How do I automate checking conditions on a TIFF?

Question

When I've finished editing, I need to make sure I've met the formatting requirements of my client. I have a checklist that i'd love to be able to automate. Within photoshop would be great; even better would be something I could run on a batch of files (e.g. a directory's contents) prior to sending them out. Example conditions would be:

• check for existence of clipping path. (Already created a PS action to create this, but I forget sometimes)
• verify 8 bit & CMYK
• verify single layer (if I forgot to flatten)

3rd party app, scripting - whatever is a good solution out there, I'm game.

Answer 1

There are two ways I would handle this, but unlike @horatio, I wouldn't use Actions because I find them to be pretty krufty, though that could be because my uses are very advanced.

The easy, prepackaged solution would be to go with some kind preflighting software like Markzware FlightCheck (Preflight) which can be used to check all sorts of things and is highly customizable. A lot of our printers have Flightcheck profiles for us to download and check our files against.

The other course of action would be scripting with Applescript (Mac), Visual Basic (Windows), or Javascript (Both platforms). This requires a lot more work than any other solution, but it will allow you to create checking processes that are as simple or complex as you need them to be, and easily goes well beyond anything Actions can provide.

Answer 2

The most straightforward way to do this is to just make an action for each individual check in your list and then a "control action" that calls each of them in turn, then batch the folder using that "control action."

The second two items don't require a decision to be made, so you can just run them on everything and the ones that don't need them will be unaffected.

The clipping path one presumably requires user intervention: you can make a note of them.