Photoshop extension setup

 Since a lot of the work in our studio depends on Photoshop a lot of tools are going to be created. Having artists go to File->Scripts->Browse every time they need a tool is not ideal. What was the name for that script that does that export thing again? What location did we use for scripts again? We streamlined this by creating a Photoshop extension. Even though the future of extensions in its current form is a bit unsure (they are already under legacy in Photoshop 2021😅), it still gives us a lot of flexibility.

One of the requirements was that the scripts used by the extension could be easily updated. Having everyone update their ZXP file every time there is an edit to a script (and there have been quite a few 😅) is quite a task for the artists, requiring them to uninstall and reinstall the extension every time. I wanted to have the scripts in an external (version controlled) location so that updates would be easy. So the only *.jsx script that's is hardcoded is a script to run an external script and to create a settings file.

Each button calls to that script and which loads it from disk. Only thing is, with our setup in Perforce, each artist's script location is different. So we also need to know where the user's scripts folder in Perforce is located. So the first time the user uses the extension they have to create this settings file (if no settings file is present every script will give an alert prompting the user to create it) Once the user selected their Perforce location the script creates a *.txt file in the user's MyDocuments folder called jollySettings.txt containing the path. The extension can then get the base path from there and call all the scripts needed.

Haven't really focused on the look yet, something we might do in the future.