Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Siva's Photoshop Conditional Action

Hi all,

This is a tool I scripted for myself that I would like to share with all fellow Photoshopers. It allows you to execute your Actions based on Conditions. No programming needed. Just click and define your conditions.. Some examples of conditions are as follows :

i) If the image height is greater than its width, do Action X, or else do else Y
ii) If the image format is JPG / PSD / BMP do action...
iii) If the image file size is bigger than 300KB, do action....
iv) if the image IS/IS NOT of RGB, CMYK... etc
v) if image author is Siva, do action...
vi) if image exif contains Nikon D70s, do action ....
vii) if image name contains "paris", do action...
etc
etc

You can define lots of conditions that suit your workflow and needs. The list of image properties that can be 'conditioned' are as follows :
Format, height, width, file name , file size, resolution, color mode, color profile name, color profile type, bits per channel, pixel aspect ratio, author, caption, category, copyright type, copyright notice, country, exif, keywords, title..

Download Siva's Photoshop Conditional Action.

if the above link does not work, go to http://sivaratnam.googlepages.com and download it from there.

Steps to install :
1) Download the zip file above.
2) Unzip the 'Siva's Photoshop Conditional Action.jsx' file to a folder.
3) Copy the extracted file to your photoshop cs2 presets/script folder. in my case, the path is :
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Scripts .
The path might be different on your computer.
4) In Photoshop, access the script by clicking File -> Scripts -> Siva's Photoshop Conditional Action. Screenshot

IMPORTANT - make sure you define a output folder for your action. The script itself does NOT change the original file. You have to explicitly record a step at the end of your action to save the file. Refer to this screenshot for example. Make sure you define the path ONLY, and not the file name in the save as step in your action.

The script works fine for Photoshop CS2 on Windows XP. I have not yet tested it on the Mac.
For FAQ and Help File please refer to the next post.

Siva
sivaratnam at gmail dott com