new text layer with the information I need and hiding it at the bottom of the file.

Kukurykus

Legend

Recently I have read something that placing (or reading or both) notes is not scriptable, however Mike Hall found some way to do it, but I didn't focus deeply on his workaround and now I don't remember where I have seen it. Later i'll check it, what way that could be done (if I find it, but probably that had something to do with Extensible Metadata Platform).

Do you use Adobe Bridge? There you have Labels (5 colours) and Ratings (up to 5). They can be used to inform you about specific information for you. They would be more like symbols you undrstand your way. As workaround also file names can be changed like from someName.psd to someName_10.jpg what means this file was processed 10 times.

Just in case that wasn't possible you ask for, list all info you need to store in notes (times something happened, processed folders, ???), maybe they can be displayed other way, not by those notes but other depending what kind of info they are...

I never used annotation, but now I checked ScriptListener records them, so maybe there is a chance to do what you wish...

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