Scripting and Crop and Straighten photos

Question

photoshop CS3 has this neat feature "Crop and Straighten photos" which is very helpful in cleaning up scanned images (remove the black border) but is there a way to turn it into an action ?
i would like to apply this against many images (lots of files) in an automated way but being new to scripts/actions, I haven't had much success since this command creates a copy of the original.
is there an action that will help me batch remove the black border from all my images either using this CS3 command or another. thanks

Answer 1

OK, I'm giving back: here's an adaptation of Paul's script that uses recursion to iterate through all subdirectories. (Note that I also changed the file name suffix to a "static" (non-sequenced) value, as well as the name of the output folder, since I am using this to process single-photo image files. The original lines are commented out.) To implement the recursion, I defined the "main" functionality in a function ("ProcessFiles") that calls itself when encountering a subfolder.
Here's the full script. Hope this helps someone!
===========================
// Prompts the user for a directory, and then recursively processes each image
// in that directory and all subdirectories by executing the "Crop and
// Straighten" command. Images are saved with a specified suffix in a
// designated subfolder.
// Adapted from a script provided by "Paul R." in the "Photoshop Scripting" forum
// http://www.adobeforums.com/webx?7@@.59b54905/2
// TIP: Hold down the "Alt" key while running this script to instruct Photoshop
// to treat the image as a single photo. (For more information, see:
// http://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/10.0/help.html?content=WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e4 1001031ab64-762e.html)
#target Photoshop
app.bringToFront;
var inputFolder = Folder.selectDialog("Please select folder to process");
if(inputFolder != null){
ProcessFiles(inputFolder);
function ProcessFiles(inFolder) {
// var fileList = inFolder.getFiles(/\.(jpg|tif||psd|)$/i);
var fileList = inFolder.getFiles();
var outfolder = new Folder(decodeURI(inFolder) + "/Cropped");
if (outfolder.exists == false) outfolder.create();
for(var a = 0 ;a < fileList.length; a++){
if(fileList[a] instanceof File && fileList[a].name.match(/\.(jpg|tif||psd|)$/i)){
var doc= open(fileList[a]);
doc.flatten();
var docname = fileList[a].name.slice(0,-4);
CropStraighten();
doc.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES);
var count = 1;
while(app.documents.length){
// var saveFile = new File(decodeURI(outfolder) + "/" + docname +"#"+ zeroPad(count,3) + ".tif");
var saveFile = new File(decodeURI(outfolder) + "/" + docname + "-CR"+ ".tif");
SaveTIFF(saveFile);
activeDocument.close(SaveOptions.DONOTSAVECHANGES) ;
count++;
else if (fileList[a] instanceof Folder) {
// alert("Folder: " + fileList[a]);
ProcessFiles(fileList[a])
else {
// inappropriate file type, or null
function CropStraighten() {
function cTID(s) { return app.charIDToTypeID(s); };
function sTID(s) { return app.stringIDToTypeID(s); };
executeAction( sTID('CropPhotosAuto0001'), undefined, DialogModes.NO );
function SaveTIFF(saveFile){
tiffSaveOptions = new TiffSaveOptions();
tiffSaveOptions.embedColorProfile = true;
tiffSaveOptions.alphaChannels = true;
tiffSaveOptions.imageCompression = TIFFEncoding.TIFFLZW;
activeDocument.saveAs(saveFile, tiffSaveOptions, false, Extension.LOWERCASE);
function zeroPad(n, s) {
n = n.toString();
while (n.length < s) n = '0' + n;
return n;