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Terminal for Photoshop

almost 9 years ago from , Co-founder at AppSignal

I was talking to a developer today about Photoshop, and we thought it might be handy to have a kind of terminal window within Photoshop so you can give it commands.

I often want to center things within the bounds of the document and I think it would be cool to have a series of commands such as

_ center in doc

I also often want to change the fill color + text color of two different layers.

_ color + fill $orange

With some nice commands, autocomplete and customisable commands, would this be something you'd want as well? I'd see this as a crossover between shortcuts and actions, leveraging the power of variables and the speed of the keyboard.

26 comments

  • Alec MolloyAlec Molloy, almost 9 years ago

    Oh wow hey yeah that totally would be cool (disclaimer: not necessarily the view of my employer).

    I imagine a plugin wouldn't even be that hard to make as an extension of the Photoshop Scripting environment: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop/scripting.html

    12 points
  • Marek HrabeMarek Hrabe, almost 9 years ago

    We've done a lot of Photoshop plugins here at Source. I'll talk to guys about this awesome idea :)

    3 points
    • Wes OudshoornWes Oudshoorn, almost 9 years ago

      Wow, great! Be sure to contact me about this, would love to talk. I'm not interested in building this myself persé or any financial gain, but mostly in using it. I know some of your stuff and it would be great if you got excited about this :)!

      wes@appsignal.com if you wanna reach out

      1 point
      • Charles PearsonCharles Pearson, almost 9 years ago

        Photoshop kicked around a similar idea a few years back. As I understand it (wasn't w/ PS then), It was mostly part of a conversation on how to let people do more of their thing via keyboard. We'll revisit this idea, its a great one, but in the meantime if there's a way we can support a third party app from Source or elsewhere, be in touch, happy to help in any way we can! Find me at @mediauras, or cpearson at adobe if you want to connect.

        1 point
    • Ashley KolodziejAshley Kolodziej, almost 9 years ago

      I would love something similar to Sublime's command palette, especially for all the menu items I use on a daily basis that don't have keyboard shortcuts. Imagine Shift + Apple + P "Shadows / Highlights", or Shift Apple P "Define Pattern".

      0 points
  • Rick KhannaRick Khanna, almost 9 years ago

    Oh lord. Programmers, leave Photoshop alone.

    2 points
    • Wes OudshoornWes Oudshoorn, almost 9 years ago

      Oh lord, we're making text editors more and more visual, why would we not want to add programming power to photoshop? It's unobtrusive.

      I co-founded a technical startup, working with developers is awesome and makes the web better.

      1 point
  • Ryan RushingRyan Rushing, almost 9 years ago

    You and I are on the same page: https://twitter.com/drawingtype/status/388040290491437056

    2 points
  • Account deleted almost 9 years ago

    This is what I miss from 3D software like Maya and AutoCAD: almost anything you can do by pointing and clicking can be done through a console. This paves way for making mundane tasks easier to script as well.

    1 point
  • Colm TuiteColm Tuite, almost 9 years ago

    Wouldn't this just be an awkward way to implement keyboard shortcuts?

    1 point
    • Wes OudshoornWes Oudshoorn, almost 9 years ago

      Yes. And no.

      1) A shortcut consists of multiple keys at the same time which often have no correlation with the actual action. 2) The terminal would make it possible to add variables and combined actions (perform action X with variable Y).

      But yes, for some people this would be awkward.

      0 points
      • Colm TuiteColm Tuite, almost 9 years ago

        Ok yeah, I can definitely see the benefit of combining several common actions into one command. When you get time, could you email me some more examples of when you would use this feature? I'd like to implement it in the design tool I'm working on.

        0 points
    • Kevin RabinovichKevin Rabinovich, almost 9 years ago

      I think it would be a nice alternative to them, because there are too many to remember.

      0 points
  • Joel SmithJoel Smith, almost 9 years ago

    I would love this... I often find myself performing precise tasks (like adjusting the size of a layer) with my mouse, committing a command would be so much better.

    0 points
  • Rafe GoldbergRafe Goldberg, almost 9 years ago

    I'm imagining something a la PS's built in Actions, but a more powerful, text-based extension! It sounds like heaven.

    0 points
  • Marc EdwardsMarc Edwards, almost 9 years ago

    What is it that you want that can’t be done with actions, scripts and plugins? Photoshop is extremely hackable as is. I’m not saying this is a bad idea — I’m all for hacking our tools to make repetitive tasks easier — but, Photoshop is probably one of the most hackable design tools on the market.

    You can even inject commands via other apps, using Photoshop Remote Connection (which would be a good way to make the kind of thing you’re after as a third party app).

    0 points
  • Ryan DevenishRyan Devenish, almost 9 years ago

    You know, there is a button that centers objects and another one that fills. Plus, you can assign keyboard shortcuts to just about anything in PS. From experience (using: autocad, cinema, maya, etc) , and considering the visual nature of the many layers you might have and the intricacies of every potential object, command line prompts can be a lot harder to handle without a ton of benefit.

    0 points
    • Wes OudshoornWes Oudshoorn, almost 9 years ago

      I know there's buttons and shortcuts for that. But there's always a button that doesn't do exactly what I want, and buttons that fill. But I am talking about some more complicated stuff here which has an input and output or is a series of connected actions.

      I just do not want to repeat myself anymore.

      1 point
  • Yakim van ZuijlenYakim van Zuijlen, almost 9 years ago

    This could be an awesome feature for designers who are working with big, complicated psd's. Another nice benefit of a console is the performance. Photoshop probably doesn't have to process as much while typing commands, then when you are dragging objects around with your mouse.

    0 points
  • Afnizar Nur Ghifari, almost 9 years ago

    This is cool idea!

    0 points