Script to insert image into existing PSD

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
,
#1

Hello all, been using this site as a resource for a while now, but this is my first time posting.

Basicly, I’m trying to automate the creation of student IDs. I have the script set up to get all the relevant information from a database, and drop it into a photoshop template that I created. The wall I ran into is trying to automate the placing of the picture. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get an image (probably a Jpeg, but if it’s important to know the exact filetype, I can ask) into the PSD at all. It would be best to be able to drop it into a specific layer, but right now, just getting it in the PSD at all would be a huge step. I have tried everything I can think of, but nothing is working.

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance for any help. You guys are great.

#2

Hi,

Photoshop isn’t the ideal application for this purpose.
Actually InDesign is much more appropriate to this job.

Anyway, the AppleScript dictionary doesn’t provide any way to place a file,
but javascript does


set The_File to POSIX path of (choose file)

tell application "Adobe Photoshop CS3"
	activate
	tell current document
		do javascript "placeFile(); function placeFile() {function cTID(s) { return app.charIDToTypeID(s); }; var desc = new ActionDescriptor(); desc.putPath( cTID('null'), new File( '" & The_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 );}" show debugger on runtime error
	end tell
end tell
#3

You are the man. That worked perfectly. Thank you so much for your help.

By the way, I know Photoshop isn’t ideal for this, but thats what they’ve always been using so all the templates were basically created already. If I had to build from scratch I would have done Illustrator.

#4

Stefan, that JavaScript is pretty much a recording of doing a menu item very much like you could do with system events. The benefit of the JavaScript is you don’t require a system preference to be active to use it. That a side you should have a new boolean in open class for smart object although I don’t have CS3 myself to see how it works.

#5

I have no idea, what this javascript does exactly, I found it somewhere with google

#6

It’s a cleaned up bit of Photoshop’s ScriptListener plug-in’s output. It records all that you do in Photoshop to a text log in action descriptor code.