Multi-version, semi-automatic installation script for Adobe Photoshop ® Add-ons (Adobe Extension Manager has been discontinued so it will be of no use for CC2015.x products. Please have a look at this CC 2015 Survival Guide and CC 2015.5 Survival Guidefor more info). Compatibility is in the range CS3..CC2015.5.

If you develop Photoshop add-ons and want them to be deployed to your users' machines avoiding AEM and/or Creative Cloud app installation, this little project of mine might be of some use for you too.

PS-Installer is able to deploy to their PS or System default folders:

• Scripts
• HTML Panels
• FLASH Panels
• PS Mac Plug-ins
• PS Win Plug-ins
• Extra items (you provide the destination)

You can choose between per User installation and System wide installation.

1. Distribute your product as a ZIP, let your users unZip it.
2. Instruct the users to open Photoshop, File > Scripts > Browse... and point to the installer.jsx
3. The script will grab the assets for each product (say, an HTML Panel and a Script, or a Plugin) and deploy them into the correct folders depending on the PS version (i.e. HTML Panel for CC onwards, Flash one for CS6, etc.)
4. A complete LOG file is created, for debugging purposes

An example folder tree is as follows - find it in the project's example folder:

.
├── ASSETS
│   ├── FLASH
│   │   ├── CSXS
│   │   │   └── manifest.xml
│   │   └── example.swf
│   ├── HTML
│   │   ├── CSXS
│   │   │   └── manifest.xml
│   │   └── example.html
│   ├── MAC_PLUGIN
│   │   └── example.plugin
│   ├── SCRIPT
│   │   ├── Folder\ A
│   │   │   ├── Subfolder\ A
│   │   │   │   └── fileD.jsx
│   │   │   └── fileC.jsx
│   │   ├── Folder\ B
│   │   │   └── fileE.jsx
│   │   ├── fileA.jsx
│   │   └── fileB.jsx
│   ├── WIN_PLUGIN
│   │   └── example.8bf
│   └── readme.txt
└── installer.jsx

The installer, while deploying your assets, will write a uninstaller script in its same folder - this can be used later on to remove the product.

You can configure the installer using properties of the object contained in the init.json sidecar file (which must be included alongside the installer.jsx). Here they are documented.

[String] - Your company's name

[String] - The email for customer support inquiries.

[String] - The descriptive name of the product to install.

[String] - Needed for Panels: ID as a reverse URL (e.g. com.cs-extensions.VitaminBW)

[String] - Yours (not PS), to be written in the LOG file

[Number] - Minimum Photoshop version required (e.g. 13.0), leave undefined for no limit.

[Number] - Maximum Photoshop version supported (e.g. 15.2), leave undefined for no limit.

[String] - Relative Path for HTML Panel (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/HTML")

[String] - Relative Path for Flash Panel (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/FLASH")

[String] - Relative Path for Script (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/SCRIPT")

[String] - Relative Path for Mac Plugin (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/MAC")

[String] - Relative Path for Win Plugin (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/WIN")

[String] - Relative Path for Extra content (no / at the start or end, e.g. "ASSETS/EXTRA") - not supported yet

[String] - Relative Path for the optional Readme file (e.g. "ASSETS/Readme.txt")

[Boolean] - false: install the Panel (if present) for all users - false: install it only for the current user. There's an open issue under Windows with Photoshop @64bit and Global installation - please set SYSTEM_INSTALL = false.

[Boolean] - false: install the Filters (if present) in a shared location (for CC onwards) - false: install them on Photoshop <version>/Plug-ins/. true: installs them on /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Plug-Ins/CC/ on Mac and \Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-Ins\CC on Windows.

[Boolean] - Enable installation logging (highly recommended)

[String] - Absolute Path for the LOG file, (no / at the start or end, e.g. "~/Desktop")

Leave it as an empty string - will be created at runtime as LOG_FILE_PATH/PRODUCT_NAME.log

[Array of String] RegExp for Files to ignore during installation, e.g. ["^\\.\\w+"] - remember to escape \

This first looked to me like a clever idea, yet I've seen it might break Signing/Timestamping. As a temporary workaround in case of such kind of errors during installation, use IGNORE: ["$."] (which basically ignores nothing - don't let it empty, the regex will match everything).

Currently PS-Installer has been tested from Photoshop CS6 onwards (up to CC 2015), but theoretically it is backward compatible down to CS3.

Copyright (c) 2015 Davide Barranca, MIT license.