From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Creating and editing Smart Objects - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Creating and editing Smart Objects

“

- [Instructor] Smart Objects offer a non-destructive and flexible way to work with layers in Photoshop, especially when you're resizing, transforming, or warping layers. I'm going to resize this image down, so I want to convert the background into a layer by clicking on the lock icon. Then I'll choose the edit menu and select Free Transform, or I can use the keyboard shortcut command + T on Mac or Control + T on Windows. Then I will hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows and transform this from the center until it's very small. Then we can go ahead and apply that transformation. But when we do that, Photoshop discards all of the information as it scales it down. So if I choose Transform again by using the keyboard shortcut Command + T on Mac or Control + T on Windows, and I resize this up, because Photoshop had thrown away the information, when it resizes it up, we're going to lose a lot of image quality. So to avoid that loss of quality, we can use Smart Objects. So I'm going to use Command + Z once and twice, and three times to return to the original state of the image. This time, instead of converting the background into a layer, I'm going to choose the Layer menu, then Smart Objects, and Convert to Smart Object. We can see in the Layers panel that it has the Smart Object icon, and this time when I choose Command + T in order to transform this and we make it smaller and we apply that, then when I change my mind and use Command + T again and we resize this larger, well, we can see that we haven't lost any image quality because the Smart Object is holding on to all of that information when we scale it up and down, or when we rotate it, or warp it, or do any of the other transformations. So let's take a look at a practical application. I'm going to use the Window menu and choose Arrange so that we can tile these two documents. And then I'm going to drag and drop layer zero, which is the Smart Object, into the template. I'll hold down the Shift key in order to drop it right into the center, and then we can close this other open document. In the Layers panel, I'll drag Layer 1 down below the rectangle, and I need to transform this in order to fit it in this open area, so I'll use Command + T on Mac or Control + T on Windows. Now, if you ever have this happen where you have a layer that is so large that you can't even access the transformation handles, you can either zoom out using Command + -, or you can use Command + 0 while in Free Transform and it will zoom you out so that you can see those transformation handles with just one click. All right, I'll hold down the Option key again, let's just make this a little smaller, and let's say I want it to look maybe like that. Then I will transform that, but if I change my mind later on, or maybe an art director changes their mind, we can always go in using Command + T or Control + T in order to transform that even more. All right, when we're done, we can click the Done button to apply that transformation, and we can do this as many times as we want and never lose any image quality. Now, there's several important things to know when you're using Smart Objects. First, if you want to do pixel-based editing, you need to edit the contents. For example, if I select the Spot Healing Brush Tool and I try to paint directly on this layer, it's going to tell me that it has to rasterize the Smart Object. I'll go ahead and select Cancel, and instead I'll choose Layer, Smart Objects, and then Edit Contents. That's going to open up the contents of the Smart Object in its own window. So I still have the parent document, which is the template, but also the contents of the child document or the Smart Object right here. So now we can remove those birds and then choose File and Save, and then File and Close, and it will update it in the parent document or in the template. Now, Smart Objects will make your files larger because they're storing that extra information so that, for example, if I go back to Free Transform and we transform this larger again, well, it's got all that information to work with. With that in mind, you might want to resize the contents of your layer down to the maximum size that you think you'll need before you convert it to that Smart Object. If you're going to add a layer mask to the layer, you might want to convert the layer to a Smart Object first and then add the mask so that you have direct access to the mask and you don't have to edit the contents of the Smart Object just to edit the mask. You can also convert several layers into a single Smart Object, as we'll see in a later video, in order to transform or warp the layers as if they're one, and you can convert your Smart Objects into a regular layer by choosing Layer, and then Smart Objects, and Convert to Layers. Most of the options for the Smart Objects can also be found over in the Layers panel. For example, if I right click here, we have all of the options to convert to layers through converting to a Smart Object. If you do convert to layers, you will lose that flexibility of the Smart Object, so I would only convert the image if I knew that I wouldn't want to resize that layer again. Using smart objects in Photoshop can be a huge advantage when you're compositing multiple layers together, or when you want the added flexibility of being able to transform and warp multiple images multiple times to try different compositions without losing image quality.

Contents