a (slightly) advanced photoshop actions question:

SooTyLaD · 30 Jul 2008 at 08:39

hi guys...

what i need to be able to do as an action is make the canvas a square...

if an image is 200x400 i need it to become 400x400, if its 230x280 i need 280x280 see? whichever dimension is bigger, i want the other dimension increased to the same...

i've been playing but cant work out a technique for this and have got a feeling it would involve some sort of scripting... any ideas?

Dj_Jestar · 30 Jul 2008 at 11:44

I can do this in PHP easily enough.. why do you need it automated, anyway?

SooTyLaD · 30 Jul 2008 at 11:51

basically i have many images that need to be made into a square, but they all vary in size so cant just do a standard canvas size action...

how can you get php into photoshop thats well cool - is that the format of the actions?

Dj_Jestar · 30 Jul 2008 at 12:17

Can't get PHP into photoshop, but it can convert image sizes. Can either crop or resample.

Ice Globe · 30 Jul 2008 at 12:37

Not exactly sure what you want to achieve in your OP. Sounds like you will end up with a distorted image as the smaller dimension is stretched to the higher dimension, losing quality and completely distorting it.

The only thing I can recommend is going to:

Automate -> Fit Image, might be of some use. But pretty sure this will only make sure the image doesn't exceed certain dimensions, which are obviously varying in your case.

TwoSaints · 30 Jul 2008 at 15:58

Ice Globe said:
Not exactly sure what you want to achieve in your OP. Sounds like you will end up with a distorted image as the smaller dimension is stretched to the higher dimension, losing quality and completely distorting it.

The only thing I can recommend is going to:

Automate -> Fit Image, might be of some use. But pretty sure this will only make sure the image doesn't exceed certain dimensions, which are obviously varying in your case.

I think he was meaning canvas size rather than image size,

I have tried a similar thing to automate framing pictures with photoshop actions and never found a way to make the canvas size change depending on the start size, I could only get specific sizes from the action. So I'd be interested to hear any solution to this