Photoshop Action question

Question

Is there a way to automate the selection of a certain color or color range?
For example, I'd like to make an action that selects the foreground color in a series of images and makes a mask based on that selection (then goes on to do other things...)
Thanks for any and all help.
Phil

Answer 1

I can’t test on CS3, but I think the affected features should not have changes since CS3.
Anyway, I think an Action cannot perform what you want, a Script should be able to, though.
You could adapt the following code by changing the variable docPath to the correct path of the Folder you want to save the jpgs into.
If you want to give it a try, paste the following text into a new file in ExtendScript Toolkit (part of Photoshop’s installation, Applications/Utilities/Adobe Utilities/ExtendScript Toolkit CS3, I guess) and save it as a jsx-file into Photoshop’s Presets/Scripts-folder.
After restarting Photoshop the Script should be available under File > Scripts and can be assigned a Keyboard Shortcut directly, recorded into an Action or started from ExtendScript Toolkit directly.
// saves jpg into same folder;
// be advised: this  overwrites existing jpgs of the same name without prompting.
// 2010, use it at your own risk;
#target photoshop;
if (app.documents.length > 0) {
var thedoc = app.activeDocument;
// getting the name and location;
var docName = thedoc.name;
if (docName.indexOf(".") != -1) {var basename = docName.match(/(.*)\.[^\.]+$/)[1]}
else {var basename = docName};
// getting the location, if unsaved save to desktop;
try {var docPath = thedoc.path}
catch (e) {var docPath = "~/Desktop"};
// jpg options;
var jpegOptions = new JPEGSaveOptions();
jpegOptions.quality = 9;
jpegOptions.embedColorProfile = true;
jpegOptions.matte = MatteType.NONE;
//save jpg as a copy:
thedoc.saveAs((new File(docPath+"/"+basename+".jpg")),jpegOptions,true);
//that’s it; thanks to xbytor;