Photoshop strips special characters

[Micke Alm]

Hi guys,

I had to register to ask a question that's been bothering me for a few days.

I have a script (with a lot of stolen parts you may recognise) that runs through a selected group of images, copies the image and filename and applies to a template in Photoshop. Everything works just fine, except that Photoshop somehow strips umlauts from my strings, ie, Björn becomes Bjorn.

"Logging" through an alert inside of Photoshop (line #30 below) shows that it has the correct string all the way until it's applied as the textItem.contents.

Code provided below, thanks for any help!

#target photoshop
app.displayDialogs = DialogModes.NO;
var templateRef = app.activeDocument;
var templatePath = templateRef.path;
var photo = app.activeDocument.layers.getByName("Photo"); // keycard_template.psd is the active document
// Check if photo layer is SmartObject;
if (photo.kind != "LayerKind.SMARTOBJECT") {
alert("selected layer is not a smart object")
} else {
// Select Files;
if ($.os.search(/windows/i) != -1) {
var photos = File.openDialog("Select photos", "*.png;*.jpg", true)
  } else {
var photos = File.openDialog("Select photos", getPhotos, true)
  };
if (photos.length) replaceItems();
}
function replaceItems() {
for (var m = 0; m < photos.length; m++) {
if (photos.length > 0) {
// Extract name
var nameStr = photos[m].name;
var nameNoExt = nameStr.split(".");
var name = nameNoExt[0].replace(/\_/g, " ");
// Replace photo and text in template
photo = replacePhoto(photos[m], photo);
// alert(name);
replaceText(templateRef, 'Name', name);  
templateRef.saveAs((new File(templatePath + "/keycards/" + name + ".jpg")), jpgOptions, true);
  }
  }
}
// OS X file picker
function getPhotos(thePhoto) {
if (thePhoto.name.match(/\.(png|jpg)$/i) != null || thePhoto.constructor.name == "Folder") {
return true
  };
};
// JPG output options;
var jpgOptions = new JPEGSaveOptions();  
jpgOptions.quality = 12; //enter number or create a variable to set quality  
jpgOptions.embedColorProfile = true;  
jpgOptions.formatOptions = FormatOptions.STANDARDBASELINE;
// Replace SmartObject Contents
function replacePhoto(newFile, theSO) {
app.activeDocument.activeLayer = theSO;
// =======================================================
var idplacedLayerReplaceContents = stringIDToTypeID("placedLayerReplaceContents");
var desc3 = new ActionDescriptor();
var idnull = charIDToTypeID("null");
desc3.putPath(idnull, new File(newFile));
var idPgNm = charIDToTypeID("PgNm");
desc3.putInteger(idPgNm, 1);
executeAction(idplacedLayerReplaceContents, desc3, DialogModes.NO);
return app.activeDocument.activeLayer
};
// Replace text strings
function replaceText(doc, layerName, newTextString) {
for (var i = 0, max = doc.layers.length; i < max; i++) {
var layerRef = doc.layers[i];
if (layerRef.typename === "ArtLayer") {
if (layerRef.name === layerName && layerRef.kind === LayerKind.TEXT) {
layerRef.textItem.contents = decodeURI(newTextString);
  }
  } else {
replaceText(layerRef, layerName, newTextString);
  }
  }
}

[r-bin]

What does the alert show if you insert it after line 71?

alert(newTextString +"\n\n"+ decodeURI(newTextString) +"\n\n"+ layerRef.textItem.contents);

[Micke Alm]

So (to me), it again proves the string needs to be decoded, and works all the way up until the string is actually placed in Photoshop?

[r-bin]

I did not understand. Explain if not difficult.

It seems that everything works for you.
And it looks like your text font is simply incorrectly displaying "non-standard" characters.

Can you manually type this text in a text layer?

[Micke Alm]

Exactly, that's what's driving my confusion - everything SEEMS to work! Script runs fine, I can manually type the text in the layer, I've checked the character encoding of everything I can think of...

So in the screenshot above, it will get the string as Ulrika Hedba%CC%88ck, decode it to Ulrika Hedbäck, show it as Hedbäck in the alert, then paste it as Hedback without the umlauts.

[r-bin]

Show a screenshot where you have a problem. I do not understand.

[Tom Ruark]

I did encodeURI and got this: Result: Hedb%C3%A4ck using that I get the text layer to show correctly with Myriad Pro. I love unicode and escaping and all that fun! Good luck to you.

[r-bin]

Explain please for details. I had no problems with the text layer. Have you had?