Veerle's blog

Since my previous post about Layer Comps in Photoshop CS I’ve discovered some interesting new things that I didn’t know about.  So today we’re going to explore the amazing world of scripts. Phew, scripts not something that I use daily or very often but handy once you got the hang of it. It’s a bite like I said before you have to take time to explore.

The first script is an easy one and pretty self-explanatory, it’s called “Layer Comps to Files”. You find those scripts under the “File menu”.  What this script does is turning each of your Layer Comps into a new file with all the layers still intact. Once you select the script you get a window where you can specify several options like file type, quality, etc.

Our next script can be handy for those rush jobs where a client has to decide quickly on how things will look. We’re all familiar with these kind of situations where there is no time to set up a meeting. So what does this script do? The Layer Comps to WPG turns your comps into a Web Photo Gallery. When this script is done running you get an online photo album with several comps in there for your client to decide on. It’s a bit more work but easy to set-up.

The only downside in my opinion is that you first must know the name of the style for the Web Photo Gallery. The standard setting is “Simple” but that’s without the possibility to add feedback. You can see all the styles when you choose File > Automate > Web Photo Gallery dialog. It’s also in this location that you can set the quality of the exported images. The one used in my example is called “Centered Frame 1 - Feedback”. It would be handier if there was a drop-down where you could select the style you want but we’re not complaining here ;-)

The rest is pretty easy now we know the name of the style it is just a matter of selecting the script by going to the to the “File menu > Scripts > Layer Comps to WPG” . Only two things left and that’s setting the destination and the name of the style and off we go. The end result is a website that shows the different possibilities you’ve created as Layer Comps with a feedback form included. When you uploaded everything to your web-server it’s up to the client to give feedback on the design and hopefully approve everything so that we can maintain our deadline :-)

You can also turn your Layer Comps into a PDF but if you want security options you’ll have to use the PDF presentation script instead under the “Automate” menu.