From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Replacing the contents of a Smart Object - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Replacing the contents of a Smart Object

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- [Instructor] There are a number of reasons that you might need to change the contents of a smart object. Perhaps you're doing template work and you need to swap out images, or you're creating a design and you're waiting for the high resolution version or the final retouched photograph. So with this template open, I'll choose file and then place embedded. I'm going to place the rocks.jpeg, and Photoshop is going to automatically resize that document to fit within the open canvas, and we can see that it's resizing at 66% on the width and the height. I want to flip this image, so I will use the contextual task bar in order to do so and then click done. Then on the layers panel, I'll change the stacking order. I'm going to put the rocks below the texture layer and then select the texture and change the blend mode to soft light. Then I'll return to the rocks layer, use the select menu to select all, and then I'm going to use modify in order to contract that selection. I'm going to contract it by 80 pixels and apply the effects at the canvas bounds. Then we can add a layer mask by clicking on the mask icon at the bottom of the layers panel. And using the properties panel, I'm going to soften the edge by increasing the feather mount to about five pixels. I also want the texture to only appear where the photo appears below. I don't want any texture in the white border area. So I'll position my cursor in between the texture and the rocks layer. Hold down the option key, and when I see the icon with the square and the downward pointing arrow, I'll click in order to create a clipping mask. That's going to restrict the texture to only appear where there's content in the layer below it. One last thing. I want to unlink the layer from the mask, target the photograph, and then with the move tool selected, I'll use the right arrow key just to reposition that image a bit. All right, so now we've done a lot of work to our image and I want to replace the photograph. Well, I can use layer, smart objects, and then replace contents, or we can right click in the layer and choose to replace the contents from the context sensitive menu. Then we can navigate to the rocks, replace and choose place, and Photoshop will automatically transform this to the same settings that the last image was. It will flip it. We can see we don't have to redo the clipping mask, and it's got the layer mask applied. So as your files get more complicated, this can be a great time saver. And while we replace the photo, maybe because we didn't like the first image, this technique can be used for replacing client images in any branded template or replacing FPO artwork with retouched files and the like. Now, one thing I do want to mention, if your originals are different sizes, you may have to resize them when you replace the content. But because they're smart objects, those transformations are all going to be non-destructive. So there you go. An easy way to quickly swap out the contents of a smart object in Photoshop.

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