From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Opening raw images as Smart Objects - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Opening raw images as Smart Objects

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- [Instructor] If you're working with raw files, instead of opening the image into Photoshop and then converting it to a smart object, you can choose to open the raw file into Photoshop as a smart object. This will enable you to access all of the raw data if you want to make changes to the image. So from Bridge, I'm going to select the sand dollar and the wall texture, and I will open these two images in camera raw. I want to make some changes to the sand dollar image. I'm going to increase the whites quite significantly and then just decrease the blacks a little bit. I'll want to select both of the images. So I'll hold down the command key on Mac, control key on Windows and select the wall texture. And then instead of simply opening the files, I'm going to open them as objects that's going to open both of these as smart objects in their own separate documents. We can see we have the wall texture smart object, as well as the sand dollar with the smart object. I want to select the sand dollar on the left. So I will choose the object selection tool, enable object finder, and then click on the sand dollar. In order to add a mask, I can click on the contextual task bar. And then to view both of these documents, I'll choose window, arrange and then tile. I'll drag the sand dollar layer into the wall texture image, and then we can close the sand dollar image without saving. I'll tap V to select the move tool and we can reposition the sand dollar in the image area. Now to make it appear as if it is resting on this texture, I'm going to add a drop shadow by choosing layer, layer style and then drop shadow here we can change the distance of the drop shadow as well as the size of the drop shadow. I'm just going to make this a little bit larger. And then instead of using the distance and the angle in order to change the location, I'm simply going to drag in the image area in order to change the location of the drop shadow. Alright, I like that, but I'm going to make it a little bit larger and then apply that. We can see in the layers panel we have an FX icon that tells me that there's an effect and here it is the drop shadow, but I want to make some changes to the sand dollar so I could select layer and then smart objects and then edit the contents. But it's easier if I just double click on the thumbnail for the smart object in the layers panel. That will bring it up into camera raw. I'm going to increase my shadows, bring down my highlights, and also desaturate the sand dollar. Let's apply those edits. And I want to make an edit to the wall texture as well. So I will double click on the thumbnail, then I'll select masking. Choose the linear gradient, drag out a gradient from the right side, and then increase the shadows as well as the exposure and decrease the saturation. Alright, let's apply those as well. Now another way to add a file as a smart object is to use the file menu and then place embedded. I'll navigate to 14 smart objects and I want to add the paper texture, so I'll double click. That will bring up camera raw and you'll notice that there aren't any options here to open or open as object, but when I choose, okay, Photoshop will automatically convert this to a smart object because I use the place command, let's apply that transformation. But I will point out that if we select the Photoshop menu on Mac and depending on what operating system you're on, choose either preferences or choose settings. And then general. Now on Windows, you'll select the edit menu and then preferences. And then general, there are three options for placing smart objects. You can choose to skip the transform when placing, which means that you won't have to hit enter or return when it places it, it will do that for you. You can also choose whether or not to resize the image during place and whether or not to create a smart object when placing. I'm going to leave these at their default for now, I just wanted to make sure that you knew that they were there. Alright, let's set the paper texture to soft light. And then I want to change the stacking order so that it also affects the sand dollar, but I don't like the blue tint that it's adding. So I will double click on the thumbnail that will bring up camera raw. I'll decrease the saturation and under the light panel and increase the exposure. We'll apply that and I like that a lot better. Okay, let's choose the file menu and save. We're going to save this as sand dollar comp. I'll save it into the 14 smart objects as a layered Photoshop document. Then we can close this and when we return to Bridge. We can see the new composite. And I want to point out that the changes that were made when we were editing the contents of the smart object only affect those smart objects in the composite, not the original file. So we can see here that I desaturated the sand dollar, while it was a smart object within this comp. And we also lightened the right edge of the wall texture, but we don't see those changes in the original. Excellent, so you can see the flexibility that you get when you bring your raw files into Photoshop. You can always reprocess them non-destructively and you don't lose any image quality, which can be really important, especially when you start compositing images together.

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