Is there a way to create PSDs in MAXScript? Particularly so that multiple bitmaps in memory could be stored as channels.
I think the short answer is no.
I know you can “load” the layers from the PSD, but I don’t think you can set them.
Shane
No was my first instinct as well, but maybe there’s something you can do to talk to photoshop directly (through com) and get it to create its own files. Alternatively, look into multi layered tiff files.
What exactly are you trying to do?
While the COM idea is intriging (and so long as photoshop supported it, doable), but I don’t think you would be able to pass an in memory bitmap to it…you’d have to pass the file…again, doable.
First of all, what I am trying to do is render out a bunch of alpha channels using MXS and put them neatly into Photoshop. This would save a lot of opening, copying, and pasting of separate files.
I like both of your suggestions. I am not very fluent with COM, but I would like to know more. Is there a good learning resource out there? Also, I think that a multi layered tiff would do the trick if I found an easy way to translate those layers into channels in PS. I couldn’t find anything in the MXS reference, do you have any good code snippets to share?
Thank you focomoso, RustyKnight
I don’t know if you knew, but you could write a plugin for photoshop to import your exported files.
For Photoshop 7 you need to download and install the “photoshop 7 scripting plugin”, you can use either JavaScript or VisualBasic6.
For Photoshop CS2 and CS3 the “scripting plugin” comes by default, but don’t support VisualBasic6 anymore, only JavaScript I thought.
I think Red has the right idea. Export your alphas as separate files with some kind of intelligent naming convention and write something separate in photoshop to put them in the right channels. You could probably get max to talk to photoshop and point it to the right files, but I don’t know if it’s worth the effort.
Hi,
Another solution would be to save each bitmaps in a specific folder.
Then do an action in Photoshop to batch process the folder.
cebas’ psdmanager is a plugin that does this and probably is exposed to Maxscript. Not too expensive from what I remember but way more straight forward!