Photoshop Scripting Basics: Scripting for Photoshop

Scripting for Photoshop

Scripting allows you to tell Photoshop exactly what you want it to do through a series of instructions. You can create scripts to automate tasks such as adding a watermark to your photos or applying a combination of filters for a certain effect. Scripting is recommended for advance Photoshop users.

Why not use recorded actions in Photoshop instead? Creating actions is a lot easier than writing scripts but actions can't make decisions making it only able to repeat the same steps over and over again. Creating scripts for Photoshop allows you to add logic to your scripts so that they can change their behaviors according to the decision they make.

Languages
Photoshop scripts support three different scripting languages:

• AppleScript - Compatible with Macs only. Able to communicate with multiple applications and services.
• Visual Basics - Compatible with Windows only. Able to communicate with multiple applications and services.
• JavaScript - Will worth with both Mac or Windows but is unable to communicate with different application and services. JavaScript is also a transferable skill you can use in web development or ActionScripting for Flash.

It is always better to write in JavaScript whenever possible due to its cross-platform capabilities.

Running a Script
Only versions of Adobe Photoshop 7 and above are capable of running scripts. Photoshop CS & CS2 already have it built in but you'll need to install a plug-in if you're using Photoshop 7. For Photoshop 7 users, you can download the Photoshop 7.0 Scripting plug-in from adobe.com and install it.

Lets begin by running a script. To run a script in Photoshop 7, go to File> Automate> Scripts and select a script to run. For Photoshop CS & CS2 users, the Scripts menu us located under File> Scripts. You may select an existing script or run an example script from the Scripting Guide\Sample Scripts\JavaScript inside your Adobe Photoshop directory.