Renaming a layer without touching mouse?

[Navarro Parker]

When exporting files from Illustrator, I get a ton of layers named <path> and <group>. I want to quickly rename these layers in Photoshop.

I'm using Alt-[ & -] to move up and down my Layer palette, but I haven't figured how to change a layer name other than double-clicking on the name (which takes a hand off the keyboard). Is there any way to rename a layer by using the keyboard only?

[Jeff Arola]

What version of photoshop?

[Jeff Arola]

If you are on version cs5 or older you could make a shortcut for Layer>Layer Properties using Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts.

On cs6 it would be Layer>Rename Layer.

[Paulo Skylar · Accepted solution]

If you are using CS6 things are a bit easier.

Double click on one of the layer names to retype. Then just press tab (or shift tab for the other direction) and the next layer name is highlighted and ready for retyping. Continue doing the same for the remaining layer names.

Paulo

[themofosauce]

Does this also work in Illustrator, and does it switch between all layers (including those grouped along with the group layer) or only whatever lever you're at?

I don't have CS6 but am facing a project that will include renaming somewhere around 95,000 - 100,000 layers in total by the end. This may finally justify upgrading to the bean counters.

[Noel Carboni]

I can't answer your question about Illustrator, but I just wanted to say you have my sympathy in having to come up with 100,000 layer names, never mind operating the equipment.  You're going to be mind-numbed every day after work having to do that all day.

-Noel

[themofosauce]

Haha, thank you Noel! I've just wrapped up the first of 17 sets that make up this project, and it's no joke. Weary eyes, wrists, and neck are the order of the day. The layer naming is by far the worst portion of the work, even if it's only 30% of the total project time. The repetition is just physically taasking, and of course the only way to be fast is to make it as repetitive as possible. Just trying to break up that part as much as I can.

[Paulo Skylar]

Negative on tabbing through layers to rename them in Illustrator CS6.  There is a mini improvement in Illustrator renaming, however. Now you can rename by double clicking the layer name and you no longer have to deal with a renaming dialog box. Basically, Illustrator CS6 renaming now is the way Photoshop was prior to Photoshop CS6.

Photoshop CS6 renaming works the way most would want it. If all the groups are open tabbing lets you go from one name to the next be it a layer or a group name or a layer withing a group. If a group is closed then just the group name is selected for renaming and the next tabbing will take you to the next entry and leave the layers in the group unchanged.

Paulo

[themofosauce]

Thank you for the detailed information Paulo. Not the answer I was hoping for, but it's very helpful. Disappointing that they continue to diverge in approaches in these flagship design products that get used side-by-side more than any other.

[station_two]

themofosauce wrote:

…Disappointing that they continue to diverge in approaches in these flagship design products that get used side-by-side more than any other.

Inconsistency between or among applications in the artificial "suites" should come as no surprise.

The "suite" concept is a fabrication of Adobe marketing and bean-counting types.  The engineering teams are totally independent of each other, they are not only in different buildings but in different cities and states of the American Union, even in different countries.

The fact that they have little if any communication among them is highlighted by requests occasionally made in these forums by top Adobe engineers to let the other teams know when there are problems in one application that impact our workflow in another one.

[Rishi Kumar]

I have made a free to use script to rename Objects/layers in Illustrator. I have made an action and call this script in that, after that I am assigning a shorcut key to that action it. You can see the full documentation, it will be really helpful.
Here's the Google Drive Link

I came across this problem when I was working on a character in Illustrator to be used in an animation. To my surprise, I found that there is no keyboard shortcut in Illustrator to rename layers/objects. With so many groups and layers, renaming things by going in layers panel was very frustrating. 

[DaveJCummings]

Interesting.  I might have to check it out.  I'm always down for things to streamline my process

[jane-e]

I am not a scripter, but if the first object in the Illustator layer is <path> in multiple layers, would all those layers then be named <path>?

~ Jane

//Rename all layers based on their first item/object name.
//Helpful when "Release to layers(Sequence)" option is used
//Created By: Rishi Kumar | email: rishi.kumar.id@gmail.com

var layers = app.activeDocument.layers;
for(var l = 0; l < layers.length; l++){
  layers[l].name = layers[l].pageItems[0].name;
}

[Rishi Kumar]

Good point Jane, I missed this case.
It will not rename them to <path> it will just rename it to a Blank value which will result in naming the layer as <Layer>. This is because, by default if you draw any shape, no name is given to it. The shape is represented by it's type. For e.g. if you draw an rectangle it will be shown as <rectangle>.

Now if you try to fetch the name of this rectangle in the script, a blank value is returned from the software.
If we assign a blank value to any object in Illustrator, the layer name will be shown with the type of the object.

Ideally the script should not rename it to blank, I have updated the script. Thanks for raising this concern. 

[Stephen Marsh]

As this topic has been bumped and the original request was a Photoshop layer renamer...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Paul-Riggott/PS-Scripts/master/Layer%20Name%20Edit.jsx

https://prepression.blogspot.com/2017/11/downloading-and-installing-adobe-scripts.html

[adriawo]

I add a shortcut (cmd+shift+R). And you can use tab/shift tab to navigate between layers.

It works with layers and groups.

🙂

this shortcut will be conflit with Filter > Lens Blur, or something like that.. but I dont use it.