Advice on PS action

Hi,

If I'm photographing a book as single pages and I want to then attach pages 1 and 2, 3 and 4, so that it will be displayed as a book, how do I batch that for a bunch of files so that I can point an action to a folder of 200 files and just leave it to get on with it?

Any ideas?

I just can't work out how to make an action pick pictures 1&2 then 2&3, etc.

I can't think of how you could do that without a variable to act as an index.

You could separate out the images into left and right, and make an action for each folder that would change the canvas size appropriately, but you'd still be stuck with a lot of drag and drop to pair them up.

Yeah need to make it automated.

Bob Rogers said:

I can't think of how you could do that without a variable to act as an index.

You could separate out the images into left and right, and make an action for each folder that would change the canvas size appropriately, but you'd still be stuck with a lot of drag and drop to pair them up.

Click to expand...

As Bob said, it won't be doable using actions. However, you can run scripts (3 flavors: AppleScript, VBScript, JavaScript) instead of actions. Scripts can be programmed to use conditional logic, loops, etc. See this document by Adobe as a good starting point.

PS: there is even a ScriptListener plug-in to create scripts easily.

You can automate Photoshop with Javascript, and that has variables.

Make the individual actions into droplets, and then you could use Javascript to pick the files out of the folder and send them to the droplets.

Unfortunately, I don't program Java, or I'd do it for you, but it shouldn't be all that difficult.

I can't program a TV nevermind a script

Anyone want to quote me for a script like this?

Ben Rubinstein said:

I can't program a TV nevermind a script

Anyone want to quote me for a script like this?

Click to expand...

Ben I would love to help you free of charge, if I had the time for it. In case you are not in a hurry, please send me a PM with the details of what you want to achieve and I will have a go at it. But I cannot promise that it will be done on the short term.

I need it by January, is that too short a timespan?

Ben Rubinstein said:

I need it by January, is that too short a timespan?

Click to expand...

It could be doable. Can you let me know what exactly are you looking for? In the meantime, just to make sure that you are not left w/o a solution due to my negligence, why don't you ask this question in the Independent Photoshop Scripting Community? They have a help me forum and also some people who offer their services.

After a bunch of PM's with Cem, the answer is Contact Sheet X, a free PS script which does what I need perfectly! The only thing I'm still missing is a way to batch rename files as 001002. 003004, 005006, etc. If it can be done in bridge then I'd be very happy but otherwise if there are any programs that can do this?

If you want to batch rename in time sequence (i.e., based on the time stamp) then you might want to look at irfanview. It can do batch renames with wildcards.

Not on time sequence but so that the file is 001002 and then the next file 003004 and the next 005006. Can Irfanview do that?

Actually it's windows only, the workstation the project will be using is Mac I'm afraid.

Hi Ben.

Ben Rubinstein said:

Not on time sequence but so that the file is 001002 and then the next file 003004 and the next 005006. Can Irfanview do that?

Actually it's windows only, the workstation the project will be using is Mac I'm afraid.

Click to expand...

This too is doable with a bit of an imagination, lol (i.e. must be a 2-step process). This is how it is done in IrfanView:
1) Open IV and press B to activate batch rename
2) Choose your input files and add to the project
3) Establish the renaming scheme to contain a sequential number, starting at 1 and use an increment of 2. This will rename all the files to 001, 003, 005, etc.,
4) Choose those files as your input and create a new scheme. First part is the original file name, and the second part is a sequence starting at 2, with an increment of 2. This will result in 001002, 003004, 005006, etc.

Unfortunately, you need to use either IrfanView or some other renaming program which allows sequence numbers with an increment which can be set to 2. I know that Bridge does not do that. I don't know if there are Mac renaming programs which do that. But in the worst case you can copy the files to a pc and rename there, can't you?

It's a shame Bridge doesn't do that. Copying to a PC isn't really an option, it's going to be a powerful MacPro workstation churning through thousands of 40 megapixel files a day, literally, we can't really afford to have something that disruptive in the workflow.

Ben Rubinstein said:

It's a shame Bridge doesn't do that. Copying to a PC isn't really an option, it's going to be a powerful MacPro workstation churning through thousands of 40 megapixel files a day, literally, we can't really afford to have something that disruptive in the workflow.

Click to expand...

But is this not the last step in the workflow, it would not interrupt per se? Or perhaps you can connect the Mac to a network and share the output folder. Then use a pc and access the network drive to rename? Or use this program on the Mac, only $20.