Assign short-cut to external program

NF
Posted By
Nicolas Fleury
Feb 26, 2004
Views
207
Replies
7
Status
Closed
Hi everyone,
Does anyone knows a way to assign an external program (running it) to a short-cut in Photoshop.
Thx and Regards,
Nicolas

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Eric Gill
Feb 26, 2004
Nicolas Fleury wrote in news:nTq%b.2466
$:

Hi everyone,
Does anyone knows a way to assign an external program (running it) to a short-cut in Photoshop.

Not without learning some scripting. However, if you’re running Windows, you can assign a system-wide shortcut to a shortcut on your desktop. Very handy.
NF
Nicolas Fleury
Feb 26, 2004
Eric Gill wrote:
Not without learning some scripting. However, if you’re running Windows, you can assign a system-wide shortcut to a shortcut on your desktop. Very handy.

Do you know of any way with scripting?
Thx and Regards,
Nicolas
J
john
Feb 27, 2004
In article <nTq%b.2466$>, Nicolas Fleury
wrote:

Does anyone knows a way to assign an external program (running it) to a short-cut in Photoshop.

May I ask why? You can’t affect the image currently in PS by running an external program, and the Mac and WindoZe desktop or program bars are as close as a PS button. Just curious.
NF
Nicolas Fleury
Feb 27, 2004
jjs wrote:
Does anyone knows a way to assign an external program (running it) to a short-cut in Photoshop.

May I ask why? You can’t affect the image currently in PS by running an external program, and the Mac and WindoZe desktop or program bars are as close as a PS button. Just curious.

I think you can affect the image currently in PS by using the COM interface. I have artists who want to have the ability to save images in 8 bits .tga and .bmp and we already have an external program doing the job. A compromise could have been to have short-cuts in PS to do the job. I think I will have no choice but buy the PS SDK 🙁

Regards,
Nicolas
J
JJS
Feb 27, 2004
"Nicolas Fleury" wrote in message
jjs wrote:
Does anyone knows a way to assign an external program (running it) to a short-cut in Photoshop.

May I ask why? You can’t affect the image currently in PS by running an external program, and the Mac and WindoZe desktop or program bars are as close as a PS button. Just curious.

I think you can affect the image currently in PS by using the COM interface.

That’s not true. If an external program makes a change to the image currently on your screen in PS/CS then it won’t show on your screen. You will have to close the current image and open the new one – providing you don’t run into an unfortunate file-lock problem. But keep reading, please.

I have artists who want to have the ability to save images in 8 bits .tga and .bmp and we already have an external program doing the job. A compromise could have been to have short-cuts in PS to do the job. I think I will have no choice but buy the PS SDK 🙁

If I understand your objective, then Photoshop (CS) can do that without any problem. Just create a Droplet. The artists won’t even have to interact with PS. It’s autoMagic as far as they are concerned.

Further, using a Droplet means you can actually invoke the droplet through the COM (cmd, command) interface, passing it arguments (file names, etc) if necessary. I posted the How To some months ago, perhaps a year ago.

No need to drag out the SDK. Press HELP and look at AUTOMATE and DROPLETS. That is, if I understand your problem properly.

Let’s dive into this with a real-life example. Lay out the senario in detail and let us have at it. The outcome might surprise you. (Or me, if I misunderstand what you need/want.)
NF
Nicolas Fleury
Feb 27, 2004
jjs wrote:
Let’s dive into this with a real-life example. Lay out the senario in detail and let us have at it. The outcome might surprise you. (Or me, if I misunderstand what you need/want.)

Thx for your time. Well, first we are using Photoshop 7. Since there’s no option in PS7 to save in 8 bits .bmp and .tga, we have an external program doing the conversion from 16 bits to 8 bits. What I’m trying to do is simplify the life of PS artists to not execute this program (and not forget it), or at least do it more easily. I can use naming convention and run a daemon program waiting for file changes to do the conversion or I can find a way so that artists can save directly in the desired format.

As you suggest, I’ve looked at droplets. Maybe it’s because I’m not using CS, but droplets in PS7 seems to need an action, and I’m not able to make an action runan external program.

Thx and Regards,
Nicolas
J
JJS
Feb 27, 2004
"Nicolas Fleury" wrote in message
jjs wrote:
Let’s dive into this with a real-life example. Lay out the senario in
detail
and let us have at it. The outcome might surprise you. (Or me, if I misunderstand what you need/want.)

Thx for your time. Well, first we are using Photoshop 7. Since there’s no option in PS7 to save in 8 bits .bmp and .tga, we have an external program doing the conversion from 16 bits to 8 bits. What I’m trying to do is simplify the life of PS artists to not execute this program (and not forget it), or at least do it more easily. I can use naming convention and run a daemon program waiting for file changes to do the conversion or I can find a way so that artists can save directly in the desired format.

The moment I hit RETURN I remembered there was no 8-bit save option for Targa. *blush*

You are clearly on the right track. I use the ‘watched’ directory on a network server for a number of things like that and can’t think of any better way for your case. Perhaps someone else can chime in here. It’s beyond me now. 🙂

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