I considered calling this post “Most Obscure. Feature. Ever,” but then I remembered the tweaky labyrinths woven as Russell Brown bribed various engineers for little improvements. In any case, knowing this tip would qualify anyone as Photoshop Illuminati:
When accessing File->Scripts in Photoshop, first hold down the Opt/Alt key. Instead of running the selected script, Photoshop will open it in the ExtendScript Toolkit (Mac/Win)–itself quite a well-kept secret.
Hey, I said it was obscure, but it could be a useful way to inspect anything from layers to PNG to Flash gallery creation. Thanks to Tom Ruark, Photoshop engineer & Russell’s collaborator on the Image Processor script, for pointing this out.
There is precedent for this, true believers: in Entourage (the Mac email application) and the great Mac editor BBEdit (and probably lots more I don’t know about) holding down Option when choosing a script from the Script menu in those applications opens the script in the AppleScript Script Editor instead of running it.
This only works if you have the JavaScript plug-in installed which I don’t. Anyone have any ideas about how I can get a copy (just moved and my CS CDs are in some unknown box or another). I’m using CS and not CS 2 BTW.