Adobe 23101764 - Photoshop CS - PC Manuale utente

ADOBE SYSTEMS INCORPORATED

Corporate Headquarters

345 Park Avenue

San Jose, CA 95110-2704

(408) 536-6000

http://partners.adobe.com

bbc

October 2003

Photoshop CS

Scripting Guide

Adobe Photoshop Scripting Guide

The information in this document is furnished for informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be

construed as a commitment by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Systems Incorporated assumes no responsibility or liability for

any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this document.The software described in this document is furnished under license and

may only be used or copied in accordance with the terms of such license.

Adobe,Photoshop,and PostScript areeither registeredtrademarksor trademarksof AdobeSystems Incorporated inthe UnitedStates

and/or other countries. Apple, Macintosh, and Mac are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. registered in the United States and other

countries.Microsoft andWindows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or

other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

iii

Table of contents

Chapter 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.1 About this manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1.2 What is scripting? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.3 Why use scripting?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.4 What about actions? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.5 System requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.6 JavaScript . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.7 Choosing a scripting language. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.8 Legacy COM scripting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.9 New Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

1.10 What’s Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Chapter 2 Scripting basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.1 Documents as objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.2 Object model concepts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3 Object Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.4 Documenting scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.5 Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.6 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.7 Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.8 Commands and methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.9 Handlers, subroutines and functions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.10 Debugging and Error Handling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2.11 What’s Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Chapter 3 Scripting Photoshop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31

3.1 Photoshop scripting guidelines. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3.2 Viewing Photoshop objects, commands and methods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3.3 Your ﬁrst Photoshop script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

3.4 Advanced Scripting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Table of contents

3.5 Object references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

3.6 Working with units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3.7 Executing JavaScripts from AS orVB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

3.8 The Application object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

3.9 Document object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

3.10 Layer objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

3.11 Text item object. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3.12 Selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

3.13 Working with Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

3.14 Channel object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

3.15 Color objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

3.16 History object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

3.17 Clipboard interaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

1.1 About this manual

This manual provides an introduction to scriptingAdobe

Photoshop

CS on Mac OS and

Windows

. Chapter one covers the basic conventions used in this manual and provides an

overview of requirements for scripting Photoshop.

Chapter two covers the Photoshop object model as well as generic scripting terminology,

concepts and techniques. Code examples are provided in three languages:

• AppleScript

•Visual Basic

•JavaScript

Note

: Separate reference manuals are available for each of these languages and accompany

this Scripting Guide. The reference manuals are located on the installation CD.

Chapter three covers Photoshop-speciﬁc objects and components and describes advanced

techniques for scripting the Photoshop application.

Note

: Please review the

README

ﬁle shipped with Photoshop CS for late-breaking news,

sample scripts, and information about oustanding issues.

1.1.1 Conventions in this guide

Code and speciﬁc language samples appear in monospaced courier font:

app.documents.add();

Several conventions are used when referring to AppleScript, Visual Basic and JavaScript.

Please note the following shortcut notations:

• AS stands for AppleScript

• VB stands for Visual Basic

• JS stands for JavaScript

The term “commands” will be used to refer both to commands in AppleScript and methods in

Visual Basic and JavaScript.

When referring to speciﬁc properties and commands, this manual follows the AppleScript

naming convention for that property and the Visual Basic and JavaScript names appear in

parenthesis. For example:

“The

display dialogs

(

DisplayDialogs/displayDialogs

) property is part of the

Application object.”

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

What is scripting?

In this case,

display dialogs

refers to theAppleScript property,

DisplayDialogs

refers

to the Visual Basic property and

displayDialogs

refers to the JavaScript property, as

illustrated below.

Once you become familiar with this notation, simply focus on the values and description for

the language you intend to use, ignoring the rest.

For larger blocks of code, scripting examples are often placed side by side.

AppleScript

layer 1 of layer set 1 of current document

Visual Basic

appRef.ActiveDocument.LayerSets(1).Layers(1)

JavaScript

app.activeDocument.layerSets[0].layers[0];

Finally, tables are sometimes used to organize lists of values speciﬁc to each scripting

language.

1.2 What is scripting?

A script is a series of commands that tells Photoshop to perform a set of speciﬁed actions, such

as applying different ﬁlters to selections in an open document. These actions can be simple,

and affect only a single object, or complex and affect many objects in a Photoshop document.

The actions can call Photoshop alone or invoke other applications.

Scripts automate repetitive tasks and are often used as a creative tool to streamline tasks that

might be too time consuming to do manually. For example, you could write a script to generate

a number of localized versions of a particular image; or to gather information about the

various color proﬁles used by a collection of images.

The display dialogs (DisplayDialogs/displayDialogs) property is part of the

Application object.

Visual Basic JavaScript

AppleScript

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

Why use scripting?

1.3 Why use scripting?

Graphic design is a ﬁeld characterized by creativity, but aspects of the actual work of

illustration and image manipulation are anything but creative. Scripting provides a tool to help

save time spent on repetitive production tasks such as resizing or reformatting documents.

Start with short, simple scripts such as those described in this manual and move on to more

involved scripts as you become more proﬁcient.Any repetitive task is a good candidate for a

script. Once you can identify the steps and conditions involved in performing the task, you’re

ready to write a script to take care of it.

1.4 What about actions?

Photoshop actions are different from scripts. A Photoshop action is a series of tasks you have

recorded while using the application—menu choices, tool choices, selection, and other

commands. When you “play” an action, Photoshop performs all of the recorded commands.

Actions and scripts are two ways of automating repetitive tasks, but they work very differently.

•You cannot add conditional logic to an action. Unlike a script, actions cannot make

decisions based on the current situation.

•Asingle script can target multiple hosts.Actions can’t. For example, you could target both

Photoshop and Illustrator in the same script.

The Actions palette, invoked under the Window menu, supports actions with a great deal of

sophistication (including the ability to display dialogs) and allows users to work with selected

objects, as illustrated below.

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

System requirements

1.5 System requirements

The language you use to write scripts depends on your operating system:AppleScript for Mac;

Visual Basic for Windows; or JavaScript, a cross-platform scripting language that can run on

either Windows or Mac. While the scripting systems differ, the ways that they work with

Photoshop are very similar.

1.5.1 Mac

Any system that runs Photoshop CS will support scripting.You will also needAppleScript and

a script editor installed.AppleScript and the Script Editor application fromApple are included

with the Mac OS. For Mac OS X, they can be found in the Applications folder. If these items

are not installed on your system, reinstall them from your original system software CD-ROM.

As your scripts become more complex, you may ﬁnd the need for debugging and productivity

features not found in the Script Editor. There are many third-party script editors that can write

and debugApple Scripts. For more details, check:

http://www.apple.com/applescript

We use the Script Editor from Apple in this manual.

For more information on theAppleScript scripting environment, see Section 3.2.1, “Viewing

Photoshop’s AppleScript dictionary

1.5.2 Windows

Any Windows system that runs Photoshop CS will support scripting.You will also need either

the Windows Scripting Host, MicrosoftVisual Basic, or one of the applications that contains a

Visual Basic editor. Most Windows systems include theWindows Scripting Host. If you do not

have Windows Scripting Host or would like more information about Windows Scripting Host,

visit the Microsoft Windows Script Technologies Web site at:

(http://msdn.microsoft.com/scripting/).

We use the Microsoft Visual Basic developer framework to edit scripts in this manual.

For more information on the Visual Basic scripting environment, see Section 3.2.2, “Viewing

Photoshop’s type library (VB)

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

JavaScript

1.6 JavaScript

In addition to writingAppleScripts and Visual Basic scripts, you can also write cross-platform

JavaScripts (using the text editor or your choice) on either the Mac or Windows platform.

Photoshop provides a built-in, platform-independent framework for executing JavaScripts.

The easiest way to run your JavaScripts is to use the “File>Scripts” menu. JavaScripts are

stored in or accessed through the Scripts folder.

Scripts folder

The Scripts folder is located in the “Presets” folder of your Photoshop installation. All

JavaScript ﬁles placed in the Scripts folder are available for execution from the Scripts menu.

On both Mac and Windows, JavaScript ﬁles must be saved as text ﬁles with a '.js' ﬁle name

extension.

For more information on the JavaScript scripting environment, see Section 3.2.3, “Viewing the

JavaScript Environment.

1.7 Choosing a scripting language

Your choice of scripting language is determined by two trade-offs:

Do you need to run the same script on both Macintosh and Windows computers?

Do you need to control multiple applications from the same script?

As mentioned earlier, JavaScript is a cross-platform language that works on either platform.

The same script will perform identically on Windows and Macintosh computers. However,

JavaScript is invoked from the Scripts menu within Photoshop and lacks the facilities to

directly address other applications. For example, you cannot easily write a JavaScript to

manage workﬂows involving Photoshop and a database management program.

AppleScript andVisual Basic are only offered on their respective platforms. However, you can

write scripts in those languages to control multiple applications. For example, you can write an

AppleScript that ﬁrst manipulates a bitmap in Photoshop and then commands a web design

application to incorporate it. This same cross-application capability is also available with

Visual Basic on Windows.

You may also use other scripting languages when working with Photoshop. On Mac OS, any

language which lets you send Apple events can be used to script Photoshop.

On Windows, any language which is COM aware can be used to script Photoshop.

Photoshop CS Scripting Guide

Introduction

Legacy COM scripting

1.8 Legacy COM scripting

Photoshop CS supports legacy COM scripting as long as you modify the way that you refer to

the Photoshop application object in your scripts. For example, instead of saying:

Set appRef = CreateObject("Photoshop.Application")

you must change the above code to read:

Set appRef = CreateObject("Photoshop.Application.8.1")

No other change is necessary for legacy COM scripts to run under Photoshop CS.

1.9 New Features

• Layer Comps

New to Photoshop CS is the ability to group layers into a "layer comp" or layer

composition.

A layer comp is a snapshot of a state of the Layers palette. Layer comps record three types

of layer options: layer visibility (whether a layer in the Layers palette is showing or

hidden); layer position in the document; and layer appearance (whether a layer style is

applied to the layer).

Designers often create multiple compositions or "comps" of a page layout to show clients.

Using layer comps, you can create, manage and view multiple versions of a layout in a

single Photoshop or ImageReady ﬁle.

•Web Photo Gallery

One of the most popular features of Photoshop is the ability to create a web photo gallery

out of a folder of ﬁles.You can now perform the same function through scripting.

•JavaScripts get their own Scripts menu

JavaScripts now join AppleScript and Visual Basic scripts as ﬁrst-class citizens.You can

add your own custom JavaScripts to the Photoshop menu system. The JavaScripts you

write are displayed in the “File->Scripts” menu item along with several pre-built

JavaScripts that ship with the product.

• UI for JavaScript

New to Photoshop CS is the ability to create graphical interface objects, such as windows

and panels, employing the JavaScript programming language. UI for JavaScripts is covered

in the JavaScript Reference Guide.

•Paths

Although Illustrator is the premier path (or

vector

) editing application, many users want to

modify their path items in Photoshop. This release of Photoshop allows you to manipulate

the path items and obtain path points in a Photoshop document. Functions include the

ability to create, modify, delete and copy paths using scripts.

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