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Question

Photoshop droplet on server?

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
March 27, 2015
8 replies
6883 views

Hello, I am looking to answer a hypothetical situation: what is the way to get droplets to work in a central network location, so that multiple users from different computers (Perhaps both Windows and Mac) can use some common folders to process files when needed. Let's assume that they only do it a few times during the week, so putting files at the same time into the same place is not a big issue. So, my question is: can Photoshop be installed on a server, and made to run droplet folders, without the need to make a big application using other software?

Then, if it is possible to put a droplet on a server location along with a copy of Photoshop, and it works by processing the files which are dropped in, what if one of the actions calls a script which has an input dialog, or if the Photoshop running on the server produces a modal dialog, who sees it?

The idea is to be able to have Windows or Mac users place files into a central folder, and get the output somewhere else, without having to use a copy of photoshop themselves, or at least without having to open up Photoshop and browsing for a script.

I have tried to look on the internet for some examples, and I found some leads, but they are more oriented towards the web & web-to-print side, so they didn't focus on discussing this part in detail as the topic was just a subset of a larger web-app oriented picture.

Also, I saw imagemagick being suggested as well. However, what I would like to find out is just what happens when a copy of PS processes a droplet on a server, if this is possible.

This topic has been closed for replies.

DBarranca

Legend

Vasily,

if I remember properly, in the HTML Panels book there are examples of Panels connecting to a remote server to load / execute JSX code: could that scenario fit as an answer to your question?

Davide

Silly-VAuthor

Legend

Hi, this one was from some time ago, and these days I do have a goal to make an extension that helps manage organization's scripts in the way you describe!

A

anthonyc49523867

Participant

Thanks for the additional tools, I will check them out.

It turns out its just a windows desktop machine running the automated process not a windows server.

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

Some potential non-Adobe options for server based image processing (I have not checked the terms/EULA though):

XnConvert · Photo Resizer, Graphic Converter

XnView Software · nConvert

Convert, Edit, Or Compose Bitmap Images @ ImageMagick

GraphicsMagick Image Processing System

A

anthonyc49523867

Participant

Thanks for the info I will double check with the appropriate people here.

A

anthonyc49523867

Participant

Its not CC its CS6, which we have an enterprise license for.

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

Make sure you understand what the enterprise license is. In our case at Boeing, we had to buy a number of "seats." Once you exceed those seats, you have to purchase more. It's not, just one license.

E

EnsilZah_

Inspiring

This is a bit off on a tangent, and doesn't lead very far, but a while back I wrote a script that allows you to input a list of folders and an action that would run on each folder.
I was thinking at that point, if I wanted to distribute the batch jobs across several computers, how would I do it?
I checked out the com.adobe.photoshop API at that point, and it seemed to me that it would be possible to write a .NET server app that handed out jobs to Photoshop on one computer, and a client app with a UI that sent jobs to the server app, I didn't get very far with that because I haven't had any experience with .NET but it seemed possible.

Another possible solution I can think of, is making some sort of small app that writes an XML file which includes locations of files, desired scripts and actions to run, to some watch folder, and have the remote Photoshop machine check the folder periodically and execute the instructions in the XML files.

Silly-VAuthor

Legend

Coming back to check out this thread, I have in the recent past conducted a test where I was able to execute a .jsx script using a web interface of a PHP web-app on my localhost (submit a web form, PHP script executes any desktop app) - something quite basic and yet advanced (setting up the permission settings in my PHP was a real drag for me being newb) as far as my experiments go. Well, it worked, implying that another computer could be used to control the applications on this computer, when on the same network - which is fascinating and potentially quite useful.

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anthonyc49523867

Participant

Just came across this thread and wanted to know if you are still trying to work on this? It can be done. I have a Windows Server running photoshop that processes product images daily. Set up some droplets tied to actions, a few automated windows tasks and a script that handles a few other processes.

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

I sort of have something like that, but it's a time-lapse set up. I have a dedicated computer running PS 24/7. I wrote a script that checks a upload folder every few seconds, and if a new file is placed in that folder, it processes the image, and saves the RAW version and a formatted version to different folders. So in effect, it could also be used to have users place imaged in a process folder on the server then process them.

Silly-VAuthor

Legend

csuebele‌ : that looks like it's a nice setup, is that on Windows? That's far more advanced than having a common droplet perform actions for different users, but an interesting concept I would like to learn about further. Also, what are the implications as brought to our attention by JJMack‌ ?

Chuck Uebele

Community Expert

Yes, it's on a Win system. I have a couple of these setups doing time-lapse. The only issue is that it ties up one computer with PS, as it's on all the time.

JJMack

Community Expert

I believe that would violate your licence agreement with Adobe.

JJMack

Silly-VAuthor

Legend

Ok let's assume everyone has a copy of photoshop, but what we want to do is make a single droplet that has all the latest actions on it, so that all the users in an organization use the latest version. So people don't get all messed up as to where this & that folder is on different computers- we'd like it in a single place for the sake of consistency, not necessarily to use free photoshop..

JJMack

Community Expert

You may have to distribute the droplets. The droplet run from a server would run on the user machine will want to start Photoshop on the users local machine. All the machine may not have the same Photoshop and plug-ins installed. So the users machine may need to be maintained by an IT staff so all machines will be compatible. Running Photoshop on the server even if all had licence may not work. Concurrent running instances of Photoshop may not be possible. Photoshop design may prevent that or cause delays because of files being locked. Photoshop was not designed to be a server application. Using it as a server application I quite sure would violate the licence agreement

JJMack

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