"$Grn " vs. "grain"

[AnthonyK]

I was looking through some older batchPlay code that I thought was generated by Alchemist (though not entirely sure) and came across some code that used "$Grn " to designate green. This seemed odd relative to the designation for the other colors. The example below is for making a Black and White adjustment layer.

//Make Black and White adjustment layer
{
   "_obj": "make",
   "_target": [
      {
         "_ref": "adjustmentLayer"
      }
   ],
   "using": {
      "_obj": "adjustmentLayer",
      "type": {
         "_obj": "blackAndWhite",
         "presetKind": {
            "_enum": "presetKindType",
            "_value": "presetKindDefault"
         },
         "red": 40,
         "yellow": 60,
         "$Grn ": 40,
         "cyan": 60,
         "blue": 20,
         "magenta": 80,
         "useTint": false,
         "tintColor": {
            "_obj": "RGBColor",
            "red": 225.00045776367188,
            "grain": 211.00067138671875,
            "blue": 179.00115966796875
         }
      }
   },
   "_isCommand": true
}; 

I checked Alchemist yesterday for the code and now get the following where "$Grn " has been replaced by "grain", which actually makes more sense.

//Make Black and White adjustment layer
{
   "_obj": "make",
   "_target": [
      {
         "_ref": "adjustmentLayer"
      }
   ],
   "using": {
      "_obj": "adjustmentLayer",
      "type": {
         "_obj": "blackAndWhite",
         "presetKind": {
            "_enum": "presetKindType",
            "_value": "presetKindDefault"
         },
         "red": 40,
         "yellow": 60,
         "grain": 40,
         "cyan": 60,
         "blue": 20,
         "magenta": 80,
         "useTint": false,
         "tintColor": {
            "_obj": "RGBColor",
            "red": 225.00045776367188,
            "grain": 211.00067138671875,
            "blue": 179.00115966796875
         }
      }
   },
   "_isCommand": true
}

It seems like both "$Grn " and "grain" work, but I wonder if one is more correct and should be used, especially given that $Grn " is unusual compared to the other color designations. I wonder where the "$Grn " name actually came from. It seems to be an outlier.

[Karmalakas]

Here’s a nice explanation from @simonhenke

How to get, set and unset layer color?

Those color names are correct. They originate from mistakes that were done many years ago, for example the grain/green thing exists due to the accidental double assignment of the char-code "Grn ". There is no documentation on every single internal property of Photoshop that you can target via BatchPlay, however I started to create Typescript types for some stuff, where you can also see the ColorNames. You can’t really directly mix BatchPlay and DOM code, but you can get the id from a layer obj…

[Jarda]

They both have exactly the same typeID number. Alchemist for conversion from .ATN file into batchplay uses this alchemist/CharIDToStringID.ts at master · jardicc/alchemist · GitHub

Otherwise, you could have much more strings like that and it would be more confusing. I think these might be preferable in .ATN files because are shorter and save space.

[AnthonyK]

Thanks for that info @Jarda & @Karmalakas . If they have the same typeID, then it’s my understanding they should work equally well for triggering the correct response in Photoshop.