Need to read my own code some time . From stdlib.js: // maybe this works. maybe it doesn't // function findCurrentTool(){ //   var ref = new ActionReference(); //   ref.putEnumerated(cTID("capp"), cTID("Ordn"), cTID("Trgt") ); //   var desc = executeActionGet(ref); //   var tid = desc.getEnumerationType(sTID('tool')); //   return typeIDToStringID(tid); // } ... View more

You can set the current tool. You cannot determine what the current tool is. ... View more

Don't worry about the file I/O in this case. Unless you're doing a lot of I/O, it won't have any effect on overall performance. The Application.get/setCustomOptions (sp?) are another way of doing this. ... View more

I am not sure, but I think that you can convert a script back into action. With xtools you can convert actions/.atn files to XML or JavaScript. You can modify the translated XML (carefully) and convert it back to a .atn file. You cannot modify the translated JavaScript back to a .atn file. -X ... View more

Your tool does sound interesting and I wish you the best. But personally I'm at a point now where I can either crank ExtendScriptUI out fast enough to suit my needs, or I'm going to have to start using Flex for more sophisticated Adobe script user interfaces. There is a niche for your software and I hope you're able to find it. Helping out people piecemeal with xtools or custom bits of code is not exactly the best solution for new comers. ... View more

There is a folder called 'Scripting' in your PS app installation directory. It's full of docs and examples. Start there. -X ... View more

Either create a named preset style that does what you want or use Scripting Listener code. There is no JS DOM for constructing styles. -X ... View more

This function places an image as a smart image into the active document. The resize() calll in there works around a problem if the ppis are not the same. After this you'll probably want to resize, translate, and rasterize the layer. -X function placeImage(file) {     cTID = function(s) { return app.charIDToTypeID(s); };     sTID = function(s) { return app.stringIDToTypeID(s); };     var desc = new ActionDescriptor();     desc.putPath( cTID('null'), file);     desc.putEnumerated( cTID('FTcs'), cTID('QCSt'), cTID('Qcsa') );         var ldesc = new ActionDescriptor();         ldesc.putUnitDouble( cTID('Hrzn'), cTID('#Pxl'), 0.000000 );         ldesc.putUnitDouble( cTID('Vrtc'), cTID('#Pxl'), 0.000000 );     desc.putObject( cTID('Ofst'), cTID('Ofst'), ldesc );     executeAction( cTID('Plc '), desc, DialogModes.NO );     var layer = app.activeDocument.activeLayer;     layer.resize(100, 100);     return layer;   } ... View more

Right you are, Mike. I was given this info from somebody at Adobe back in PS7/CS days (I think) and took it as gospel. Either the information was incorrect or somewhere along the way they made the layerids persistent. -X ... View more

There is no way of finding out directly but you may be able to do so by: 1) Chage your Color Settings so that 'Ask When Pasting' is turned off 2) Create a new temporary document larger than you expect the clipboard to be 3) Paste in the clipboard contents. 4) Check the layer.bounds to get the size 5) Check the doc profile name to get the profile If it can be done at all, the technique should be similar to what I've described. ... View more

8080 (and 8800) are generic error codes that PS uses when it can't tell you anything specific about what went wrong. ... View more

Open the document. Select all Copy Close the document Paste into the existing document. Usually, things are a bit more complicated than that, but that's the basic flow. You could also use Place the image as a smart object, etc... -X ... View more

Sounds like a job for Datasets. Search PS Help. ... View more

Add 20 layers to a blank document. Record the ids for each layer. Save it. Reopen it. Delete some and reorder the rest. Record the ids. Unless things have changed and they are now using UUIDs for for layer ids, you should see a difference. The addition of layer-level metadata in CS4, however, provides a convenient way to get around this problem. -X ... View more

Note that layer ids are valid for a given PS session even if you move the layer. They are not persistent across PS sessions. ... View more

If you want the path to be absolutely identical on both OS X and XP, you will need the folder c:/cutlines to be created on XP (as Paul noted) and the folder /c/cutlines to be created on OS X. On OS X, this means creating a folder called 'c' in the file systems root directory with a subfolder called cutlines. I have a couple of folders like that for some scripts I have laying around that still contain hardwired absolute paths. ... View more

Is there a way to change the script to default similar to the old Cs2 ELF script? Not to sound obvious, but is there any reason that you can just use the CS2 ELF script in CS4? ... View more

X this forum is a bit slow as its taken 24 hours for your reply to show up, must be because of the picture. Great information from you as usual! Actually, the first post came up blank. The post/edit with the pic is from the morning (my TZ). The forum software just dropped the Edited note that explained this. ... View more

I would like to be able to query PS, from my application using an AppleScript, for this information. Is that possible, and if so, how? There's a Photoshop specific EXIF field called PhotoshopQuality (in exiftool-speak) that should give you what you need. I don't know if you can get at it via XMP or not, however. -X ... View more

Can I also take it that I can also change the "--" or "++" i++; is the same as i += 1; is the same as i = i + 1; shorthands to say "+ 3" and jump? You've lost me here. ... View more

I got it working by setting my Terminal preferences to use these settings.  The important thing for me was adding osascript, loging, and bash to the list at the bottom right. The shutdown popup gave me a nice list of process names to add. Also, this is OS X 10.5.6. ... View more

file.writeln("/usr/bin/osascript -e 'tell application \"Terminal\"' -e 'close front window' -e 'end tell'"); I get a 'Do you want to close this window?' prompt for the terminal window with this code. I've never been able to automatically close the terminal window without a prompt. -X ... View more

I typically set File.encoding to 'BINARY',  File.lineFeed property to 'unix', and always use '\n'. They way I know exactly what's getting written to the file. ... View more

Use this script to create an executable shell script package for use in JS in Photoshop. You just need to run this once to set it up. At runtime, do an open('e') on the 'macexec' file and write whatever shell commands you want to run. File("/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS4/Presets/Scripts/macexec.app").execute() will run those commands. This effectively gets around the inability to set the 'execute' bit on shell scripts. #!/bin/bash # # createMacExec.sh # # $Id: createMacExec.sh,v 1.1 2008/10/03 20:59:58 anonymous Exp $ # # This is the Mac exec installation script. # This creates the necessary files and folders needed to execute shell scripts # under OSX. # # Installation instructions: # # To install the OSX shell script support, open a terminal window and change to # the parent directory, possibly Presets/Scripts # # Run this script: #   % ./createMacExec.sh # # Specify the desired parent directory here # Exec defaults to using this path IDIR="/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS4/Presets/Scripts" if [ ! -e "$IDIR" ]; then    echo Bad directory specified ${IDIR}    exit 1 fi cd "$IDIR" mkdir -p macexec.app mkdir -p macexec.app/Contents rm -f macexec.app/Contents/macexec touch macexec.app/Contents/macexec chmod 755 macexec.app/Contents/macexec echo macexec successfully installed # EOT ... View more

Photoshop doesn't seem to let you overwrite an existing preset. But xtools does: //@show include //@includepath "/c/Program Files/Adobe/xtools;/Developer/xtools" // //@include "xlib/stdlib.js" //@include "xlib/PresetsManager.jsx" var toolsMgr = PresetsManager.getManager(PresetType.TOOL_PRESETS); toosMgr.renameElement(oldName, newName); -X ... View more