How to get Ruler Tool angle measurement

[marco mda]

Good afternoon all,

I'm struggling to find a way on how to use the angle displayed when tracing a line with the ruler tool.

This is in order to amend a script that now uses as a condition the width of the active layer: if bigger than n px do this, else do that. It just works fine.

I need to do the same but using the angle traced by a user (before running the script).

BUT I cannot find a way to use that angle measure.

Any help please?

Thanks a lot,

MD

[c.pfaffenbichler · Accepted solution]

Does this help?

// 2015, use it at your own risk;
#target photoshop
var ref = new ActionReference();
ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID("Dcmn"), charIDToTypeID("Ordn"), charIDToTypeID("Trgt") ); 
var docDesc = executeActionGet(ref);
var point = docDesc.getList(stringIDToTypeID("points"));
var p1 = [point.getObjectValue(1).getUnitDoubleValue(stringIDToTypeID("x")), point.getObjectValue(1).getUnitDoubleValue(stringIDToTypeID("y"))];
var p2 = [point.getObjectValue(2).getUnitDoubleValue(stringIDToTypeID("x")), point.getObjectValue(2).getUnitDoubleValue(stringIDToTypeID("y"))];
var angle = 360- getAngle (p1, p2);
alert (angle);
////// get an angle, 3:00 being 0˚, 6:00 90˚, etc. //////
function getAngle (pointOne, pointTwo) {
// calculate the triangle sides;
  var width = pointTwo[0] - pointOne[0];
  var height = pointTwo[1] - pointOne[1];
  var sideC = Math.sqrt(Math.pow(width, 2) + Math.pow(height, 2));
// calculate the angles;
  if (width+width > width) {theAngle = Math.asin(height / sideC) * 360 / 2 / Math.PI}
  else {theAngle = 180 - (Math.asin(height / sideC) * 360 / 2 / Math.PI)};
  if (theAngle < 0) {theAngle = (360 + theAngle)};
  return theAngle
  };

[Chuck Uebele]

Nice, Christoph! I was looking at something like this for a project, but I still have issues with AM code.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Oh, I have issues with that as well …

But fortunately with past advice from and some code by the usual suspects I can work out some stuff. 

[Chuck Uebele]

I should spend some more time with the AM code. I actually asked Jeff about this exact same thing, and he replied that AM was "Dark magic."

[marco mda]

Thanks a lot Cristoph!

I'm pretty new with JS (couple of months) and it still look strange to me that something as simple as a readout from a tool needs all that code. I mean since Photoshop already made all the calculations why should I do them again? Really don't get this.

If I understand correctly this is sort of hand-written-scripting-listener kind of code, isn't it?

Anyway I will test it deeply but the first impression is: it works! 🙂

Thanks again,

MD

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Who knows, maybe the angle is available somewhere – but Script-performance-wise the calculation based on two points should be close to negligible.

[DBarranca]

Hi Christoph,

do you happen to know why the point ActionList contains 3 points? It seems like point 0 and point 1 are the same, while point 2 is the second one.

Thank you!

Davide

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Sorry, I don’t know that either.

[Patrick_Deen]

Hi Davide,

I stumbled here searching for a way extract the L1 and L2 values without the need to calculate.

I can answer your question though. Point 0 is used when you draw an angle by holding Alt using the Ruler Tool.

Mystery solved 🙂

P.