How to locate current_document property using Appscript in Python for Photoshop 2022

Hey,

(Sorry about the necromancy)

Seems appscript can't pick up Photoshop's scripting definition anymore, and unfortunately appscript official development ended development many moons ago, so there's likely to be no fix for this.

One alternative is to use the PyObjC Python module to access Apple's ScriptingBridge for Objective-C. This is clunky, since you are effectively writing Objective-C code, but "translated" into Python, but it gets the job done and this is the solution I'm currently using.

Some sample code to get you started, here's how you could do what you wanted above:

from ScriptingBridge import SBApplication

class YourClass:
    def some_method(self):
        self.psApp = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier_("com.adobe.Photoshop")
        for layer_set in self.psApp.currentDocument().layerSets():
            for group in layer_set.layers().get():
                if group.name() == "image_1":
                    return group

Photoshop Specific Limitations:

All the AppleScript commands are wrapped, but some may not be functional due to limitations of the "rules" of ScriptingBridge. For example, the "open" command is broken, since all possible arguments must be specified, and the "open options" argument requires a reference to a class that cannot be instantiated in ScriptingBridge. Luckily you can still use the "do javascript" function to open files, or the "open -a {photoshop} {file}" shell command.

(Py)Objective-C "Quirks":

Translation between Objective-C and Python makes your code super verbose. For example:

AppleScript:
do javascript [script] [arguments] [open options] [show debugger]

Python:
doJavascript_withArguments_showDebugger_(script, arguments, int.from_bytes(b'Nevr'))

Some (lots) of functions will need magic enum numbers from the Photoshop sdef file (like the b'Nevr' above). You can reference those by opening Script Editor, opening the Photoshop scripting dictionary, and then File -> Save As, open the file you just saved with a text editor, and you'll be able to see the values you need for each function.

I won't babble on more, but for Photoshop scripting this is seems like the most usable option now that appscript is dead.

Here's an old Apple doc explaining most things.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/RubyPythonCocoa/Articles/UsingScriptingBridge.html

You obviously have a need to do this through Python, I can't help with that.

AppleScript can run JavaScript, so you maybe you could use JS:

var selectLayer1 = app.activeDocument.artLayers.getByName("Layer 1");
app.activeDocument.activeLayer = selectLayer1;

Or:

app.activeDocument.activeLayer = app.activeDocument.layers["Layer 1"];

As the AS wraps the JS in double quotes, any double quotes in the JS need to be escaped with a \ backslash:

tell application "Adobe Photoshop 2022"
	
	set js to "app.activeDocument.activeLayer = app.activeDocument.layers[\"Layer 1\"];"
	
	do javascript js
end tell

EDIT: Or you could change double quotes in the JS to use single open/close quotes so that there is no conflict with the double quotes used in the AS.