Action opening all the files at once

Report · Jun 12, 2020

I have been using an ancient Photoshop7 to batch process 17000 PDF files per month. That was great until something changed in PDF recently that now crashes the old photoshop. So I installed Photoshop2020 and made the same action. It opens the PDF, flattens it, adjusts levels, turns to paletted image and saves as gif in another folder and then closes it. But when I run the action on 2020 it starts opening all the files at the same time and doesn't seem to do any of the other steps. Opening 17K files at once is not going to work. What has changed? How can I make my simple action behave like I expect, processing 1 file at a time?

Thanks

Report · Jun 12, 2020

It sounds like you may not have a close step in you action after the save. So the document batch opens for you action remain open in Photoshop after you actions finish processing a document. Or more than one document is opened for a PDF for it had several pages. PDF is more a Acrobat file than a Photoshop image file. Are .Gif file saved?

JJMack

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Please provide information including screenshots of the fully expanded Action in the Actions Panel and the Batch dialog.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

My problem with all the files opening at once was solved by Override Action "Open". But that leads me to the big problem. Override Action "Save As" isn't working with PDF sourced files. This used to work in ancient photoshops but not now in 2020. I have just spent a long time with tech support and it seems to me to be a bug. All my files save as the filemame I prototyped the action with, instead of overriding with the filename of the source file. I think I have to find old photoshop that is new enough to open these PDFs but not have this bug.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Oops, that isn't the right screen shot for the script dialog.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Does the operation perform better if you remove the useless parts from the Action?

Report · Jun 12, 2020

Which parts are useless? The problem (as verified by adobe tech support) is that the [Override Action "Save As" Commands] fails to work on images loaded from pdfs. This is a bug. It worked in old versions of photoshop. Unfortunately it is still borked in 2018 version, the oldest they can give me.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

The opening, saving and closing would appear to be useless if they need to be overridden anyway.

Unless the pdfs were created in Photoshop and saved with »Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities« you cannot actually open them with Photoshop, but you import (convert) them.

How and with which application are the pdfs created?

Have you looked into Image Processor Pro yet?

If that does not work out I suspect you can script the whole thing with JavaScript.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

It overrides the filename generation. Overriding requires the open and save steps to override, as photoshop tells you when you do this. They have confirmed this is a bug. There is no solution. I will have to look to other tools, but the ones I've tried don't antialias the pdfs or have other shortcomings. I don't know how the PDFs are created. They are distrubuted by FAA. I have done this task happily with PS7 for 15 years until something changed in the PDF now crashes that ancient version. I am downloading CS6 to see if that is old enough to not have this bug, but new enough to work with these PDFs. It is sad Adobe cannot keep Photoshop working properly for those of us who rely on it for income.

Report · Jun 12, 2020

I don’t think any the regulars on this Forum are likely to deny that there are bugs in Photoshop and there have been bad decisions on Adobe’s part but you complaining about Adobe’s performance in Photoshop’s upkeep and maintainance when you have until recently been using a perpetual license for Photoshop 7 (which was released in 2002) seems less than compelling.

»There is no solution.«

The process seems scriptable in Photoshop perfectly fine.

And have you looked into Image Processor Pro yet?

Report · Jun 13, 2020

I have tried doing the process using the Scripts - Image Processor. But it opens the pdfs at very low resolution... like 300 pixels wide. So ruins the quality. I can find no way to set resolution. It does maintain the filenames correctly. Sorry if I expect software to get better over time and not break basic functionality (broken at least 2 years). I have 17000 files I need processed yesterday. So I am looking for solutions, not just complaining. Other pdf converters I have tried have terrible or nonexistent antialiasing that ruins legibility of tiny text on these aviation charts, and makes them ugly. I will try the batch processing tools Stephen Marsh recommended.

Report · Jun 13, 2020

And for the third time: Have you looked into Image Processor Pro yet?

»Sorry if I expect software to get better over time and not break basic functionality (broken at least 2 years).«

As far as I can tell what you want to do can be achieved with Photoshop, whether you would rather complain about Photoshop not living up to your expectations or investigate the existting options is up to you.