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Photoshop Scripting After Flash
23 June 2014
As we discussed in Updating To Photoshop CC 2014, Flash-based panels like those built with Configurator are not supported in the new version of Photoshop.
In April Adobe's Jeff Tranberry blogged about the change as a consequence of "modernizing" the code. He warned that Mini Bridge, Kuler and Third Party Panels would be removed. Configurator, presumably, among the latter.
If your Configurator panels are essential tools, you can still run them with Photoshop CC, which can live side by side with Photoshop CC 2014.
HTML5
Flash may be gone, but Adobe introduced HTML5 extensions when Creative Cloud was launced in 2012. In September 21013, Hallgrimur Bjornsson explained the advantages in Introducing HTML5 Extensions:
These new panels open up the world of panel development to a wider range of developers who may be more comfortable working with HTML/JavaScript and CSS. Since June, support for HTML5-based panels has been added to more Adobe products. As of now Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC and Prelude CC support HTML5-based panels.
That blog entry includes two videos, primarily of interest to developers, showing how to build and debut an HTML5 extension with the free Adobe Extension Builder 3 and how the extension can use the Creative Cloud.
That, though, is steep sledding for non-developers (the undaunted may find Starting Photoshop HTML5 Extension Development and this Beginners Guide helpful). Configurator made it no harder than using drag-and-drop to create an interface of application tools to get a job done. So there's a big hole at the moment.
SCRIPTING PHOTOSHOP
Photoshop has always been scriptable, though, and this version is no different. Adobe has already released documentation for Photoshop CC 2014 scriptiing. There are four PDFs for the poison of your choice:
- Photoshop CC Scripting Guide (402-KB)
- Photoshop CC AppleScript Reference (1.5-MB)
- Photoshop CC JavaScript Reference (1.9-MB)
- Photoshop CC VBScript Reference (705-KB)
Put your money on JavaScript. The company has, in the past, wondered out loud if it should continue support for AppleScript.
And Russell Brown's scripts, which will give you an idea how far you can go down this trail, are written JavaScript. The open source code is available for many of them, as well.
As Transberry said, "Developers are now able to leverage the same tools they use to build web applications to build panels." So picking up a little jQuery (designers might like this approach) would be the easy way to add a user interface to your script.
Update (25 June): In On the Adobe panel migration from Flash to HTML, John Nack, who breathed life into Configurator when he was at Adobe, links to an HTML version of the Kuler panel plus links to more references on building HTML panels.