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I Love Smart Objects by Bill Guy

Smart Objects in Photoshop is a fast and easy way to work on images in a non destructive way and can be a great timesaver. However, many users are hesitant to use them because, in my opinion, Adobe has not done a good of explaining them.

When Smart Objects came into CS 2 it was handled with Place command under File and had limited use. CS 3 really improved on the concept allowing the use of Smart Filters but still Adobe did not really explain how this new feature can be a great help to photographers. So think of them this way, a Smart Object is more of a place holder than a straight copy of an image.

Here is how it works. Let’s say you are working on a template which will have a few images in it (wedding photographers do this all the time with album pages) and you have your background and layout done and are now ready to add the images. In the past you would go to the images, copy and paste them into the template. Because images come in different sizes and resolution you might need to resize the imported images to fit into the format of your template. Not a problem, you just Transform by grabbing the handles and resize them and click OK. As you work the template and images you move them around and notice that one of the images needs to be a bit larger. Ok, if you needed to reduce an image that was imported and pasted that works out fine, but if you need to enlarge then you have a problem. Once the image is imported and you click OK it is set and rasterized which means if you enlarge you run the risk of pixelation. That's those jaggies that happen in an image that is being stretched past its point of image quality. So you have go back to the original image and import it again. Plus, let’s say you get all done and another client wants you to create this same page for them. That means you have to re create it all over again.

This is where Smart Objects come in. In CS 3 and CS 4. When you are ready to import the images you go to File>Place and from the file menu pick the image you want put into your image. You will notice that instead of a simple paste you get a Transform ready image with an X across the image. This tells you it is coming in as a Smart Object. You can do your placement and resizing and click OK. Now in the Layer Menu you will notice that in the corner of the thumbnail is a strange icon that looks a little like two squares connected. This is the Smart Object indicator. What you have here is not a pasted image but a link back to the original image. While you are working on this template image if you need to go back to the original image to fix something you double click on the layer thumbnail and you are taken back to the original. Do what even you need to (fix a stray hair, zit, brighten teeth) and save. When you do your other work is updated right away. No redoing the placement or anything else you had done on the template. If you need to resize just Transform and reduce or enlarge, as a place holder you can go up to the original resolution as many times as you like. It is always referring back to the original. This does not mean that you pull a wallet image up to a wall poster but you can move them up and down all day long without losing any resolution. Plus as a Smart Object you add Filter effects and they will show up under the image so if you need to fudge them a bit you can.

What really makes this great if you created a masterpiece of a template with Filter effects, Special drop shadows and strokes and even a few adjustment layers and another client comes along and wants the same template you can replace the Smart Object image with a just a few clicks. All the effects will remain in place. Very fast and easy.

Next time I will show you how to use Smart Objects and Raw images for really special effects and control over an image.

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