Photoshop "Server"

[MOMIR_ZECEVIC]

Hi Folks,

I have a client wanting to use Photoshop in so to call it server mode.

Basically it would be installed on a server and would use custom scripts for predefined actions on PSD files that are found in so to say input directory.

Mostly those are scaling and exporting operations for multiple targets.

I have to say that workload is quite high meaning that there could be 50 -100 files in the input directory and sometime normal Photoshop requires 2-5 minutes per input file, so considering that it would be great if "Server Photoshop" could take advantage of the clients server architecture (multiple processors with multiple cores - up to 128 cores).

Any help/your experience would be much appreciated.

Adobe had something called Adobe Graphics server but it is not available since 2008.

Does anyone know what are the other options.

Regards,

Momir Zecevic

Ars Media

[ilvar]

I'm unaware about any out-of-the box solution for this kind of task currently available. While there is no doubt it can be technically achieved without too much hassle by tying web interface to PS scripting and then further scaled to an arbitrary number of machines/cores using virtualization techniques, its the Adobe licensing which will become an issue here (e.g. see this document for Adobe's official policy). This question actually came up a few times in the past and you may also find some other discussions on the forum, even though I think the bottom line is that you have to contact Adobe directly to obtain such license.

ivar

[MOMIR_ZECEVIC]

Hi Ilya, thanks for the feedback.

I have read previous discussions, but this is somewhat different.

Workflow at my clients place looks like follows:

Several people already have Photoshop/Illustrator in which they design graphics.

At this moment when design is finished, they call my automation plug-in which analyzes images (we use document/layer naming to describe what user wants to be done with a particular layer) and exports them for appropriate targets (resize to various resolutions, filling text layer stubs with actual text, exports every layer as a clip and generate reports scripts etc.)

Some documents have up to 500 layers/groups and it can take quite a bit to export one image to all desired targets, and during that time Photoshop can not be used.

Client have very powerful servers, and idea is that exporting process (automation plug-in) is moved to the server side. He is willing to purchase any appropriate licensing scheme, if needed additional license for every existing Photoshop license.

At this moment they are happy because they are doing things that ware almost impossible earlier but they are hitting limits of the existing workflow.

Again, any feedback is more than wellcome.

Regards,

Momir

[ilvar]

Momir,

Assuming all the licensing issues figured out with Adobe, I'd imagine either using one of existing web based job schedulers or writing your own trivial one that would simply get parameters from the user (e.g. the folder with the input files) and instantiate a virtual machine (e.g. a VMare, VirtualBox or a Microsoft Virtual Server guest system) on the server. The VM would launch Photoshop in scripting mode with the parameters specified by the web interface and then post the logs back. In theory, all the components here are scriptable, so it should be just a matter of putting it all together, probably without much C++ coding involved.

You may of course get away without virtualization but this approach won't scale.

[MOMIR_ZECEVIC]

I never thought of the problem this way, it looks promissing at the first glance. I will try it and post here.

My thought was that Adobe already have somthing out of the box.

Thanks Ilya.