Hi,
I spent a large part of today learning Scripting for Photoshop using Javascript and I ran into several issues as I was figuring everything out that you might want to know about. Any one of the below probably stops a certain percentage of people at each step.
1) The main scripting page which is where I think I started my journey:
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html
lists Photoshop Versions, however, in the Creative Cloud App the version information is listed as 21.13, 21.12, etc... and even the name under creative cloud is simply Photoshop (no CC or CC+Year) as of the date of this post. This makes things a little difficult to line up.
Of course, I ignored this and asssumed very little would probably change version to version given the large 4 year gap between 2019 and 2015 information.
I downloaded the two PDFs, reference and guide and began scanning classes and features. Then I noticed that I couldn't copy and paste information from the doc into my web browser because the PDF is locked.
You don't seem to have an online repository of methods, classes, etc... similar to what you see other companies doing (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/index.html) so I'm stuck searching through the document, enabling the back button in Acrobat Reader so I can hop between links and understand the data types and what they do. Being able to copy and paste class names would really help speed up the learning process, as well as reduce typos when just starting out.
2) One big missing section right at the start should be 'LIMITATIONS'. I was half-way developing my script and thinking everything was going well when I realized that certain features were inaccessible therough the API such as directly modifying masks of layers. I wont go into detail at the sadness I felt when I read on someone's blog that masks in photoshop are actually selections and the very different way masks and transparencies seem to behave compared to the areas I'm used to.
One gentleman going by the name JJMack offered a lot of people the suggestion of using the Action Manager to handle copying those features not available in Javascript.
So I set out to download it and install...
3) In the guide in section 4 a link is provided that points back to the scripting page:
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html
Which does not contain the download link. A google search brought me to:
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/downloadable-plugins-and-content.html
And a few sections down is the ScriptListener Plug-in. I'm using Windows and I download the link.
However, within the link itself the documents zipped up are for Photoshop CS6 so now I'm wondering if I even have the right version.
Now I'm left with this ScriptListener.8li file and I'm not sure what to do with it. There isn't anything in the scripting utilities folder or a read me, so I go back to the guide and read some more.
At some point in the journey I also find this blog post regarding installation:
https://blogs.adobe.com/crawlspace/2006/05/installing_and_1.html
The CC guide says to go to my Photoshop CC\Plug-Ins folder to paste the script.
The guide from CS6 tells me to go to Plug-Ins\Automate and paste the file.
The current version of CC (2020 as the install location states) has a Plug-ins folder with a Generator in there. So I make a folder called Automate and give it a shot.
I run photoshop and there on my desktop are two log files.
I'm glossing over a few other issues:
4) Visual Studio Code limited support especially for Intellisense which would have really sped me up if completed, seems like it has been on the table for over a year now with no progress.
5) Burying Extendedscript Toolkit CC in the old programs, enabling it thinking I'll get some form of intellisense and I can 'feel' my way through the classes and data types. Just to find out the thing won't even launch for some reason.
I don't expect anyone to hold my hand, but I really think updating your documents and being more consistent would really help people just starting out. I teach at a University as an adjunct and I can tell you that each of these points would stop a good number of students. Programming isn't easy, but this barrier to entry is less about programming and more about accessing information.
I was trying to learn and creating something in a day to solve a completely different problem by embedding bit data in the alpha channel of a file generated by substance painter and that is what led me down this wild road today.
I hope this information is useful. I'm sure I overlooked things or didn't read deeply enough. But I did take time to scan the documents, read classes, understand the framework, the app, documents, layers, search for blogs and forum posts, and so forth. I think these issues deserve some attention.
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