Edit an Action as a text file and save again as an Action

Ronal Walraven · Post by **Ronal Walraven** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 6:04 pm

I am looking for a way to edit an Action in a text editor and then saving it as an Action. I found how to save an Action as a text file and open it in a text editor and edit it but I have not found out how to save it back as an Action. Can this be done. I am using a Windows PC, Windows XP, and Photoshop CS.

xbytor · Post by **xbytor** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 6:47 pm

Adobe provides no facilities to do this, nor do they provide documentation for the Action File format(s). I have written a perl script that will read most of PS6, PS7, and PSCS actions files and spit out and XML representation. However, since I cannot parse out things like Path objects (again, no docs) I don't have anyway of safely reconstructing and Action File. If you have some way of getting me the Action File Format docs for CS or CS2, I'll finish my little perl-XML project, then we can edit Action files with our favorite text/xml editors. I haven't heard of anybody getting any closer that this.

BTW, I did get ahold of the PS6 docs which is why I was able to make the progess that I did. They don't make the docs available anymore, for some odd reason.

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Sat Jun 04, 2005 9:48 pm

Hi Ronal, welcome to ps-scripts.

What are you wanting to achieve with editing the action? Possibly by using actions converted to scripts (via the script listener) you can do what you are looking for.

Andrew

Ronal Walraven · Post by **Ronal Walraven** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 2:21 am

Andrew, you are up very early or late in New Zealand. I am trying to create an action that will put a © year first last name (I.E. © 2005 Ronal Walraven) on a mixture of images of various sizes (4x6, 6x4, 5x7, 7x5, 8x10, 10x8) all of the same PPI. I created a custom shape of the above and use it in the action. I am trying to edit the action to use a different custom shape in lieu of recording the placement of a new custom shape. I am not familiar with "script listener". I will see what I can find out about it.

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:00 am

Look in the chapter Utilities: Action manager scripting in the Adobe Photoshop Javascript Reference for info on the script listener.

It sounds to me like this might work.

OTOH it also sounds like it would be directly scriptable as well. Perhaps you should go through exactly what the task is more slowly (like describe the task and the options you would like in doing the task).

Andrew

Andrew · Post by **Andrew** » Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:03 am

BTW, I did get ahold of the PS6 docs which is why I was able to make the progess that I did. They don't make the docs available anymore, for some odd reason.

well I wonder why that might be lol

Andrew