You have the option to embed images into Adobe Illustrator or to link them. If you embed them, then your file will be large (a 500MB AI file is an everyday occurrence in my work). The other is to link to the image file, but if you hand the file off to another person, the linked images will not be stored with it. One option to is to have a central repository located on a network for images. All new images are placed there. This can sometimes be cumbersome not to have a copy of the image on your local machine–consider image manipulations and having to manage file versions centrally. This script solves the problem of collecting linked images for output. This script collects external image links into a single “Links” folder. You can then give that folder and the subsequent source file (AI) to another person and the external links will work.

Hopefully, you are not using Adobe Illustrator source files (AI) to pre-press print work, but if you are this will aid in collecting linked images for that purpose too.

Caveats

This script does not collect fonts or other files, only images. If your image is within an opacity mask this script will not be able to find it. Illustrator Package Script has been tested on Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Adobe Illustrator CS3 only.

I did not write this script. This script was written by Pavel Rassadin. You can download the original source for this Illustrator Package Script from his website.

The default title for Gallery2 item uploads is the file name of the image. It easier to name your files well from the beginning from the safety of either than edit the URL, titles, and keywords for your item after they are uploaded. My naming convention for a file name is photo_set-photo_subset-people_or_objects. For a photo of my parents, my bride and myself at my wedding, I used “wedding-party-parents-rachel-stephen.jpg”

When creating titles this script does the following via regular expressions:

• Removes ‘copy’ (a common OS-X filename suffix)
• Removes underscores at beginning
• Removes underscores at end
• Removes double underscores
• Removes left and right parenthesis
• Removes all single digit numbers and letters
• Replaces underscores and hyphens with space

When creating keywords from titles, this script removes the following common words and inserts commas between the remaining words:

a, about, above, across, act, add, after, again, against, all, along, also, amid, among, an, and, any, are, around, as, at, back, be, been, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, came, can, cause, change, close, come, concerning, considering, could, cover, cross, despite, did, differ, do, does, down, draw, during, each, even, every, except, excepting, excluding, far, few, find, follow, following, for, found, four, from, get, give, go, grow, had, hard, has, have, he, her, here, high, him, his, how, if, in, inside, into, is, it, just, keep, know, large, last, late, left, let, like, little, long, look, made, make, many, may, might, minus, more, most, move, much, must, my, near, never, no, now, of, off, on, one, only, onto, opposite, or, other, our, out, outside, over, own, part, past, per, plus, put, regarding, right, said, same, saw, say, see, self, set, she, should, side, small, so, some, still, such, take, tell, than, that, the, their, them, then, there, these, they, thing, this, three, through, to, too, toward, towards, try, two, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, us, use, versus, very, via, want, was, way, we, went, were, what, when, where, which, while, who, why, will, with, within, without, would, you, your

Usage

You can either edit the setup variables in the script or use URL variables (such as “?field=g_keywords&begin_id=3000″). That example would insert keywords (test insert, not commit) based on the titles of all items after item 3000.

Requirements

• Some familiarity with the PHP language
• Login credentials: server, username, database name, password
• Item ID to begin with (default is 0, that is “all items”)
• If you want to change my default title word removal listed above, familiarity with regular expressions

Download Gallery2 titles and keywords SEO script

NOTE: You will need to rename the “.txt” file to “.php” in order to run it on your server. Also this script will edit not only item names, but also albums. I’ve included copious comments in this script to aid in customizing it to your needs.

The need

Professional web developers have been aware of CSS sprites or CSS rollovers/hovers since 2004 (The rollover term is taken from JavaScript and the hover term is taken from CSS). They are the background graphics that change position based on mouse hover thus eliminating the need for JavaScript image swaps and image caching since the “mouse on” and “mouse off” are one image. I have been using sprites for years. It is a more tedious process than clicking Swap image on a DreamWeaver drop down menu, but it produces more accessible and more clean code. The most tedious part of creating CSS sprites for menu navigation is aligning the static (in-active) and hover (active) images. This script solves this problem by taking two images and merging them into one. I hope this increases your productivity and creates a more standards-compliant web.

There are online CSS sprite generators out there. My Photoshop script is not as remarkable as these 20 image sprites, but it’s much simpler, and you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. Also, all my sites are designed in Illustrator which is a slightly different work flow than most. I find that Photoshop is an awful layout program.

Download CSSsprite.jsx

Installation

A JSX script is similar to a Photoshop plugin or an action, but are commands in Photoshop’s JavaScript based script interface. Download and copy this script within the Presets>>Scripts folder of your Photoshop application folder:

• OS-X: Macintosh HD/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Presets/Scripts/
• Windows: Program Files/Photoshop CS/Presets/Scripts

The Script will appear under File>>Scripts>>CSSsprite on the menu. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to this script. I prefer Control+Command+S. This shortcut fits well with the Save for Web shortcut, Command+Alt+Shift+S.

Usage

Open two files (and only two files) with the same height and width (if they are different sizes, the offset of your hover button state will not be half of the height). Select the non-hover background image, making it active–thus making the hover background image de-active. Run the script from the Scripts menu mentioned above. This will place the hover background image on the bottom of the sprite. This script does not support adding a third state to the sprite, but you could add a third and fourth state. To do this, first combine the third and fourth state, and then combine that image with the normal/hover sprite.

For your information: States for this script

The following is a list of Photoshop commands that are executed in this script:

• Convert Image Mode to RGB
• Make horizontal guide at 100% of canvas height
• Switch to inactive document (-1 in document array)
• “Duplicate Layer. . .” Layer Menu via right click
• Switch back to inactive document (+1 in document array)
• Double canvas size vertically
• Transform/Move top layer down (50% of canvas size)
• Zoom In (twice)

Result
This gives you a two-layered Photoshop file with second layer the CSS hover layer. Save the file as GIF, PNG, or JPEG using File>>Save for Web.

Notes
Adobe Photoshop JavaScript is the only cross-platform scripting language for Photoshop. This script was only tested Photoshop CS3 Extended (Mac). Our firm does not use Photoshop for web layout–only for image manipulation. We use Illustrator for layout.

I would like to thank the creators of ScriptingListenerJS and ActionToJavaScript.

You may be interested in this PhotoShop script that creates a sprite from all the images in a folder.