CS5 Hiding layers is painfully slow

flash-cs5, javascript, optimization, photoshop, photoshop-script

Solution

The only thing I can think of is try try to loop through the individual layers in `app.activeDocument.layers` which contains all the layers and groups. When you do this you'll notice that grouped layers will still retain their original `visible` property but are hidden because their parent group is hidden.

#target photoshop

var myLayers = app.activeDocument.layers;
var myLayersLength = myLayers.length;

for (var i=0; i<myLayersLength; i++) {
    myLayers[i].visible = false;
}

EDIT: So I tested this solution on a 400mb file with 50 layers and it worked in seriously less than a second. Are you sure the problem is with Photoshop?

If you have to iterate through every single layer and child-layer individually to perform an action you can do it recursively:

#target photoshop

var doc = app.activeDocument;
findLayers(doc);


function findLayers(set) {
    for (var i=0; i<set.layerSets.length; i++) {

        //recursive call
        findLayers(set.layerSets[i]);

        //iterate sub-layers and hide
        for (var j=0; j<set.layerSets[i].layers.length; j++) {
            set.layerSets[i].layers[j].visible = false;
        }
    }

    //hide top-level layers
    for (var l=0; l<set.layers.length; l++) {
        set.layers[l].visible = false;
    }
}

This takes a bit longer, ~20 seconds on my machine, but it will hit every single layer in a document.

NOTE: I also tested your original scripts from the question and they don't work on un-grouped layers because you're iterating through `document.layerSets` instead of `document.layers`

Problem

Original source