Stepping backward into a group in a Photoshop action

Question

I'm writing a Photoshop action that is supposed to select one of the layers inside a group.  At the point where this happens, the group itself is selected and its contents are collapsed.  Using the shortcut alt-[ ("select backward layer") steps OVER the group so that the layer below the group is now selected.  But I want it to step INTO the group.  Alt-[ steps into the group if the contents are expanded, but I have no way of controlling whether the group is expanded or collapsed.  Clicking on the arrow next to the group to expand is not recorded. Is there a way to do this?

JJMack · Accepted Answer

Action have a hard time dealing with documents with duplicate Layer names and duplicate layer group manes. Even if you know the document layers structure it can be difficult selecting Layer relatively recording shortcuts Alt+, Alt+. Alt+[ and Alt+] these shortcuts only select layers that have their visibility on in the layer stack. Not only does the action require a document with a particular layer stack structure only the visible layers can selected via the shortcuts. If the document gets alters they may have layers added, deleted or visibility changes. The action will likely fail to work correctly.

Actions and Script that process existing files normally depend on document having something the actions or script was created to process. Actions can not use logic without using some scripting to do a process that requires the use of Logic. Like menu File>Automate>Fit Image... Adobe Plug-in script will record the width and height number of pixels the image needs to fit within into the Actions step. When the Action step is played the action player will pass the width and height to the script. The script will retrieve the Document current width and height then calculate a constrained resize to fit within the width and height pass by the action player.

If you want to be able record action to do some complex processing you need to learn a little scripting.

Crafting Actions Package UPDATED Aug 10, 2014 Added Conditional Action steps to Action Palette Tips.
Contains

Action Actions Palette Tips.txt
Action Creation Guidelines.txt
Action Dealing with Image Size.txt
Action Enhanced via Scripted Photoshop Functions.txt
CraftedActions.atn Sample Action set includes an example Watermarking action
Sample Actions.txt Photoshop CraftedActions set saved as a text file.
More then a dozen Scripts for use in actions

Example
Download

Stephen Marsh · Answer

If you take some time to search the web, this is a common request without an easy to find scripting solution, as there is no basic method or action manager code for this task. I looked through my script repository and this came up (not sure where it originally came from):

// Expand all layer sets
function openAllLayerSets( parent ){  
    for(var setIndex=0;setIndex<parent.layerSets.length;setIndex++){  
        app.activeDocument.activeLayer = parent.layerSets[setIndex].layers[0];  
        openAllLayerSets( parent.layerSets[setIndex]);  
    }  
};  
openAllLayerSets( app.activeDocument );

It does not appear to work if there are empty sets.

As I only hack at JavaScript, I have not worked out how to change the code for only the active set.

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