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gmetrixcc
Inspiring
July 2, 2018
Question

ExtendScript is there an API?

  • July 2, 2018
  • 2 replies
  • 1444 views

I have been trying to write some Extend Scripts for Photoshop. I have found the Toolkit to have some kind of limited intellisense but not to the standard that we would like to see. My team and I would like to make our own tool and use reflection to implement our own intellisense inside our own development environment.

Where is the API that allows the current ExtendScript toolkit to link up and communicate with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and In-Design etc...? We feel very confident that if we had that we could make this happen in a short amount of time. Please help point us in the right direction.

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2 replies

Inspiring
July 3, 2018

JJMack mentioned PSJS so I'll touch on some other options.

Communications between apps is handled via the BridgeTalk API.

If you want to do socket level comms, there is a Socket class.

There is also an SDK that will let you write code in C and load that DLL in at runtime. I tried it years ago and found it very frustrating. to use. I wanted to define and implement new classes in C for performance and other reason.

There is also the Plugin SDK which probably won't be of help as plugins are not cross-app portable.

For cross app communications, BridgeTalk is the best tool. I haven't programmed the ESTK editor and don't know if it's possible.

I assume that is where you wanted to do your intellisense work.

JJMack
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 3, 2018

Adobe Photoshop Document Object Model does not cover all of Photoshop Features. Features not covered need to scripted via Action Manager Code.   Read up on Adobe Plug-in Scriptlistener once installed it will log all you di in Photoshop in action manager code. The log files will be on your desktop.

JJMack