Placing the names of layers in Photoshop into Illustrator as text

Question

I'm using a linked .psd file to quickly make a series of images for screen-printing and web all at the same time. I use it to place images from Photoshop into Illustrator. The linked file is really key to expediting my workflow, but the only drawback is that I need to enter the names of the layers in Photoshop into a text box in Illustrator. To clarify, the layers in Photoshop are named according to Pantone colors which I document in Illustrator for the printer to reference.
The linked object in Illustrator doesn't show the layer names. It's really clunky to click back and forth from Ai to PS and type in the name of each Photoshop layer into Ai. Is there a script or an action for doing this? I thought maybe an apple-script that recorded my copy-paste keystrokes would do the trick but I don't know much about scripting.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

I figured it out! This applescript I found is really handy if you need to copy/paste things between programs. I edited it to fit my specific task and it works perfectly. Maybe someone else will find it useful.

This applescript is for copy/pasting text between Excel and Firefox. It's meant for automatically filling out webforms from a spreadsheet: http://www.nextab.de/en/blog/copy-paste-automator-apple-script/

I edited it so that it automatically copy/pastes the layer names from Photoshop into a text box in Illustrator. I made "cmd /" a keyboard shortcut to rename layer in Photoshop, then selected the first layer in Ps and made sure the text tool was in the correct spot in Ai. I ran this script in automator and it put all my layer names into Illustrator:

repeat 6 times
tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC 2014" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Photoshop"
        keystroke "/" using command down
        keystroke "c" using command down
        keystroke tab
    end tell
end tell
delay 0.3
tell application "Adobe Illustrator" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Illustrator"
        keystroke "v" using command down
        keystroke return
        keystroke "-"
        keystroke space
    end tell
end tell
end repeat
end