I am a pretty vocal hater of most things AI (at least when it comes to imagery/advertising), but I spent a few hours working with various agents this week to automate some of my least favorite activities in Photoshop via scripts.
If you don't know, PS supports little javascript files that can be used to do basically anything you want. I, not knowing a lick of Javascript, sat down and put a very detailed and logical workflow together for AI, telling it exactly how the scripts would be used in PS 2026 on desktop, and what my end goals were.
What I found is that Grok was able to fulfill my requests the fastest of any I tried, even suggesting helpful tweaks along the way to further automate my processes.
It then suggested recording actions for these scripts so they are truly one-click solutions and can be used against entire folders with one menu.
I would HIGHLY suggest if you have a repeatable process in PS you give this a shot, I've saved future Scott countless hours by investing a few this week.
Perhaps this goes beyond the capabilities of Photoshop Actions, but you can basically record just abot anything you do in Photoshop as an action.
In addition, actions can be created by sequencing other actions. In this way, you can script some pretty sophisticated operations.
An example. I have a process for creating .jpg screen images for my website and social media. It involves a series of steps: reducing image dimensions, adding borders, adding branding and copyright text, and so forth. I made actions for each of those individual steps and then I make “super actions” that sequence the application of those actions for a particular outcome.
For those who aren’t yet using actions, I urge you to dig into them. They can be extremely powerful and they speed up all kinds of processes that can be slow if done manually each time.
As an important aside, I've seen a lot of posts on Adobe Community concerning updates to Ps causing apparent unrecoverable loss of custom actions. It should go without having to say it, but this advice can't hurt:
back up everything, and back up often.
GoodEgg wrote:
As an important aside, I've seen a lot of posts on Adobe Community concerning updates to Ps causing apparent unrecoverable loss of custom actions. It should go without having to say it, but this advice can't hurt:
back up everything, and back up often.
I haven’t lost anything important like that via an update, but a recent ACR update slightly mangled (in a very annoying manner) one panel that I rely on, then fixed the goof in a subsequent update.
And your _everything_ point is especially important. I think some people may back up files but not necessarily system and apps. I recommend doing both regularly, and certainly before updates.
AI-generated Photoshop scripts are really useful for repetitive tasks. I've had good results using AI to help with batch actions for product photo workflows.
One thing I've found: for simple batch operations (background removal, resize, export multiple sizes), a dedicated desktop tool can be faster than scripting Photoshop, especially when processing 100+ images. But for complex compositing or precise adjustments, Photoshop scripting is still the way to go.
Are you generating the scripts with ChatGPT or Claude? I find Claude better at understanding the Photoshop scripting API syntax.
