Problem: I have images on a transparent background, they’re different shapes and sizes, for all older versions of Photoshop I’d have a generic action that copy merged my selection, created a new document (with dialog on so it adjusts the size correctly), pasted, saved (again with dialog on so I could enter filename) then closed.

Quick and easy.

CS3 comes along and sticks a spanner in the works - when you create a new document via Actions it creates it to the width and height defined in the action, even though this was set to clipboard. Re-record or load old actions created with older versions of Photoshop and the same happens - when you run the action, Clipboard is greyed out and unavailable and the dimensions are the size of whatever was orginally recorded.

Doh!

Solution: Finally managed to resolve the issue with some help from Steven Sacks…

Download the Photoshop script here, then follow these steps:

  1. Place copymerged.jsx somewhere on your hard drive, preferably a fixed location
  2. Select the position in your Action where you want it to copy merged and create the new document
  3. Start recording
  4. From the menu: File -> Scripts -> Browse (dialog opens) choose the script that you just placed from your saved location
  5. The script should run through copying, creating a new document, paste your image and resize
  6. Stop recording
  7. Turn off any previous actions you had which did anything from within this new script (e.g. new document, paste, etc)