Disaster 1 photoshop action cannot refer to files opened by relative links, they always refer to files by absolute paths, disastrous inter computer portability.

Disaster 2 photoshop has its own internal way of referring to documents and layers and switching documents to files that are already open open in photoshop, in this case it uses relativism without choice and unhelpfully, for instance it refers to Documents in the following style

“select Document -3” -3 i believe relative to say the first document and being incremented subsequently as documents are opened, prior to the point at which an action uses such a command, this means that any action that uses other open documents, are sensitive to failure on the basis windows documents closed and the specific order in which they were opened, that relative “select documents -3 doesnt work unless the documents are opened in the exact same order prescribed by the action and are currently in the correct state for said command, in the action at that moment, so as to point to the right document, this was a very bad design decision to not allow switching and selecting of documents by specific filenames, or at least in the minimal giving the user a choice in the matter ie it doesn’t allow the use specific filenames when it would be clearer to do so ! its this lack of control of relative and non relative linking that destroys most of these actions, especially from a debugging an action point of view. This make ones work life unnecessarily harder, and loses more hours to the iniquitous complexity and failure of software to save time in life.

actions also records documents switching between documents with things like “next document” and previous document, this absolute relativism is disastrously shit, for it only takes having windows in a sightly different state from the order in which the script was recorded to fuck up everything up totally.

it also does things like refer to layers with terms like current layer, meaning if your coding an action and then accidentally select a different layer and carrying on recording the script, it can be affecting the wrong layers when played back.

It appears photoshop insists on relativism in areas where absolutism would be preferable and absolutism when relativism would be preferable, just the right decision to make actions practically useless and a great deal more arduous to write than necessary … GGRRR at least give users the fing choice, then we can pick what is write for the situation.

secondly lots of actions you can do photoshop are not recorded properly in actions in CS5

Disaster 3 for instance attempting pasting into masks of a particular layer, results in the pasted mask being added as an extra normal layer rather than being pasted as a mask in the mask of a layer, the only way round this being to use the load selection command to get a mask from one document into another and then create the mask with option key held down so uses the selection in the mask … pathetic.

Basically if you want actions to run smoothly do not open documents and copy paste things into each other etc it will go horribly wrong, desperately try to stay within one document when using actions.

apparently theres an additional javascript listening interface you can add in to photoshop to control it, presumably because actions are actually a pile of shit, they tacked such an interface on the side no doubt to placate the people who were disgusted with flakey patchiness of photoshop supposed built in automation scripting – actions, it is indicated that this has some proper control, but I might state the reason why one might use a GUI to do image editing in the first place is because your a visual person, if i wanted to code in javascript I would be working as a web developer earning twice the money, im not interested in whether theyre are more complex ways of solving problems with software, software should always be purchased on the basis of reducing complexity involved in task not increasing it, should I now spend an entire week learning the photoshop javascript interface ? would it be a worthwhile use of my life ? will it be as buggy as actions ? will it be redundant in a year or two ? all such variables to be considered when time is precious ?

I’ve bothered to learn computer languages before basic and “Lingo” for instance only to have the merit of doing so made pointless, by seemingly every decent natural language programming language ever created being eventually forcibly prostituted into some form of cryptic hair pulling javascript, JT thompson you had vision and understanding of the kinds of minds theyre are in the world and enabled a whole other class of people to get into visual inguistic programming in a relaxed way, natural language programming has declined in the last 15 years, even disregarding the fact the processor power has multiplied to such an extent as to make natural language coding more viable than ever, but no apparently everything must be some form object orientated javascript, remember flashes descent into javascript anyone ? two dead products flash and director. Why is it that companies would always rather add additional features than write something properly or fix something they got wrong, its also unpleasant to be dictated as a user as regards relative and non relative file path linking there is no logical reason for this. So much code goes unfixed even in products people charge allot of money for.

Also droplets dont appear to be able to save anywhere on the fing disk as well !!!!

And as a user I can write in and out of that folder all day long no problem, its a problem with photoshop and especially when using droplets actions, I can save there normally in photoshop without using a droplet as well.

the droplet always comes up with this error >

Could not save as “xxxxxx0001.psd” because the file is locked or you do not have the necessary access privileges. Use the ‘Get Info’ command in the Finder to unlock the file or change permissions on the file or enclosing folders.

permissions are all fine for all other programs and user only photoshop droplets seems to have this issue ? more wank to troubleshoot thanks adobe, i’ll guess i’ll google why your software doesn’t work again.