Supported Features

This is a list of currently supported features.

Photoshop

The APIs are documented at Photoshop API.

Photoshop Actions

Execute Photoshop Actions

Adobe Photoshop APIs supports playing back Photoshop Actions recorded from Photoshop. The APIs are documented here

An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files—menu commands, panel options, tool actions, and so on. For example, you can create an action that changes the size of an image, applies an effect to the image, and then saves the file in the desired format.

For more information on how to create Photoshop Actions, see Adobe Help Center

Usage Recommendations

Create actions that do not open any operating system dialogs. All Photoshop dialogs are supported, but not operating system dialogs.
It is recommended to create Actions that do not require user interactions.
Input and Output file format should be any of PSD, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
Make sure to test your actions on Photoshop, with several different input/images. If it has any errors on Photoshop, it won't run successfully on our servers either.

Known Limitations

The following are known limitations:

3D and Video features are not supported.
Custom presets (for example color swatches and brushes).
The action should operate on one document. Multiple documents support will be in a future release.

Here are examples of submitting and executing Photoshop Actions. Execute Photoshop Actions with all actions and Execute Photoshop Actions with a specific action

In this example we applied a custom Action we created called "Graphic Design." alt image

ActionJson

Similar to the Photoshop Actions endpoint, this api also allows you to apply Photoshop Actions to an image programmatically. However there are a few key differences which give you added flexibility.

Ability to modify the payload converting your static actions into a dynamic one.
You don’t need to upload and store your actions as you do with the Photoshop Actions endpoint.

You can find the api documentation guide here. We have an example of actionJSON with the same image and Action file from our Photoshop Actions example but modified the final output color to make it black and white.

alt image Sample code can be found here

actionJSON endpoint has the capability of supporting multiple inputs as a parameter passed to the actions. An example can be found here

Here is a video showing how to work with actionJSON

How to create an actionJSON

You can create a new actionJSON or you can convert an existing .atn file to an actionJSON. Here are some ways to get an actionJSON

Create new actionJSON using developer mode.

If you have “developer mode” enabled in Photoshop follow the instructions below . If not follow how to enable developer mode here.

Open Photoshop desktop application
Click on "Plugins” from the top menu
Select “Development”
And then choose “Record Action Commands..."
Name your file and click on “Save”
You can now make edits to your document and all of your edits will be saved

Once you are done recording your action:

Click on "Plugins” from the top menu
Select “Development”
Choose “Stop Action Recording"

The file will be saved to the directory you chose when you named your file.

Create new actionJSON using actions panel

Open Photoshop
Click on "Open action panel”
Select “Create new Action”
Select your single action from action set
Click on copy as Javascript
Paste it in any text editor
Modify the file to trim out the actions (example is shown below in the code sample)
Use the action in your payload

Convert an existing Action (.atn) file into actionJSON

We have an API that let you pass an .atn file and get an actionJSON. This is the Simplest and easiest way to get an actionJSON. You can find the api documentation guide here

Convert an existing Action (.atn) file into actionJSON using Photoshop

Open Photoshop
Click on "Open action panel”
Select “Load action”
Choose the action you would like to convert to actionJSON
Click on copy as Javascript
Paste it in any text editor
Modify the file to trim out the actions obj blocks (example is shown below in the code sample)
Use the action in your payload

A code sample of Action JSON when you copy as Javascript

async function vignetteSelection() {
    let result;
    let psAction = require("photoshop").action;

    let command = [
        // Make snapshot
        {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"snapshotClass"}],"from":{"_property":"currentHistoryState","_ref":"historyState"},"using":{"_enum":"historyState","_value":"fullDocument"}},
        // Feather
        {"descriptor": {"_obj":"feather","radius":{"_unit":"pixelsUnit","_value":5.0}}, "options": {"dialogOptions": "display"}},
        // Layer Via Copy
        {"_obj":"copyToLayer"},
        // Show current layer
        {"_obj":"show","null":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"toggleOptionsPalette":true},
        // Make layer
        {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"layer"}]},
        // Fill
        {"_obj":"fill","mode":{"_enum":"blendMode","_value":"normal"},"opacity":{"_unit":"percentUnit","_value":100.0},"using":{"_enum":"fillContents","_value":"white"}},
        // Move current layer
        {"_obj":"move","_target":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"to":{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"previous"}}
    ];
    result = await psAction.batchPlay(command, {});
}

async function runModalFunction() {
    await require("photoshop").core.executeAsModal(vignetteSelection, {"commandName": "Action Commands"});
}

await runModalFunction();
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1async function vignetteSelection() {
2    let result;
3    let psAction = require("photoshop").action;
4
5    let command = [
6        // Make snapshot
7        {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"snapshotClass"}],"from":{"_property":"currentHistoryState","_ref":"historyState"},"using":{"_enum":"historyState","_value":"fullDocument"}},
8        // Feather
9        {"descriptor": {"_obj":"feather","radius":{"_unit":"pixelsUnit","_value":5.0}}, "options": {"dialogOptions": "display"}},
10        // Layer Via Copy
11        {"_obj":"copyToLayer"},
12        // Show current layer
13        {"_obj":"show","null":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"toggleOptionsPalette":true},
14        // Make layer
15        {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"layer"}]},
16        // Fill
17        {"_obj":"fill","mode":{"_enum":"blendMode","_value":"normal"},"opacity":{"_unit":"percentUnit","_value":100.0},"using":{"_enum":"fillContents","_value":"white"}},
18        // Move current layer
19        {"_obj":"move","_target":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"to":{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"previous"}}
20    ];
21    result = await psAction.batchPlay(command, {});
22}
23
24async function runModalFunction() {
25    await require("photoshop").core.executeAsModal(vignetteSelection, {"commandName": "Action Commands"});
26}
27
28await runModalFunction();

Modify the javascript file to trim out the actions. Remove everything else from the javascript file and copy the array containing _obj from the command variable which will look something like below

[      
 {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"snapshotClass"}],"from":{"_property":"currentHistoryState","_ref":"historyState"},
 "using":{"_enum":"historyState","_value":"fullDocument"}},
 {"_obj":"feather","radius":{"_unit":"pixelsUnit","_value":5.0}},
 {"_obj":"copyToLayer"},
 {"_obj":"show","null":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"toggleOptionsPalette":true},
 {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"layer"}]},
 {"_obj":"fill","mode":{"_enum":"blendMode","_value":"normal"},"opacity":{"_unit":"percentUnit","_value":100.0},"using":{"_enum":"fillContents","_value":"white"},
 {"_obj":"move","_target":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"to":{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"previous"}}
]
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1[      
2 {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"snapshotClass"}],"from":{"_property":"currentHistoryState","_ref":"historyState"},
3 "using":{"_enum":"historyState","_value":"fullDocument"}},
4 {"_obj":"feather","radius":{"_unit":"pixelsUnit","_value":5.0}},
5 {"_obj":"copyToLayer"},
6 {"_obj":"show","null":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"toggleOptionsPalette":true},
7 {"_obj":"make","_target":[{"_ref":"layer"}]},
8 {"_obj":"fill","mode":{"_enum":"blendMode","_value":"normal"},"opacity":{"_unit":"percentUnit","_value":100.0},"using":{"_enum":"fillContents","_value":"white"},
9 {"_obj":"move","_target":[{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"targetEnum"}],"to":{"_enum":"ordinal","_ref":"layer","_value":"previous"}}
10]

More details about actionJSON can be found here

How to enable developer mode

Open Photoshop
On the menu bar, select Photoshop → Preferences → Plugins... (For Mac) Or Edit → Preferences → Plugins...(For Windows)
Enable Developer Mode
Completely Exit Photoshop

Enable Hidden Feature if you are using Photoshop 23.4 (July 2022) or earlier. Execute the command below.

For Mac

echo "UXPEnableScriptingUtilities 1" >>  "/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop 2021 Settings/PSUserConfig.txt"
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echo "UXPEnableScriptingUtilities 1" >>  "/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop 2021 Settings/PSUserConfig.txt"

For Windows Powershell

echo  "UXPEnableScriptingUtilities 1" >> "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2021\Adobe Photoshop 2021 Settings\PSUserConfig.txt"
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echo  "UXPEnableScriptingUtilities 1" >> "C:\Users\$env:USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop 2021\Adobe Photoshop 2021 Settings\PSUserConfig.txt"

Open Photoshop

SmartObject

The Photoshop APIs currently support creating and editing of Embedded Smart Objects. Support for Linked Smart Objects is forthcoming.

In order to update an embedded smart object that is referenced by multiple layers you need to update each of those layers, then only the effect will be reflected in all layers referencing the same smart object.
The replaced smart object is placed within the bounding box of the original image. If the new image is bigger or smaller than the original image, it fits into the original bounding box maintaining the aspect ratio. You can change the bounds of the replaced image by passing bounds parameters in the API call.
If your document contains transparent pixels (e.g some .png) for the smart object layer, you may not get consistent bounds.

The APIs are documented here. We also have an example of replacing a Smart Object within a layer. For better performance, we rasterize our smart objects that are bigger than 2000 pixels * 2000 pixels. For optimal processing, please make sure the embedded smart object that you want to replace only contains alphanumeric characters in it's name.

Example of Smart Object replacement with a sample image. alt image

Text

The /text API supports editing one or more text layers from a Photoshop document. The APIs are documented here.

It enables users to

Format text properties such as antialias, orientation and be able to edit text contents. (Note: Changing only the text properties will not change any character/paragraph styling).
Some of the key character properties that can be formatted include (but not limited to):
- Text treatments such as strikethrough, underline, fontCaps.
- Character size and color.
- Line and character spacing through leading, tracking, autoKern settings.
All the paragraph properties are supported.
Use custom fonts when specified through the options.fonts section in the API request body.

Usage Recommendations

Ensure that the input file is a PSD and that it contains one or more text layers.
Please refer to Font Handling and Handle Missing Fonts for better understanding.

Known Limitations

The following are known limitations:

The API cannot automatically detect missing fonts in the layers. To prevent potential missing fonts from being replaced, please provide a href to the font(s) in the options.fonts section of the API. For more details on specifying custom fonts, please refer to the example section below.

Here is a code sample.

Here is an example where the font was changed from the original image on the left using the Text API. alt image

ProductCrop

The ProductCrop API supports applying smart crop to your image. The APIs are documented here.

It enables user to

Identify the product and get it cropped smartly.
Enter the required padding they need in their cropped image.

Known Limitations

The current model is trained to return a crop that respects the salient object within an image. There is a current known issue that when a person or portrait is contained within a salient object, the model will crop with the person as the focal area rather than the salient object that contains it. This is problematic in the case of an item where an image of a person is contained within a design (i.e. a t-shirt, collectible or art). Rather than crop to the intended item, the service will crop to the person within the item. We intend to correct this issue in future releases.

Here is a code sample.

DepthBlur

The DepthBlur API supports applying depth blur to your image. The APIs are documented here.

Depth Blur is part of the Neural Filters gallery in Photoshop. It allows you to target the area and range of blur in photos, creating wide-aperture depth of field blur effects. You may choose different focal points or remove the focal point and control the depth blur through manipulating the focal range slider. Setting focusSubject to true will select the most prominent subject in the image and apply depth blur around that subject.

Here is a code sample.

Rendering / Conversions

Create a new PSD document.
Create a JPEG, TIFF or PNG rendition of various sizes.
Request thumbnail previews of all renderable layers.
Convert between any of the supported filetypes (PSD, JPEG, TIFF, PNG).

Here is an example of creating JPEG and PNG rendtions of a PSD document: Render PSD document

Layer level edits

General layer edits
- Edit the layer name.
- Toggle the layer locked state.
- Toggle layer visibility.
- Move or resize the layer via it's bounds.
- Delete layers.
Adjustment layers
- Add or edit an adjustment layer. The following types of adjustment layers are currently supported:
  - Brightness and Contrast.
  - Exposure.
  - Hue and Saturation.
  - Color Balance.
Image/Pixel layers
- Add a new pixel layer, with optional image.
- Swap the image in an existing pixel layer.
Shape layers
- Resize a shape layer via it's bounds.

The add, edit and delete layers

The /documentOperations API should primarily be used to make layer and/or document level edits to your PSD and then generate new renditions with the changes. You can pass in a flat array of only the layers that you wish to act upon, in the options.layers argument of the request body. The layer name (or the layer id) will be used by the service to identify the correct layer to operation upon in your PSD.

The add, edit, move and delete blocks indicate the action you would like to be taken on a particular layer object. Any layer block passed into the API that is missing one of these attributes will be ignored. The add and move blocks must also supply one of the attributes insertAbove, insertBelow, insertInto, insertTop or insertBottom to indicate where you want to move the layer to. More details on this can be found in the API documentation.

Note: Adding a new layer does not require the ID to be included, the service will generate a new layer id for you.

Here are some examples of making various layer level edits.

Text layers Edits

The Photoshop API currently supports creating and editing of Text Layer with different fonts, character styles and paragraph styles. The set of text attributes that can be edited is listed below:

Edit the text contents
Change the font (See the Fonts section for more info)
Edit the font size
Change the font color in the following formats: rgb, cmyk, gray, lab
Edit the text orientation (horizontal/vertical)
Edit the paragraph alignment (left, center, right, justify, justifyLeft, justifyCenter, justifyRight)

The APIs are documented here.

We also have an example of making a simple text layer edit.

Text layer Example Code

Font handling

In order to be able to correctly operate on text layers in the PSD, the corresponding fonts needed for these layers will need to be available when the server is processing the PSD. These include fonts from the following cases:

The font that is in the text layer being edited, but the font itself is not being changed
If the font in a text layer is being changed to a new font

While referencing fonts in the API request, please ensure that the correct Postscript name for that font is used. Referencing to that font with any other name will result in the API treating this as a missing font.

The Photoshop APIs supports using the following category of fonts:

Currently Installed Fonts on the server listed here
Fonts that you are authorized to access via Adobe Fonts. Note: Currently only available for OAuth tokens, JWT service token support is forthcoming.
Custom/Other Fonts: These are the fonts that are either owned by you or the ones that only you are authorized to use. To use a custom font you must include an href to the font in your request. Look at the options.fonts section of the API docs for more information. For including an href to the font in your request, please ensure the font file name to be in this format: <font_postscript_name>.<ext>, when it is being uploaded in your choice of storage. A sample options.fonts section will look like so:
```
{
  "storage": "external",
  "href": "<Storage URL to OpenSansCondensed-Light.ttf>"
}
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1{
2  "storage": "external",
3  "href": "<Storage URL to OpenSansCondensed-Light.ttf>"
4}
```
Note: This also applies to any other font present in the document which is not to be found in the first 2 categories above.

Here is an example usage of a custom font Custom font

Handle missing fonts in the document.

The API provides two options to control the behavior when there are missing fonts, as the request is being processed:

Specify a global font which would act as a default font for the current request: The globalFont field in the options section of the request can be used to specify the full postscript name of this font. For any textLayer edit/add operation, if the font used specifically for that layer is missing, this font will be used as the default. If the global font itself is missing, then the action to be taken will be dictated by the manageMissingFonts options as explained here in the next bullet point.

Note: If using an OAuth integration, Adobe Fonts can be used as a global font as well. If the global font is a custom font, please upload the font to one of the cloud storage types that is supported and specify the href and storage type in the options.fonts section of the request.

Specify the action to be taken if one or more fonts required for the add/edit operation(s) are missing: The manageMissingFonts field in the options section of the request can be used to specify this action. It can accept one of the following 2 values:
- fail to force the request/job to fail
- useDefault to use our system designated default font, which is: ArialMT

Here is an example usage of manageMissingFonts and globalFont. Handle missing fonts

Limitations

Most of the text attributes retain their respective original values. There are some attributes however that do not retain their original values. For example (and not limited to): tracking, leading, kerning

Document level edits

Crop a PSD
Resize a PSD

Artboards

Show artboard information in the JSON Manifest
Create a new artboard from multiple input psd's

Remove Background

Initiate a job to Remove Background. Code sample here.

Example of Remove Background with a sample image. alt image

Image Mask

Initiate a job to create an image mask. Code sample here.

Example of Image mask with a sample image. alt image

Remove Background and Image Mask APIs are powered by Adobe’s Artificial Intelligence Technology and Photoshop. The APIs can identify the main subject of an image and produce two types of outputs. You can create a greyscale mask png file that you can composite onto the original image (or any other). You can also create remove background where the mask has already composited onto your original image so that everything except the main subject has been removed.

The APIs are documented at Photoshop API Documentation

Lightroom

The APIs are documented at Lightroom API. Any input image format that is supported by Lightroom is also supported by the APIs. To look at the list of these formats in more detail, please refer to: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/supported-file-formats.html

At this point the output formats supported are JPG, DNG and PNG.

AutoTone

Automatically correct exposure, contrast, sharpness, saturation, etc. Code sample here

In this example, we automatically adjusted the photo using the AutoTone API. alt image

AutoStraighten

Applies the Auto Upright transformation on an image. Code sample here

Presets

Apply one or more XMP Lightroom presets to an image, by referencing preset file(s) stored on cloud. Code sample here The preset file can be created by editing an image in lightroom and exporting it as a .xmp file. The details on how to create a preset can be found here. If the use case would be to be able to create an .xmp file from a set of slider values obtained directly from a user, there are 2 ways to achieve this workflow:

Start with the empty .xmp file from here and add the corresponding slider values
Or please look ahead in this documentation page at the /edit API

In this example, we are applying the Preset called "Aged Photo" to automatically make the adjustments. alt image

Edit

Apply one or more Lightroom edits to an image. Code sample here

XMP

Apply a Lightroom preset to an image, by passing in the preset XMP contents inline through the API. Code sample here

Customized Workflow

You can make a 'customized workflow' by chaining different APIs. Example of which can be found here

Using Webhooks through Adobe I/O Events

Adobe I/O Events offers the possibility to build an event-driven application, based on events originating from Photoshop and Lightroom APIs. To start listening for events, your application needs to register a webhook URL, specifying the Event Types to receive. Whenever a matching event gets triggered, your application is notified through an HTTP POST request to the webhook URL. The Event Provider for Photoshop and Lightroom APIs is Imaging API Events. This event provider has two event types:

Photoshop API events
Lightroom API events

As the names indicate, these event types represent events triggered by the individual APIs.

Registering your application to our Event Provider

Prerequisites needed to use the Event Provider

In order to use the Adobe I/O Events you will need to create a project on Adobe I/O Console.
You can follow the steps listed in Getting Started page if you haven't created one yet.
Create a Webhook application. This page gives all the details of what the skeleton of a basic application would look like. You can find a sample NodeJS application here

Registering the Webhook

Once the above prerequisites are met, you can now proceed to register the webhook to the service integration. The steps to do that can be found here. After the webhook has been successfully registered, you will start to receive the events for any submitted job that either succeeded or failed, from the Event Types selected. This eliminates the need for your application to poll for the status of the job using the jobID. Examples can be found here

General Workflow

Code Samples

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Supported Features

Photoshop.css-83mclq{margin-left:var(--spectrum-global-dimension-size-100);}

Photoshop Actions.css-jmmyhj{margin-left:var(--spectrum-global-dimension-size-50);}

Execute Photoshop Actions

Usage Recommendations

Known Limitations

ActionJson

How to create an actionJSON

How to enable developer mode

SmartObject

Text

Usage Recommendations

Known Limitations

ProductCrop

Known Limitations

DepthBlur

Rendering / Conversions

Layer level edits

The add, edit and delete layers

Text layers Edits

Font handling

Handle missing fonts in the document.

Limitations

Document level edits

Artboards

Remove Background

Image Mask

Lightroom

AutoTone

AutoStraighten

Presets

Edit

XMP

Customized Workflow

Using Webhooks through Adobe I/O Events

Registering your application to our Event Provider

Prerequisites needed to use the Event Provider

Registering the Webhook

Photoshop

Photoshop Actions