X, if this was on usenet someone would have already called him a troll. ... View more

When I said that 'you do not need to use actions' I was responding about using the action manager API in a script. Actions have thier place and I was not suggesting that they should never be used. I only meant that if you where script the workflow that you could script anything that can be done in an action and that you do not need to use both. Guy may be able to do what his workflow requires by actions alone. It's possible that he could not, which may be the reason he asked about scripting. I was trying to answer his question about if something could be done with scipting and which is better applescript or javascript. I agree that actions are powerful and that people some times think that they need to script something that could be done with actions alone. Had he asked 'How to change the visibility on a mask' I may have responded differently. To my mind, by the wording of his post, it was clear that he wanted a scripting solution. ... View more

Scripts can also be triggered by keyboard via actions and in Flex panels directly. When you say that actions are faster, do you mean faster than scripts? On what information do you base that claim? However and more to the point, Guy posted his question on a scripting forum and ask 'Can a script change...'. It seems to me that you are the one doing the assuming that Guy is unaware of actions. ... View more

I am not sure what is the problem but I don't think it is missing fonts. Photoshop can open and rasterize a psd with missing fonts. However you can not edit the text layer with the missing font. And the text layers with missing fonts have a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in the bottom right of the T icon. When you say that the images come up with a small x, come up where? ... View more

Iron_Mike wrote: setting the doc's resolution to 72 dpi and the setting the UnitValue.baseUnit solved the problem... Just so it's clear. You only need to do one or the other. When the resolution is 72 dpi the baseUnit's default value is the correct value. It only needs to be changed when the dpi is not 72. ... View more

The easy way would be to use scriptlistner to transform-scale the path. That way you don't have to deal with editing the path via scripting. ... View more

If you just want to determine the order the images where shot you may want to check to see if your files have the metadata 'aux:ImageNumber'. With my Nikon that number is the number of images the camera has taken. It can not be reset in the camera like the filename can. ... View more

If I understand what you are doing you should be able to replace the images. The full path and filename needs to be the same. The only reason I can think that it's not working to you is either the path is different or the filenames are different ... View more

I should have said that you do not need to use actions. You can record what you like in an action then call that action from a script. But actions are not needed. You can use scriptlistner( action manager ) code to do what the action would do. ... View more

Let me explain the code and the structure of the descriptor as it is not straightforward. Note in my first post I had getting the channel's ranges in one line. This time will we use several lines to make the code more readable and robust. var desc = Styles.getLayerStyleDescriptor(doc, layer, true)  returns the main descriptor you need. From that you want the blendOptions descriptor. You will want to add a test here to make sure that the layer has blendOptions set or you will get an error when you try to get the options. So add an if statement that test for desc.hasKey(stringIDToTypeID('blendOptions')). If it's true you can then get the options. var blendOptionsDesc = desc.getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('blendOptions'))  from the options you need the list of blendRanges var blendChannelList = blendOptionsDesc.getList(stringIDToTypeID('blendRange'))  now it gets tricky. The list will have between one and four items. each item is a descriptor for a given channel. blendChannelList.count will let you know how many channels you will need to deal with. There may be only one channel and it could be any of the channels. if the layer only has green blendOptions the first and only item in the list will be the descriptor for the green channel options. The key is you can not count on the channels being in a set order. var channelBlendRanges = blendChannelList.getObjectValue(0)  will get the first descriptor. you can now check the channel with typeIDToStringID(channelBlendRanges.getReference( stringIDToTypeID('channel')).getEnumeratedValue()) change the 0 to get the other list tiems From this point you know how many channels you need to deal with, how to determine the channel in the list, and how to get the blend values from my other post. That could be a lot of data if all 4 channels have settings. I will let you handle how best to store the data. ... View more

You can work with a channel mask using scripting. But it has to be done with the Action Manager API. I can post some examples if you like. I would recommend that you use javascript for several reasons. First it is cross platform, second there seems to be more people on the forums using JS than AS, and last but not least in this case you can not work with the Action Manager API using AS. You would have to create and call JS funcions from AS. ... View more

You can not deal with slices directly using JS. There is a work around that will let you get some info about the slices but I am not aware of any method to write the info in the slice options. ... View more

You can use the scriptlistner plugin that ships with Photoshop to get code that you can use with VB but it's not really anything like VB. I think that you would be better off using the VBS scripting guide and adapting it VB. ... View more

I don't have any direct experience with RapidScriptUI. I did use CSUIB at one time but I now prefer to create my own dialogs. If you have a current version of Photoshop, you will want to look in the JavaScript Tools Guide. There are also lots of examples and code snippets at http://ps-scripts.com/bb/index.php ... View more

Thanks to Xbytor's update of the script here is the code you need to get the blend if values from a layer. Note you will also need Styles-1_14.jsx for this to work. #include "/C/Program Files/Adobe/xtools/xlib/Styles-1_14.jsx" var blendIf = {}; var doc = activeDocument; var layer = doc.activeLayer; var desc = Styles.getLayerStyleDescriptor(doc, layer, true).getObjectValue(stringIDToTypeID('blendOptions')).getList(stringIDToTypeID('blendRange')).getObjectValue(0); blendIf.channel = typeIDToStringID(desc.getReference( stringIDToTypeID('channel')).getEnumeratedValue()); blendIf.srcBlackMin = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('srcBlackMin'));// 'This Layer' in dialog blendIf.srcBlackMax  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('srcBlackMax')); blendIf.srcWhiteMin  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('srcWhiteMin')); blendIf.srcWhiteMax  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('srcWhiteMax')); blendIf.destBlackMin  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('destBlackMin'));// 'Underlaying Layer' in dialog blendIf.destBlackMax  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('destBlackMax')); blendIf.destWhiteMin  = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('destWhiteMin')); blendIf.destWhiteMax = desc.getInteger(stringIDToTypeID('desaturate')); ... View more

It seems that I was wrong. The blending options are not part of the layerEffects descriptor. At least not in CS4. There was a time when you had to use a script by Xbytor named Styles.js to get the layerEffects descriptor. I tried that as well and it also doesn't return any blend settings. ... View more

The blend if settings are part of the layer's effects descriptor. You can get the current setting from a layer and/or change those settings using the Action Manager API. I don't fully understand what you are trying to do. Although you can get the Underlying Layer numbers they still depend on the other layer and I think would be hard to set with a script. If you need help with the scriptlistner code to get and set those values let me know. ... View more

You can not use a scripting API reference when working with action manager API. You could add by index, but the action manager index for a layer is not the same as the scripting layer index. If your workflow allows you could make the layer you want to add active, get the action manager index, add by that index and restore the active layer. function addLayerTransToSelection( layerIndex ){      try{           var desc = new ActionDescriptor();                var ref = new ActionReference();                ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "Trsp" ) );                ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID("Lyr "), charIDToTypeID("Ordn"), charIDToTypeID("Trgt") );                ref.putIndex(charIDToTypeID( "Lyr " ), layerIndex );                //ref.putName( charIDToTypeID( "Lyr " ), layerName );           desc.putReference( charIDToTypeID( "null" ), ref );                var ref1 = new ActionReference();                ref1.putProperty( charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "fsel" ) );           desc.putReference( charIDToTypeID( "T   " ), ref1 );           executeAction( charIDToTypeID( "Add " ), desc, DialogModes.NO );           return true;      }catch(e){alert(e);}      return false; } var ref = new ActionReference(); ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID("Lyr "), charIDToTypeID("Ordn"), charIDToTypeID("Trgt") ); var index = executeActionGet(ref).getInteger( stringIDToTypeID( 'itemIndex' ) ); addLayerTransToSelection( index ); ... View more

The function below will add a layer trans to the selection like ctrl-shift-clicking in the layers icon. Note there needs to be an active selection so use the other function posted to load one layer trans then use the function below to add as many layers as you need. function addLayerTransToSelection( layerName ){      try{           var desc = new ActionDescriptor();                var ref = new ActionReference();                ref.putEnumerated( charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "Trsp" ) );                ref.putName( charIDToTypeID( "Lyr " ), layerName );           desc.putReference( charIDToTypeID( "null" ), ref );                var ref1 = new ActionReference();                ref1.putProperty( charIDToTypeID( "Chnl" ), charIDToTypeID( "fsel" ) );           desc.putReference( charIDToTypeID( "T   " ), ref1 );           executeAction( charIDToTypeID( "Add " ), desc, DialogModes.NO );           return true;      }catch(e){}      return false; } ... View more

Here is how to get the date with Photoshop CS4 function loadXMPLibrary(){      if ( !ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript ){           try{                ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript = new ExternalObject('lib:AdobeXMPScript');           }catch (e){                alert("Can't load XMP Script Library");                return false;           }      }      return true; } loadXMPLibrary(); var docXMP = new XMPMeta( app.activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData ); var date = docXMP.getProperty( XMPConst.NS_EXIF, "DateTimeDigitized" );// or "DateTimeOriginal" they are the same with my test files ... View more

As far as I know there is no way to change those setting using a script. You just have to keep that in mind when you run the script and let other users know to check those settings if you share your script. ... View more

I don't think it is a CS4 issue. It seems that exporting using save for web uses the last SFW setting in the GUI. Try doing a normal save for web and make sure that all slices are selected in the slice dropdown. It sounds like it is now set to selected slices ( which would be the last one created ) ... View more

Using you sample image and NetGeek888's suggestion I made a selection using the quick select tool and ran this bit of code ellipseSelection = function( b) {      function cTID(s){return charIDToTypeID(s);}     var desc = new ActionDescriptor();         var ref = new ActionReference();         ref.putProperty( cTID('Chnl'), cTID('fsel') );     desc.putReference( cTID('null'), ref );         var desc1 = new ActionDescriptor();         desc1.putUnitDouble( cTID('Top '), cTID('#Pxl'), b[1].as('px') );         desc1.putUnitDouble( cTID('Left'), cTID('#Pxl'), b[0].as('px') );         desc1.putUnitDouble( cTID('Btom'), cTID('#Pxl'), b[3].as('px')  );         desc1.putUnitDouble( cTID('Rght'), cTID('#Pxl'), b[2].as('px')  );     desc.putObject( cTID('T   '), cTID('Elps'), desc1 );     desc.putBoolean( cTID('AntA'), true );     executeAction( cTID('setd'), desc, DialogModes.NO ); }; ellipseSelection( activeDocument.selection.bounds ); It seems to work well with the sample image and you could refine or transform the selection for an even closer match. ... View more

Here are several things you can do to make the script run faster. First make sure the playback options are set to accelerated. Here is some code from Xbytor cTID = function(s) { return app.charIDToTypeID(s); }; sTID = function(s) { return app.stringIDToTypeID(s); }; Stdlib = function Stdlib() {}; Stdlib.setActionPlaybackOptions = function(opt, arg) {   function _ftn() {     var desc = new ActionDescriptor();     var ref = new ActionReference();     ref.putProperty(cTID("Prpr"), cTID("PbkO"));     ref.putEnumerated(cTID("capp"), cTID("Ordn"), cTID("Trgt"));     desc.putReference(cTID("null"), ref );     var pdesc = new ActionDescriptor();     pdesc.putEnumerated(sTID("performance"), sTID("performance"), sTID(opt));     if (opt == "pause" && arg != undefined) {       pdesc.putInteger(sTID("pause"), parseInt(arg));     }     desc.putObject(cTID("T "), cTID("PbkO"), pdesc );     executeAction(cTID("setd"), desc, DialogModes.NO);   }   _ftn(); }; Stdlib.setPlaybackAcclerated = function() {   Stdlib.setActionPlaybackOptions("accelerated"); }; Stdlib.setPlaybackStepByStep = function() {   Stdlib.setActionPlaybackOptions("stepByStep"); }; Stdlib.setPlaybackPaused = function(delaySec) {   Stdlib.setActionPlaybackOptions("pause", delaySec); }; next togglePalettes() to hide the palettes. And set doc view to as small as it will go. This doesn't help that much so may not be worth the effort. runMenuItem(  charIDToTypeID("ActP") );// fit on screen for(var z = 0; z < 17;z++){      runMenuItem( charIDToTypeID("ZmOt") ); } But even with all that, working with layers using the scripting API can be slow. ... View more

As you plan on making a plugin you may want to ask in the SDK forum. As far as I know there is no access by script to tool options. You can make a selection of any size then apply the average filter to that selection, get the color from the histogram, then undo the filter ... View more