in today's video i'll be explaining photoshop smart objects as they relate to photo editing
but before we get into photoshop we need to look at something starting with a raw file in lightroom
i've already applied some lightroom adjustments to this and i now want to move into photoshop to
work on it further to do this you might typically right click on the image thumbnail in lightroom
then in the pop-up menu you would click the edit in photoshop option this processes the raw file
and then opens the image in photoshop now let's do the same thing but this time using a smart object
i'll right click on the image as before but this time i'll come down to the bottom of the menu
and choose to edit the image as a smart object in photoshop again this process is the raw file but
now it's opened as a smart object if you look at the image thumbnail in the layers window
you can see a small icon to the bottom right this tells us the layer isn't a regular image but it's
a smart object the reason you might want to do this is to preserve the raw file editability what
i mean by this is that if we wanted to change any of the existing adjustments we just double click
the smart object it then opens in adobe camera raw using the same adjustments that i applied to the
image in lightroom it even keeps things like the healing brush changes as well as the masks that
i used something that i missed when editing the image in lightroom though was to level the horizon
so i'll do that now using the crop tool i can then select the level tool and then click and drag to
straighten the image when i click the ok button adobe camera raw closes and i'm back in photoshop
don't worry about seeing this transparent document background if you try this you can remove it using
the crop tool in the photoshop tools palette the important point to remember is that if i double
click on the smart object again i still have access to the adjustments i made including to
straighten the image what happens when photoshop creates a smart object is that it acts like a
container around the image inside in this example lightroom passed the raw file data to photoshop
along with all the adjustments that i've made photoshop then converted all this information
into a smart object inside the smart object is the raw file data along with my adjustments that's why
when i double click the smart object to open it photoshop loads the raw file in adobe camera raw
now let's look at the image we opened as a regular layer i'm first going to duplicate the layer by
right clicking it because i want to use it for a comparison now let's convert the duplicated image
layer into a smart object you can do this either in the filter menu or you can right click on the
layer and choose the convert to smart object option as before you can see the layer now has
a smart object icon in the corner let's double click this and see what happens at first glance
you might think nothing's happened but it has photoshoppers open the smart object and you're
now looking at the image that's inside it notice in the layers window you now only see one layer
which is the contents of the smart object also if you look at the tab at the top you can see this
is the background copy psb image we still have the document with the two layers open in another
tab what you don't see though is adobe camera raw because this is a regular image and not a raw file
now let's add a levels adjustment to the smart object and use it to make a change i'll then
save the changes i've just made to the smart object after that i can close the smart object
when i hide the smart object in the document you can see that it's different to the original layer
but you can't see the levels adjustment i applied because it's inside the smart object if you want
to see the levels adjustment again you need to double click the smart object won't net now you
can make any further adjustments that you want to and save them inside the smart object again
something else people often don't realize about photoshop smart objects is that you can nest them
inside of each other let's select the original layer and the smart object in this image i can
then convert the two layers into a new smart object using the option in the filters menu
now when i double click the smart object to open it i see the layer and the smart object
inside then if i double click on the second smart object i can see the layers inside of
that as useful as smart objects are there is a downside to using them they can create a larger
file size you may find that you need to save your images using the photoshop large document format
rather than a regular psd file if you have a lot of layers in them smart objects can also
slow the saving of your image files if you find the files are taking too long to save you could
try saving them in the tiff format instead this is much faster but the files are also much larger
when saving images which use smart objects it's important to use a file format that supports them
or they will be rasterized into a regular image you will need to save your images as
either a photoshop psd large document or tiff file to preserve the smart objects
another great feature of smart objects is that they can turn a destructive filter edit
into a non-destructive one if i apply a gaussian blur filter to this regular image layer there's
no way for me to adjust it afterwards i can only undo the change i've just made and try again with
a different setting now watch what happens when i apply the same filter to a smart object layer
the filter now appears below the smart object in the layers window in a smart filters section
now if i want to change the blur setting i can double click the filter to reopen the dialog
but this doesn't only work with filters you can also apply adjustments like levels in this way
rather than using a levels adjustment you will also find that some third-party filter plugins
like the nik collection from dxo can work as smart filters let's say that i apply my changes to this
image using knit color effects pro then when the filter closes it becomes a smart filter this means
i can reopen the filter by double clicking and then making any changes to my original adjustments
all my edits including any control points i've used are saved as part of the smart object this
doesn't happen when you apply a plugin to a regular image layer
now let's go back to the image we opened as a smart object from lightroom we've already seen
that double-clicking the image opens it in camera raw but there are a couple of important points
let's copy the smart object by right-clicking and selecting the duplicate layer option
you can also press command and j on your keyboard or use control and j if you're using a windows pc
i'll then double click to open the new copy smart object because this is a duplicate of the original
smart object it also opens in adobe camera raw and it has the same edit supply to it the next thing
i'll do is to convert this from a color image to a black and white and then apply the changes as you
would expect the image is now black and white but look at what's happened to the other smart object
that's also been converted to black and white the two smart objects are linked so that any
change i apply to one is automatically applied to the other this happens whenever you duplicate a
smart object by copying it and it can have many uses but if you want to edit a copy of a smart
object without affecting the object it's copied from you need to make a copy in a different way
you can still right-click smart object in the layers window but don't use the duplicate option
instead choose the new smart object via copy this creates a new smart object but
using copied data now let's double click to open the image in camera raw we'll then convert it back
to color again and close it now we have one color smart object and one in black and white
this shows that we can now edit the two smart objects independently of each other
if you're wondering why you might want to do this though you need to watch this video
next it explains a great technique for editing photos using smart objects thanks for watching
and don't forget to subscribe i hope you'll be back to enjoy more of my videos in the future