Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: E_Edwards on October 09, 2007, 06:21:38 pm

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: E_Edwards on October 09, 2007, 06:21:38 pm

I use various Photoshop actions to batch-save my master files ready to deliver to clients as flatenned CMYKs.

The actions typically involve flattening the layers, resizing, converting to CMYK, final sharpening for repro, stripping any Alpha chanels or Paths and so on.

This is where I run into trouble sometimes.

If the action includes, say, "remove Path 1." and one of the files in the batch happens not to have any Paths anyway, the Photoshop action will stop and give you an error, because it's trying to delete something (the Path) that is not there.

I can't see an option such as "if this condition is True...do this...else...do that" which is normal in any programing language.

The only way round I've found is the option for Photoshop to write the errors as a log file, in which case it will continue the batch action till the end, and leave the files affected open for you to deal with them individually.

This if fine if it only affects a couple of files, but what about a situation where you have, say 300 files to process, and 20 per cent give error.

There may be an easy solution to this, rather than segregating files into different folders depending on content.  Anyone knows?

I also have Quickeys, maybe convining a Quickeys script and Photoshop actions?

Edward

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: digitaldog on October 09, 2007, 06:47:07 pm

Photoshop actions don't support conditionals.

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: luong on October 09, 2007, 07:48:24 pm

You need to write a script. Here is a tutorial for a start: http://www.kirupa.com/motiongraphics/ps_scripting.htm (http://www.kirupa.com/motiongraphics/ps_scripting.htm)

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: E_Edwards on October 09, 2007, 08:04:32 pm

Quote

You need to write a script. Here is a tutorial for a start: http://www.kirupa.com/motiongraphics/ps_scripting.htm (http://www.kirupa.com/motiongraphics/ps_scripting.htm)
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Thank you, this is very useful, it's exactly what I needed to know to go beyond Photoshop's basic Actions, and I am used to basic scripting, so I'll enjoy following this up.

Edward

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: Graham Mitchell on October 09, 2007, 08:26:09 pm

This sounds interesting. I have also been missing conditional actions.

Title: Photoshop actions for batch save
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on October 10, 2007, 01:04:05 am

Quote

This sounds interesting. I have also been missing conditional actions.
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Me too!