hey guys welcome welcome back today we're going to look at smart objects
so you guys know i use smart objects reasonably regularly and you've seen them in all of the full
edits on this channel i'm through an edit at the moment and i've come across this situation that i
want to share with you because i realize we've not done it before so let's start at the top what is
a smart object why would you use a smart object because that's probably really important let's
go ahead and basically demonstrate what happens right so this is just a signature watermark so
we're gonna just select all of it copy it and then go ahead and add a new layer to this image
and paste it what that does is that's not given as a smart object that's just giving us a layer
right and it's currently sat at this resolution so it's nice and crisp at this resolution
now if that's a normal layer what i can do is i can make it smaller
and that's great but i can then make it bigger only the problem is
is that when it's at a normal layer it's lost its resolution so what i'm going to do is i'm
going to undo those changes so you can see the difference so we've resized it and then
we've tried to enlarge it again and it's lost its resolution you see so what it's doing is because
it's a raster layer it's just a raster thing it's rasterized and therefore it loses its resolution
look what happens when we do the same thing with a smart object and we'll place it in as a png
right so what that's done because we've dropped it in from a different program we've now got a
smart object now what this means is that if we resize that to roughly about ish the size that
it was earlier on i don't know about that probably maybe and if we zoom in now right so we've kind
of set up at the same situation but we're a smart object so what we can do is we can resize
and then we can resize again and the resolution is not affected at all
so a smart object what it does basically is it holds everything that you've got all of the pixels
safely in a little protective package that you can then go back and change now the relevance for this
in my full edits basically is that when we have a smart object layer and convert a layer to a smart
object we can then stack filters on them and then go back into the filters to change things
that's the benefit of having it as a smart object by the way we're halfway through and edit here so
it's kind of before the edit and that's now so this is the point we're at but i've now come
to this and you guys know with using a smart object that you can't then go and do anything
because it's a smart object so you can't clone anything you can't spot healing brush anything
you you can't do anything because it's a smart object what if i wanted to go and clean up some
areas i'm now distracted by this what do i do do i have to rasterize it then i can't go back what
do i do right don't panic all you need to do is right click on your smart object layer and choose
edit contents what that does is it opens up the internal package as a new document right so this
is basically just operating as a normal photoshop file now so we can create new layers we can edit
on this we can duplicate stuff we can paint all over things like so and then all you need to do
is close the file and then save and what that does is that shoves all of this straight back into this
smart object little protective coating here and it will spit it out update the layer on this image
and then we'll have our black line like so looking good so what if you've done an
adjustment and you don't like it we can go back in edit contents all of those original layers
will be kept intact over here so it means that we can go through and adjust things after the fact
clean up stuff and make sure that we're happy with it
whilst we're going through an edit so that's how you get back into a
smart object and that is the purpose of smart objects and that is why i love smart objects
if this has been helpful please do let me know i'll see you all again really really soon