Call Photoshop Action from other APP?

[NEXU]

Hi Everyone,

Anybody has any experience to run any Photoshop action using a binary .EXE file?

For example, I want to let Photoshop execute a filter action from my own application?

I know that DROPLET can do this, what I did is that I use System("Droplet.exe somefile") to launch the Photoshop action. However, I got enough trouble doing this with the UAC of Windows7, there're intermittently "Droplet couldn't communicate with Photoshop" error showing up, and UAC always prompt you the warning message. I tried lots of ways "Run as Administrators" etc, but the error shows again even though the previous time it worked!

Finally, I think it's time to give up droplet and thinking of other way of doing this.

I just simply want a ".exe" or something that can let my application tell Photoshop to run a simple action (with no parameters). I'm not sure whether PostMessage/SendMessage can do this or not on Windows. If anybody has any idea, please let me know.

Thanks in advance!

By the way, I also learned that Photoshop API is not thread safe, so that an "inception thread" of a plugin in the Photoshop causes unpridictable crashes, and you cannot do that in a separate thread.

[Chris Cox · Accepted solution]

Just call Photoshop with the name of the image file and javascript on the command line.

IIRC correctly, it loads last to first - so you may need to experiment a little.

Or you could make a droplet from Photoshop.

[NEXU]

Indeed, Running "Photoshop.exe javascript.js" solves my problem. It seems more reliable than using Droplet.

[bagonterman]

Can I get a hint of how you call photoshop from the command line? I would like to create a way of running an action on a folder. I know the javascript for the action. But I don't know anything about the command line. Please advise.

Thanks. Run on Windows.

[Tom Ruark]

Check out the vbs samples (Visual Basic) from here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html

Then use "cscript" from the command line.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff920171.aspx

[bagonterman]

Thanks for your quick reply. The cscript looks interesting. Do you think it is nessasary for there to be a hard written link to the photo file?

[bagonterman]

Would this work? C:\test.exe C:\test\*.jpg