[AppleScript] Target Photoshop CC 2015.5?

[DBarranca]

I'm doing a bit of AppleScript automation and I'm completely stuck at square one.

This works flawlessly:

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC"

  do javascript file ("/Users/davidebarranca/Desktop/pippo.jsx")

end tell

(if you wonder, pippo.jsx just alerts "PIPPO")

This breaks miserably (merely added 2015.5):

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5"

  do javascript file ("/Users/davidebarranca/Desktop/pippo.jsx")

end tell

With the following error: Syntax Error – Expected end of line but found identifier.

And it selects the "javascript" word.

I've been banging against this wall for one hour – what the heck is happening?!

I've tried to run this script in the Terminal:

sleep 5; osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"' -e 'set frontApp to name of first application process whose frontmost is true' -e 'end tell'

You run it, then you have 5 seconds to switch to Photoshop, and then Terminal will log the Application name, which is – guess what – "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5".

So why on earth those 3 lines of applescript are wrong?! They're driving me nuts 🙂

Thank you,

Davide Barranca

[pixxxelschubser]

Hi Davide,

in [JS] you can call the version Photoshop CC2015.5 with

#target photoshop-100.064

or more simple

#target photoshop-100

For CC2015 you need

#target photoshop-90.064

or more simple

#target photoshop-90

Perhaps you can do the same in Applescript? I don't know.

Have fun

[maxwyss]

I am doing quite a few (Photoshop) JavaScript calls out of Applescript, and I explicitely state that it is a POSIX file, and I also set the file spec in parentheses. Your example would then look like this:

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5"

  do javascript (file (POSIX file ("/Users/davidebarranca/Desktop/pippo.jsx")))

end tell

and this is stable.

If Photoshop CC 2015 is not installed when CC 2015.5 is present, I can even tell the application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015" to do stuff, and it will do that correctly.

[DBarranca]

Thanks for your replies, my comments below:

pixxxel schubser​: the AppleScript way is exactly 'tell application "AppName"'. In fact for "Adobe Photoshop CC" the little script works flawlessly.

maxwyss​: I've tried adding POSIX, but no luck. By the way, using "Adobe Photoshop CC" without POSIX works fine anyway, so it should "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5"

Let's reformulate with a simpler code:

# Working

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC"

  do javascript "alert('boo')"

end tell

and:

# Broken

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015.5"

  do javascript "alert('boo')"

end tell

What the heck is going on there?!

Thanks,

Davide

[DBarranca]

I've been able to track the root cause of the issue – not been able to solve it, though.

I can't run AppleScript invoking Photoshop versions that I also happen to have in my Parallels virtualized Windows 10.

So to speak, Parallels "steals" them from OSX.

In fact, if I:

set doesExist to false

try

  do shell script "osascript -e 'exists application \"Adobe Photoshop CC\"'"

  set doesExist to true

end try

return doesExist

It returns TRUE; while if:

set doesExist to false

try

  do shell script "osascript -e 'exists application \"Adobe Photoshop CC 2015\"'"

  set doesExist to true

end try

return doesExist

It returns FALSE. Countercheck:

set appID to id of application "Adobe Photoshop CC"

is "com.adobe.photoshop", while:

set appID to id of application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2015"

is "com.parallels.winapp.ba6ce4f563fc495390502afab876d865.e76675ef6e5847ae8f396c55f9ff2f09"

So I'm currently unable to use CC 2015 and CC 2015.5 via AppleScript because they're sort of missing, because "stolen" by Parallels.

I've contacted their tech support – I hope they'll be able to tell me how to set things back to normality – has anyone of you ever had to do such a thing?

Thank you in advance,

Davide

[DBarranca · Accepted solution]

Problem solved.

Recap: I'm using Windows 10 virtualized with Parallels Desktop on my Mac, and Windows has "stolen" some Photoshop versions (the one I've installed also on the PC side) from OSX – that's the reason why AppleScript fails: it can't find Photoshop.

Solution: I had to disable application sharing:

Probably I could leave "Share Mac applications with Windows" on, but I don't need it anyway.

I hope this is going to save some hours-thrown-down-the-toilet to somebody else in the future.

Davide

[mauricior6328708]

I do not use mac ... But I think here hundreds of users use and sure enough, it will be useful to many. Thank you for sharing Davide.