You could create an action to load the requisite action sets from the network and have that run automatically at startup.
Michael, I seem not to be able to record an Action that manages Action Sets, the Clear, Load and Replace actions -commands are grayed out while recording. Is there a trick to do this?
Also, how to make an Action to run at startup?
Thank you,
Matti
Might be worth asking in the Scripting Forum. Someone might already have create a script to do this (or might offer to whip one up in their lunch hour 😉 ).
Matti:
Does more than one person update actions that are common to all users or is there only "one person" adding/changing actions?
Does everyone use the exact same sets of actions, or is there a common group that everyone uses, but individuals (like a team with specific responsibilities) have sets loaded that others do not?
So is there a way to have the current action sets to be automatically reloaded at startup?
Yes. Instead of invoking photoshop directly, always launch via a shell script. Have the shell script do this:
1) Copy a default Actions Palette on top of the users existing psp. This is how the old actions are removed from the palette.
2) Launch PS.
3) Run PS again but this time pass in the complete path to the atn file(s). This will cause PS to load the action files. You can also load actions from scripts so you have a couple of different ways of tackling this problem.
I don’t know if Photoshop needs to be completely loaded before 3) can occur but it would be easy enough to stick a pause in there to give it time to completely come up.
Currently, there is no way of forcing PS to save the Actions Palette. This only happens during shutdown.
However, a script can be written that will save one or more of the loaded action sets out to disk. You would have to manually run the script, but it is possible.
Another thing that’s possible is to unpack the Actions Palette’s psp file out into a complete set of atn files. Then you could copy them around, share them, and manage them. But I suspect that there is already a tool out there that covers some of this ground.
Also, how to make an Action to run at startup? You can register an action to run at startup. See the Script Events Manager.
-X
If you can’t use an action to load action sets, use a script and run it at startup.
Danny, 7 people are using two common action sets (these sets can be combined in to one sest of course), two of us are active with actions (improving them and creating new ones). Actions are rather stable, perhaps only 1 change per month. When a change is made to an action set then one should to go through all the computers and do the ClearActions followed by LoadActions but it is not possible to do so at that very moment since these computers are being used by somebody. So it is easy to forget the updating. Then when a new change to the action set is made on such computer where the last update of the actions was forgotten it gets messy. Some of us do use personal actions but those sets may be cleared at will, they then need to reload such sets.
Matti
Xbytor, with a shell script do you refer to a *.BAT file? I found the ‘Actions Palette.psp’ but unfortunately the path to it is not the same on all computers, I’m not sure if BAT has enough commands to resolve this.
OK, on one computer I created a new action, closed PS, then took a copy of the ‘Actions Palette.psp’, went to another computer, closed the PS on that, replaced the ‘Actions Palette.psp’ with that copy. Seems to work, now the only problem is to distribute that ‘Actions Palette.psp’ properly. Also seems that PS must not be running at the time when the ‘Actions Palette.psp’ is replaced.
Matti
Michael wrote:
"If you can’t use an action to load action sets, use a script and run it at startup."
Well, I’m rather sure that no-one can use an Action to clear nor load Actions.
Now that I have "found" the Scripting functionality of PS (I have been aware that scripting is there but have not got acquainted with it) I realize that it offers plenty of power for customization. I have found the way to run a script when PS starts and I was even able to modify a simple script that I found from the Web so that it does what we need, it now resamples an image so that the long side is 400px no matter if the image is landscape or portrait, great.
But I do not find the command that would do the ‘Clear the Actions’ and a ‘Load an Action set’ from the ‘JavaScript Reference Guide.pdf’, been reading that for the last 24h.
What I only need is that at the startup of Photoshop the script would first issue the ‘Clear all Actions’ command and then it would do a ‘Load Actions’ command (taking the *.atn from the folder on the network drive).
Matti
