So you have to KNOW that top left pixel is 100% white, in each file. Select the pixel at (0, 0) Copy Fill White Deselect Magic Wand I do this when I have a largish tolerance but want to make sure the base is pure White. This takes in to account the fact that the (0,0) may be 250,250,250. Since (0, 0) is in the clipboard, you can replace later if needed and if you haven't already overwritten the clipboard. If the clipboard is not an option, there are other ways of restoring the pixel. -X ... View more

I'm actually interested in a response to the Clipboard question. I've finally started doing all of my work in CS4 (because of debugging improvements) and got bit by this when I tried to back-port to CS3. I was fortunately able to code around being able to specify the Clipboard preset but I'd rather not have to in the future. -X ... View more

Here's what is looks like in CS3 And here's what it looks like in CS4 Looks kinda different to me. -X ... View more

Piffle - its been possible to do this since at least Photoshop version 5 - created back in 1998 How? I am seeing two different things being recorded for CS3 and CS4. If the clipboard contents are identical when the action is recorded and later played back, it doesn't matter. But if the clipboard is a different size, the results are completely different. -X ... View more

The other metadata example - have you tried Bridge at all? Yep. I'm fairly familiar with it. But this is an operation in PS that is not recordable, which was the question at hand. The solution in Bridge would require using the UI (and allowing multiple updates in one pass) or would require using a script. Another category of operations that can't be recorded are anything dealing with Actions (e.g. loading, saving, renaming, etc...). Admittedly, it's rather rare that you would need this capability, but I have had the need more than once and I know there are others out there that have as well. -X ... View more

I assure you, I've been an Actions power user for years - there are really no examples where they have made things recordable that weren't before. Create a new document based on the properties of the current contents of the clipboard. In CS3, the properities of the clipboard are hardwired into the action. In CS4, it uses the 'Clipboard' preset which uses the properties of the clipboard at the time the action is run. Very handy. It's the most recent one that I ran across. Thats what I call a conditional, its conditional on the name of the file. A 'conditional' is more commonly defined as something that requires conditional execution such as an if-then-else construct. For instance, if doc.orientation is Portrait then do these steps else do some other steps. • They don't know what Actions are capable of That was my 'They don't know any better' item. -X ... View more

No thats not possible, and I gave the answer in post 6 - what he wants is easy to achieve with an Action. He has an existing script to which he is adding this additional functionality. Yes, he could implement these steps as an action and call it from the parent script, but that may not be the best solution. Inlining the action as javascript means you just have a script to manage and distribute instead of a script and an atn file. It also means you only have one resource to checkin to CVS or subversion. If anyone can provide me with examples where they can find a linear process in Photoshop is not Actionable, (multiple document juggling, liquify, excepted obviously) then I'm up for the challenge! I've posted a few in this thread. To be honest I think we are all on the same page, if that's the general view here these days. It is. I've turned down work by telling people that they'd be better of learning how to use actions instead of hiring me to script a solution. -X ... View more

BTW, I still come across (new) things in PS that can be recorded in Actions that previous required scripting. If you happen to come across post where this is true, by all means do let us know. Things change from version to version and I'm definitely not always current. -X ... View more

Well - I'd like to know which linear problems you happen to think fall into that category? I I gave one later in my post. A trivial example is placing the name of the document into the Title metadata field. This was from a post either here or on ps-scripts.com. Adding a text layer with the image's name in it is a request that comes up about once a month or so. Here's another example. A project that I am currently working on needs to apply a metadata template to a set of images. Recording an action will result in the values from the template file being stored in the action. What is really needed, in this case, is to be able to change the values in the template, rerun the action and have the new values applied to the image. Yes, they're both metadata examples, but I've been doing a lot of metadata work lately so that's what I remember most readily. I have a history of going through this forum and thinking "yep… time wasters - actions would be a better answer" People ask for scripts for a number of different reasons. They are learning They are curious They have an existing script that needs to be enhanced They are on a version of PS that can't record what they need They don't know any better The people that fall into the last category really aren't all that common, especially after traffic dropped off during the Jive conversion. And they usually get helped appropriately. -X ... View more

Scripts have to read off the disk, as far as I'm concerned this slight delay is annoying enough to make Actions a better option. Certainly where everyday workflow is involved. Actions play instantly and can as a result be built into workflow better, shortcutted. Do you actually have empircal rather than anecdotal evidence? If you can notice a performance difference because of a script being read off the disk, you either have a very very slow disk (e.g < 5400rpm) or a very very large script (>>100KLOC*). If you are not recording actions that call scripts (or writing scripts that call actions), you're not taking full advantage of both. Actions that call scripts can be as easily integrated into your workflow as actions that don't. It was more a response to your repeated advice "you do not need to use actions." The advice "you do not need to use actions" was (probably) meant more to reduce the overall complexity of the solution, especially if the solution is to be shared with others. If you have to have a script (because you're looping over layers, or whatever) there are likely parts of the script that could be implemented as actions. Is it easier to provide/package a 300LOC* script that requires a half dozen actions to be present or is it easier to provide a 400LOC script? And as a result try to step into the complex world of scripting too early, and get discouraged as a result. True. That is why Mike, I, and others regularly recommend using actions instead of scripts. But, as you noted, not everything is recordable in actions and what is recordable varies from version to version of PS. I've repeatedly said that the best script is the one you don't have to write, but often times it is unavoidable. Thinking that scripting is the ONLY solution to complex linear problems is not constructive. But it is the only solution to some linear problems, regardless of their complexity. A trivial example is placing the name of the document into the Title metadata field. -X *LOC = lines of code, KLOC = thousand lines of code ... View more

Two lines of code with xtools/xlib/stdlib.js: Stdlib.magicWand(app.activeDocument, 0, 0, 20, true, true); app.activeDocument.selection.fill(Stdlib.COLOR_WHITE); But if you don't want to @include stdlib.js, you can use script listener code for the magic wand call and manually construct WHITE for the fill. -X ... View more

PS stopped supporting Contact Sheet II in either PSCS3 or PSCS4, but I don't recall which specificially. Check your 'File->Automate' menu to see if it's there. You can copy over the plugin from a previous release to get the functionality back. Bridge has direct support for constructing contact sheets if you need it. And there is always Contact Sheet X for PS if you need complete and utter overkill. -X ... View more

The scripts cause it to crop either to the canvas size of the template, I haven't found a script that goes to the exact contents of the layer. Normally, you would want to have the script select the (merged) layer transparency then crop to the selection (or copy/paste to a new document). Layer Styles, such as drop shadows, cause problems because they are included in that selection but are not technically a part of the layer content. This may not matter here, but it does matter in other situations. The states are dependent on what the graphic is but ideally I'd be aiming to have files save: graphic_state.png Your structure looks reasonable. You'll just need to tweak the script to name the output files like you want since it's not based simply on a layer's name. -X ... View more

- The ones that don't resize save images the size of the original canvas, the ones that crop don't crop around the image perfectly. What does this mean "don't crop around the image perfectly"? Depending on the script, it may be cropping based on the layer content with or without the layer mask and/or layer styles taken into account. Or it may be some other problem. - They take -each- layer and turn them into PNGs, so if BUTTON 1 -> ACTIVE has 3 layers in that group, each one is turned into a .png Use some type of naming convention for the groups/layers that you want to save to files. Modify the script to only save groups/layers that match that naming convention. -X ... View more

If you can record PixelBender as a replayable action, then it is probably generating scripting listener code, which is how you would invoke the filter from JS. -X ... View more

Change the doc's resolution to 72ppi. That way pts=pxls. ... View more

In CS3 and before the 'size' property was in points. And probably still defaults to points., so be explicit: T1.size = UnitValue(36, 'pt'); or T1.size = UnitValue(36, "px"); -X ... View more

It's only accurate to seconds which is pretty crap given modern SLRs can shoot many FPS. Given how overspec'd most data-points are these days it seems an odd oversight from XMP boffins. You're wrong.  The XMP spec will accept Date values to (implied) abritrary precision. If your camera doesn't spit out anything thing with finer resolution than seconds, it's a problem with your camera vendor, not the spec. Here's the relevant bit from the XMP spec: Date A date-time value which is represented using a subset of ISO RFC 8601 formatting, as described in http://www.w3.org/TR/Note-datetime.html. The following formats are supported: YYYY YYYY-MM YYYY-MM-DD YYYY-MM-DDThh:mmTZD YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD YYYY = four-digit year MM   = two-digit month (01=January) DD   = two-digit day of month (01 through 31) hh   = two digits of hour (00 through 23) mm   = two digits of minute (00 through 59) ss   = two digits of second (00 through 59) s    = one or more digits representing a decimal fraction of a second TZD  = time zone designator (Z or +hh:mm or -hh:mm) The time zone designator is optional in XMP. When not present, the time zone is unknown, and software should not assume anything about the missing time zone. It is recommended, when working with local times, that you use a time zone designator of +hh:mm or -hh:mm instead of Z, to aid human readability. For example, if you know a file was saved at noon on October 23 a timestamp of 2004-10-23T12:00:00-06:00 is more understandable than 2004-10-23T18:00:00Z. -X ... View more

Either use a predefined folder, like you did, or write the location to a predefined .ini file. Using the .ini file will let you pass more information if you need to later. -X ... View more

You might be able to do this with ContactSheetX. It has a 'Post-Processing Action/Script' setting that is run when each sheet is finished. If you have the sheet constructed to use SmartObjects for the thumbnails, you could write a script that loops through the thumbnail layers and resizes/crops the thumbnails with no loss of image quality. But I would go with the recommendation that you pre-process the images so that your contact sheet has the pre-cropped images. -X ... View more

If you decide to use JavaScript, there are tools available to convert Actions to JavaScript. -X ... View more

  var VB1 = new File("C:/Program Files/My Applications/MovingFiles_VBA"); should probably be   var VB1 = new File("C:/Program Files/My Applications/MovingFiles_VBA.exe"); -X ... View more

Bridge has Slideshow capabilities builtin. Try that. -X ... View more

FWIW, here's some code from stdlib.js for parsing lines in a CSV file. This correctly handles quoted fields (with embedded commas) and just about everything else that I've been able to throw at it. Some of the code (the 'while (true)' loop, in particular) is there because I couldn't get the master RegExp expression quite right and had to handle some cases manually.   var rexStr = '([^",]+)|"((?:[^"]|"")*)"|^,';   var rexp = new RegExp(rexStr);   function parseCSVLine(line) {     var ch = ',';     var parts = [];     var res;     while (line.length && (res = line.match(rexp)) != null) {       if (res[1] || res[2]) {         if (res[1]) {           parts.push(res[1]);         } else {           parts.push(res[2].replace(/""/g, '"'));         }         line = line.slice(res[0].length + res.index);         if (line[0] == ch) {           line = line.slice(1);         }       } else {         while (true) {           if (line[0] == ch) {             parts.push('');             line = line.slice(1);             continue;           }           if (line.startsWith('""')) {             parts.push('');             line = line.slice(2);             if (line[0] == ch) {               line = line.slice(1);             }             continue;           }           break;         }       }     }     return parts;   } ... View more

What Paul said. Also, unless you are really fluent in VB, I strongly recommend using JavaScript. You will find far more resources (websites, people, other scripts, etc...) to help you out with JS than with VB. -X ... View more

If you really need to get the document's properties _before_ opening the file, you'll need to examine the file's metadata via the XMPScript API (PSCS4+ or BridgeCS3+). It's not the easiest API to work with, but it's faster than opening the actual image. -X ... View more

You may want to take a look at the xtools package for JS/PS. The source is here. http://ps-scripts.cvs.sourceforge.net/ps-scripts/ The packaged zip file at that site is a bit old, but the CVS repository is up-to-date (just did a refresh this AM). In xtools/xlib/stdlib.js, there are routines that cover a vast amount of the typical things you need to do with PS but is not provided directly in the JS API. For instance      Stdlib.insertImageIntoSelection(doc, layer, image, fit); will insert an image into the current selection in the specified layer. 'image' can either be an open document or a file (or path) on disk. The 'fit' parameter determines whether the image is resized to fit the selection (with possible whitespace on two edges) or if the image will fill the selection (possibly cropping two edges).    Stdlib.insertImageIntoSelectionAsSmartObject(doc, layer, im, fit); does the same, but places the image as a smart object instead. -X ... View more

Only one question: do you know any interesting web to learn about Ps Scripting? ps-scripts.com is the other major active site supporting the scripting of Photoshop. There are other smaller sites with resources scattered about as well. Google may help if you're looking for something specific. -X ... View more