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JAJJansenJr
Participant
July 5, 2010
Question

Scripting with Visual Basic - or something else?

  • July 5, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 2577 views

Greetings,

As this is my first post and I am new to Photoshop (mainly have tried Photoshop CS5 Extended and Photoshop Elements) please forgive me

if I ask questions which may have been answered elsewhere.

I need to learn how to script Photoshop.  By this I mean I would like to take control of Photoshop and pass virtual keystrokes to it under programmatic control.

Visual Basic provides a "SendKeys" capability in various flavors, but, so far, I have not been able to "SendKeys" to Photoshop.

It would really be nice if I could find a way to use Visual Basic to do scripting, as I am very familiar with that language.

If not VB, then what are the available scripting options?

Especially important:  where can I find examples which clearly show how to learn scripting examples for scripting languages which Photoshop

can talk to?

Any and all help sincerely appreciated.  I am becoming quite familiar with Photoshop but I have a need to automate or script certain projects.

To any Adobe personnel reading this I hope you can point me in useful directions,  If there are any so-called undocumented features of photoshop that would allow VB or other scripting I would be glad to sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to learn about those.

If anyone can help me in my scripting quest I will see that your name is mentioned with the angels!

Sincerely,

Joseph (Joe) A. Jansen, Jr.

JAJansenJr@gmail.com

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

JJMack
Community Expert
JJMackCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2010

VB your on windows and have installed CS5 check out the folder "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS5\Scripting" it contains three folders Documents, Sample Scripts, and Utilities.

Documents contains Photoshop CS5 Scripting Guide.pdf, Photoshop CS5 VBScript Ref.pdf, Photoshop CS5 JavaScript Ref.pdf and Photoshop CS5 AppleScript Ref.pdf

Sample Scripts contains thre folders of sample scripts VBScript, JavaScript and AppleScript

Utilities contains the ScriptListener Plug-in it will record VBscripts and JavaScripts some what like the Action Palet recorsd actions haoever there are no controls.

Good intro http://morris-photographics.com/photoshop/tutorials/scripting1.html and part 2 http://morris-photographics.com/photoshop/tutorials/scripting2.html he has many free script also this forum and http://www.ps-scripts.com/

Also CS5 ships with Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CS5 for editing and testing scripts.

JJMack
J
JAJJansenJrAuthor
Participant
July 5, 2010

Thanks for a most helpful reply.  I will look into all those options.  I have run across so-called Photoshop Actions

(See, for example, http://www.visual-blast.com/photoshop/124-free-photoshop-actions/) and I hope everyone

reading this thread will chime in as to how useful these can be to minimise banging away on the keyboard.

Like Hawkeye Pierce in M.A.S.H. I need to do "meatball surgery" as a programmer in order to get a particular

block of work out of the way.

Thanks in anticipation to others who stop by and offer their suggestions.

It does seem a shame that interoperability between a superb program like Photoshop and a great development

tool like Visual Basic is marginal.

JJMack
Community Expert
JJMackCommunity Expert
Community Expert
July 5, 2010

Photoshop Actions can not have logic in them without the use of Plug-ins and scripts there Photoshop step step. I have put together a package on crafting Photoshop Actions you can download it here: http://www.mouseprints.net/old/dpr/JJMacksCraftingActions.zip

Contains:

Action Actions Palette Tips.txt

Action Creation Guidelines.txt

Action Dealing with Image Size.txt

Action Enhanced via Scripted Photoshop Functions.txt

CraftedActions.atn Sample Action set

Sample Actions.txt Photoshop CraftedActions set saved as a text file. This file has some additional comments I inserted describing how the actions work.

I also would not classify programming for Photoshop as marginal.  As a new comer to Photoshop you have a huge learning curve it more a case of your knowledge of Photoshop and programming  Plug-in, Script and Actions is less than marginal. Have you looked in Adobe web site for their Photoshop SDK http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/

JJMack
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