Lessons

Lesson Info

9:00 am - Smart Objects

All right well yesterday we covered retouching and today it's more about kalash which means combining multiple images together to create something that is hopefully a greater whole than they individual pieces it's made from and that's what we're gonna dio so today I'm not going to plan on making like any uh what I said just absolute fine art like ready to hang on the wall because sometimes creating something like that distracts from all the techniques you need to know to be able to do that at home in that I need to make sure we just cover all the topics that are necessary so that when you get home you can create fine art masterpieces or doesn't have we find our communication you want but sometimes there are certain topics that where and when I say there's just not a perfect image for it instead you just need to see how it works and then one day you'll run into a technique where you'll be in the middle of creating an image and you're just stuck on one little part of it it will be that o...

ne little part where if you didn't know this one little jewel of information you wouldn't know how to solve it and so I need to make sure you can cover all those things eso we're going to jump in what we're going to do is the very beginning of the day we're going to talk about smart objects smart objects are a way to take the contents of a layer and kind of put it in a little protective bubble, he could say in then that's going to allow you to think differently and photo shop in that if you scale something, it always look back to the original to calculate the scaling so you could scale it is many times as you want, you could open your image two years later, scale it up or scale it down there's, always calculating from the original, there'll be a pull bunch of other things we can do with smart objects, lots of little details in it. So I want to jump right in and get started with that. I know that after smart objects that we're going to cover ways of hiding the background on images or ways of making one image show up on lee, where something else is in your picture, that kind of stuff, and we'll also get into how to bend, warp and displace your image. So if you need to take an image, you know, wanted flat, you wanted to look like it's bent around a coffee mug, or you need tio let's say, to do some re touching, you need toe, have something bend around to conform to something, you'll know how to do it, and at the end, we'll just cover a bunch of shorter techniques that relate to compositing we've got a bunch of stuff to do today, let's jump in ah, here I had just happened have some imaged open with and this one I happen to do the most crude retouching on in that I took the sima tries in southeast asia and of course, there's tourists and so all I did was used the spot healing brush go over there and get rid of them and, you know, took a few passes. It's not a perfect job is just the start. I did it well, you guys were introducing yourselves, it's not like I was trying to be precise, but we need to start with something let's talk about using this image how we can think about smart objects, there's, a bunch of different qualities related to smart objects I want to get into, so what I'm going to do is take this image and duplicated I'm just going to go to the image menu and choose duplicate, and I'm gonna name this one not smart because it's not going to be a smart object. So now we have two identical images open. They showed the separate towns if we don't want them his tabs, we could just grab the name of a tab and pulled down away from that top edge and it'll become its own window I'll zoom out on it so I can just get them side by side lips don't pull it, barry back up to that top edge if you bring it right back up here, do you see the kind of blue border going around that means you're about to put it back in there with the other is a tab, so I don't want to quite move it up there, I'll drag the other one down as well, so we can have him side by side in an unrelated tip is if for some reason you hate tabs, you can't stand him because you like to be able to see your images side by side and whenever you drag one near another, I seem to combine together into these little tabs just is a little aside here you can go to your preferences and it's either under interface or general. In there you're going to find that their air to check boxes you could turn off those to check boxes are open documents as tabs that would make it so he turned it off. Then when you open your documents, they appear separate windows instead of being combined together into one window with tabs, and then the second thing is enable floating document window docking that's when I'm actually going to turn off right now and that means if I dragged one document near another that little blue border shows up that means they're going to be combined together with as little tabs it just won't happen, and so if you turn off both of those check boxes, photo shop would no longer use tabs, and when you dragged one image near another, they're not going to combine together into one window, but I don't mind tabs sometimes they get in my way, sometimes they're useful, so don't mind him. So here we have two identical images I'm going to take the mention the left and I'm going to convert it to a smart object. One way of doing that is to go to the later menu, choose smart objects and right there we have a choice called convert to smart object when I do that, watch what happens in my layers panel specifically watch what happens to little thumbnail image that's there the only indication that I've done anything special will be in just a second usually doesn't pause like this, but just a second right over here you see that extra icon sitting on top of the thumb now if I choose undue that's what it used to look like she's undue again to reapply it and that's the only indication that this is a smart object, so if you ever glance into your layers panel, you see that extra icon on top of a thumb now you know that's a smart object so the two images visually don't look any different, but what happened is on the image in the laugh we took the contents of that layer and we just put him in side of a container that's known as a smart object you can think of it as a little protective bubble that means that now photoshopped cannot directly modify that layer if I come in here and try to modify that layer if I grab something like the paintbrush tool, if you look closely at my mouse, you see it's a little no symbol because I'm unable to directly change that layer. If I try to paint on it, it'll just tell me I can't. If I try to use the retouching tool, it'll tell me I can't it's protecting the contents of that layer there's a way I can change it and I'll show you that in a few minutes but in general it's going to protect the contents of that layer the on ly thing I'm going to be able to do to that layer are things that photoshopped to keep track of with just text her numbers that attach is too that layer like let's say a layer style like a drop shadow you were added one of those it's just a feature attached to a layer, a feature that you could turn off or throw away later it's something that's not permanent on that layer so is going to treat it differently let's take a look at how it does it so I'm going to take these two images and first I'm going to scale them down many go to image size and I'm going to make this absolutely tiny we're starting out with over five thousand pixels on the width I'm going to make it so there's four pixels in the width that means it's going to be tiny would assume upon it check it out now I'm going to take the image on the right and the only thing I'm going to do to it is going to change the name of the background just so I could do certain features that aren't available in the background I won't need to do those features in the very beginning but when we progress with this image I'll need to I'm going to do then the exact same thing go to image size I'm going to scale is down to four pixels wide and we'll zoom up the look similar might not look absolutely identical but pretty darn close now here's the thing if I scale these images back up I'll take the image on the right go to image size and say I want to make it big again hopes I didn't mean to make it that small the problem is when I scale it back up it has no idea what the original looked like. When its scales it back up, the only thing you can think about is what we have right now and that's what it's going to scale up so if you look at how little information that is that's next to nothing so when you scale it up let's, take a look at this thing nice! It looks terrible, but if I take the smart object, it's got the original layer encapsulated in a little protective container called a smart object in any time I scale, the image doesn't matter how many times I scale the image, it always calculates it from the original contents that air in that protective container. So if I scale it back up, you notice that if it's a smart object when you scale it, it should always calculated based on the contents of that smart object and the contents is protected. It's always exactly the same is whatever it looked like it the moment you turned it into a smart object. I'm not sure what I did hear that suddenly make it so it's, not a smart object. I've never actually had that happen before, but when scaling, uh, it can be useful because that means if I'm going to make a composite and I'm going to move into much around and I'm going to scale it up and down, I might end up scaling it down rotated and into place and letting it sit there for a while and once I'm done with the rest of the composite, I might decide it's a little too small well it's a little too big and I might decide to scale it again in rotated again well, as long as you have a smart object it's always starting from the original contents and so the quality is going to be a ziff you've onley scaled it once it's coming always from that original whereas if you're not using a smart object each time you scale the image to make it larger, smaller it's starting with whatever you had the moment before you scaled it, not the original and the quality goes down usually the image gets softer just doesn't look as good let's look at a few of the other things we can do I'm going to take me much on the right and choose undo a few times to get back to when it looked like an actual pick, then let's try doing scaling and rotation so I'm going to go here to the edit menu I'm going to choose free, transform and I'm going to scale this down also I'm going to rotate it press return ranchers say I'm done, I'll go to the image on the left and I'll do the same thing I'll go to free transform I'll scale this down and I'll rotated but now let's say that I've done that and later on I decide to come back and that the angle is off a little bit well let's see how it's going to be a little different between working with a smart object and not let's start off with a smart object this time all I'm going to do is go back to edit and choose free transform and look at what it does notice that it acts as if I never stopped transforming the image in that the little transformation rectangle that's on it is still rotated and still lines up with the picture you see that so that I can come in here and also the numbers at the top reflect the scaling and the rotation that I applied previously it's just coming back in and remembering the settings that where they're just telling me what they are so I could come up here to the angle setting in change it from negative twenty seven to zero and it would put the image back to the original angle I had come in here and set the with two, one hundred percent not a thousand in the height to one hundred percent and it would be back to the original within height of the image on the image on the right though it's different anytime you don't have a smart object, it does not know what the image used to look like it only knows what it looks like right here. It has no idea I've ever rotated it. It has no idea I've ever scaled it in, so if I go to the edit menu and choose free transform, you see what happens with the rectangle it has no idea was ever at an angle, so puts a fresh transformation rectangle on it, the numbers at the top of my screen it says, well, it's never been scaled so it's not a hundred percent view the angles that zero ve you. So how could I straighten that thing? I'd have to do it visually, I'd have to go. I think around here and I might be off a little bit and if I want to get it back to its original size, I would have to scale this up and the quality wouldn't be there because it's starting with whatever we had a moment ago which didn't have as much information as the original, so make any sense as far as how it's working, so when it comes to the smart object it just thinks of whatever I do to the smart logic is a setting attached to that layer like a numeric setting a value in a little field that you could always set back to its original setting in the layer would go back to normal, however, originally looked so that's another advantage let's also choose undo a few times in both of these and let's look at cropping if I come in here with the crop tool and I decide well maybe on the image on the right which is not a smart object I'm gonna come in here, grab these edges and just really get this down to the most interesting part of the photograph and then press return a renter to say I'm done now let's say I saved and close that image and eye opening a month later the information outside the cropping rectangle is permanently gone the image on the left if I crop a similar fashion the image that's outside there is protected in the smart object because whatever I had at the moment I created a smart object is what's protected and that concluded the entire picture. So if I take the image that's over here and I just go to the image menu there's a choice called reveal all and reveal all its just shows me usually whatever's going beyond the edge of my documents it be a city at a multilayer composite and you move one element so goes beyond the edge of your picture you know your document v chose reveal all it would make your document larger just large enough to include that extra stuff going beyond the edge if I choose reveal all here it's going to uncross the image now, just so you know, with the other image I could have with the crop tool gone to the top of my screen and there is a check box up here, you could turn off delete cropped pixels. And if he had turned off, it wouldn't throw away that stuff out there, but with a smart object, even if you had that checkbox tried to be turned on, its not able to throw away the information. A smart object always protects its original contents. So let's, try other stuff. Here's. A simple image I created. In fact, you know how part of it was created. If you were here yesterday, you see that background that's, ad noise, motion blur. And I think I also added a grady in to make it darker on the edge of spider in the middle. But that's not a big deal. On top of that, I have created this little bulk like thing, and all that is is a circle. You know how you have a shape tool and photo shop? Uh, that's. Right over here. Right down here. S o you could grab the ellipse tool to make a circle. And after creating the circle, I just went to the bottom of my layers panel. To hit the letters f x and I added a drop shadow so it's a circle with drop shadow, then with that same tool, we can also go in and use the polygon tool, which would be a multi sided object, and I just drove and made a polygon on top of it to simulate look of a school or bolt. Well, now what I'm going to do is in my layers panel, I'm going to select both of these layers this layers already selected a hold shift to get the top one, and then I'm going to turn that into a smart object, so I'll go up here to the layer menu smart objects convert to smart object if you have more than one layer active at the time, you choose that it's going to act as if you merge those layers together, as if you went to the bottom of the layer panel and just chose emerged layers. In this case, it says merced shapes because they happen to be a maid with shape tool but it's gonna look a cz if I did that, so watch my layers panel, but it just took those two layers. It still has them. It just put them in a protective little box that's called a smart object and it's just letting you show the outside of the box so all you can see is what is the result of those layers look like doesn't show you the individual pieces it's made out of just think of it is similar to saving it is a document on your hard drive, and now all your viewing is the little icon for that file where all you see is what is the end result? Look like you don't see the pieces it's made out of, but those pieces still exist there just inside a little protective box called a smart object, and we just need to learn howto access them to be able to change it now what I'm going to do is duplicate that layer. There are many different ways of duplicating the layer. One issue could type command j control jay and windows I think we use that yesterday didn't command j to jump it to a new layer, and then I can use the move tool to move it down or let's, say a select more than one layer in my layers panel hold shift, and I'll click on the other layer in the middle there when I used the move tool there's another way you can duplicate layer is not sure if you're aware of it or not, but any time you used the move tool if you hold down the option key, which is alton windows when you dragged you drag a copy we actually used a similar concept when we were in vanishing point remember when I had a selection around a window and in order to move the window I held down the option key and it moved a copy of the window so similar idea old option and that's just another way of duplicating if you look in my layers panel you'll see all the duplicates showing up. But imagine maybe this is on a brochure and it's just the background. The brochure is supposed to look like a brush metal panel and you put little bolton the corners so it looks as if the panel's air being, you know, security in place well, here's, what special? Because we used a smart object anytime you duplicate a smart object it thinks that the duplicate is an exact clone of the original and if you can figure out how to change the original it will change all the clones of it. Meaning all of these things are referring back to the same original if you want an example out of other software. Imagine I just saved a picture on my hard drive and I loaded it into microsoft word or I blood into a web page and I just used it eight times on the page if I go and change that file on my hard drive and I reload the web page, aren't all the instances of it going update you know it's not how it works with web pages or if you used like microsoft word or something similar? I'm not sure about word because it's probably not smart enough to know it's on your hard drive still, you know, link it up, but so let's figure out how can we edit that smart object so that we can get all of these to update what I'm going to do is in my layers panel I mean a double click on the thumbnail for this picture. Now the thumbnail looks tiny because it's the contents of the smart object is square and so the little icon forts taking up most of it. But if I just double click here, what is going to happen is they're hard to edit the contents of a smart object it's going to show it as a separate document it's just going to pop open a brand new document to say this is what's inside your smart object so let's see what happens when I double click on the thumb now for any one of these layers doesn't matter which way what it says tells me that when I'm done, what I need to do is to save and I'll describe really what this means in a moment, but when you double click on a layer that contains a smart object that's what happens it pops has a new document and I could make changes to this document so let's say I hide the top layer, maybe a zoom up on the image a little bit, so you see what I'm doing, and I'll add something different let's say this is going to be a phillips head screw instead of a bolt imagine those are the same size because that one let's think it's one of those cheap knock ones you get real cheap, but the unlike I'm not one of the cheap websites s o I've just done that I still have the other piece sitting in here, I just turn off the eyeball on it, but I've modified this in some way. Now what I'm going to do to get the other document update is I'm going to save and close this document now most of the time when you're used to saving your used to thinking mentally that when you're sailing, you're saying the file on your hard drive we're not in this case if I just come up here and choose save it's getting saved back into where it came from when this document came into existence, the separate document here, what I have done is double click on the thumbnail for a layer that's where it came from, so when I choose save it's getting saved back into that smart object, so I'm gonna just to save and then I'm going to switch to the other document and you see how they all updated notice when I did that, I go right back to the other documents, switch it back, I chose save you'll never find me choosing save as or save for webb because those two commands would ask me where to save it. And if they ask me where to say that it's going to save it somewhere else other than where it came from, it's going to save it is a file on my hard drive, but if I just choose safe, doesn't save usually save things right back into where they came from. It doesn't tell you like, where should it go or anything? It just put him back where it came from. So as long as all you choose is a safe command and you'd never use save as with a smart object, then it's saving it right back into this document it's kind of a different way of thinking because I'm used to every time I think to savour it like that it's under my hard drive no in this case, it's back into this document so these are all multiple instances of the same smart object kind of weird, but I think it's pretty cool because that means I can use the same element over and over and document and later on I double clicking the thumbnail for that layer and I could make a change in the entire document updates let's take a look at a few examples web design well, make one tab turn into a smart object, then duplicate the tab moved over duplicate the tab move it over for your other tabs later on you decide to update your web site, double click of the thumb now for any of the tabs and change its shape make it so it's a square tab and suddenly they all update that could be throughout a really complex document same thing with these circles you could change him two stars or anything else is long as you turn it into a smart object before you duplicated it, then it thinks of them all is being multiple instances of the exact same content here's an image that I created using smart objects this is one shape all I did was used the pen tool and kind of randomly drag it to create a shape. The shiny look is just created with layer effects, but it's called layer effexor layer styles. If you ever seen drop shadow bevel in boss knows things they're called either layer effects or layer styles. If I turn those off, you'll see it's just a flat shape but that was a smart object before I duplicated it and rotated it, duplicated it and rotated it duplicated it rotated duplicated, rotated and just did that multiple times put a black background behind it what's creating the shiny look and even the color of the layer of facts if you look at him, just look at the names that air their devlin boss you could make something look like a shiny three d object with devlin boss as long as the object is thin enough that the bevel could make it all the way across the surface satin is something that will add a kind of a squiggle in the middle. It'll add the little it's little kind of dark line going out towards the edge in that kind of stuff and then color overlays what's actually determining the color and so that's putting a color on top little squiggle in the middle and then a three d kind of effect. So anyway, this was a smart object and it can tell that by looking at my layers panel where I see the smart object icon let's double click on that thumbnail to see what I originally had at the moment I turned it into a smart object. Well, the layer that was active when I turned into a smart object looked like yes that's what I had and now I can go in and modify this it's made out of a path with shape tool could make things out of paths soaking the pen tool and I can modify it and now if I save and close this it's going to update the other document, and that means every single instance of it will change, so I'm just going to type command ass, and I'll switch back over to the other document, and I'll choose undoes we could see before and after before after yet change, and that makes it much easier to create interesting composites of this so that if I need this part here to extend the little isp it further so that it looks like it has a little gap in there. Let's say, in this one here, maybe I could change a little bit, that kind of thing. Well, just go into your layers panel double click on that layer and go in and modify it. I think it was the sand where I decided I might want to extend it just a little bit like that. The opposite end. Maybe I want to pull in a little bit, save and switch back to the other document. Now do you see that change happened in both spots? So makes it much easier for me to create a complex image that has all these duplicates and have control over how those things look, but in order to access the content, I double click on the little thumb now for the layer and it shows up is a separate document it's just opening the box to say what's in your smart object you could make a change on lee when that separate document is sitting there, then when you save and close it updates the document that was used within so let's see what else we can do with that I mean, we can make one from scratch we haven't done much of that. There are a few disadvantages of union smart objects just say no, there are a couple features that ah, dobie just hasn't implemented when it comes to smart objects that I really wish they would, I can show you one instance of that what she'll be bummed about once you see it, but it'll you'll understand why then occasionally I am, uh, less efficient when using smart objects with just a couple features. So here I am using the quick selection tool to attend to remove the background on this, and once I get the object isolated here, my layers I'm going to change the name of the background for certain features that can't use on the background layer, so double click on it, name it anything you want and then if I use a layer mask and we're going to get into layer mask in more detail later today when you have a selection active and you add a layer mask, it only keeps the area that you have selected and it hides anything you don't have selected so I can come in here and at the bottom of my layers panel think we used later mass a couple times yesterday anyway, there is the icon that looks like a circle inside of a rectangle if I click on it that's going to add my later mask and if you have a selection active it's going to hide everything except for what selected that's election gets transformed into this mask, we're in a mass the black areas hide things, the white allows them to show up, so I'm going to take that, and before I do anything more to it, I'm going to convert it into a smart object. So now it's going to protect the original contents that I have in that layer it's in a little protective box in anything that I do to it it's just going to be a setting attached to the layer setting that could easily change later on and so let's see what we can do, I'm going to use the crop tool and I'm just going to add some space of this document by pulling out like this put him in the middle like that okay returner interval finish it and now I'm going to duplicate that smart object just by typing command jay and after I duplicated, I'm gonna transform it remember, before we transform, we scaled and rotated, and I did that. But going to the edit menu and choosing free transform well, if you look at free transform it has a keyboard shortcut listed the keyboard shark cut his command t I'm going to use that because I'm going to transform things multiple times and it'll be inefficient to go to the menu every time, so I'll take command tea and check this out when you rotate something. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but there is a little symbol in the center of your image. It looks like a little cross hair, and that determines what this is going to pivot around, pivots around that symbol, choose undue I can move that symbol by clicking on it now I can see it more easily. I can put it down here now when I rotate, it pivots around that spot. I don't if you noticed that before, but that's ah, the case, choose undue, then when I'm rotating there's another little trick, and that is if you just click and drag, you can rotate to any angle you want, but if you hold down the shift key when you do it, you're going to get it in increments of fifteen percent. That way if you want to make things consistent you're gonna rotate eight layers and you wanted to be a consistent amount here I'm going to rotate this forty five degrees you see the forty five and I'll press return enter to sam dunn and now all I'm going to do is repeat that process again and again to make this become ah shaped like a little star like thing so what I'll be doing is I'll be typing to keyboard shortcuts the first one will duplicate the layer the second one will transform it so I can rotate it those keyboard shortcuts are command j jump into new layer and then command tea for transform each time I'll grab the little center point and move it to the bottom of that object and then rotate press returner interest say I'm done I'm just going to the exact same thing again command j to duplicate command t to transform moved a little thing to that bottom command jake command t all I'm doing is the exact same thing over and over again it's not the most exciting thing to watch man change grantee but if you happen to have noticed the course graphic for this that had a leaf rotated around multiple times to create what might look like a fan the technique was identical all right so now we have this shape all of those look back to the same original and sometimes I end up starting off with a kind of crude selection on my original just to see if this is going to look ok when I'm done because it's not worth spending the time to get an absolutely precise selection around the edge until I've done this I look at it say levels that look worthwhile or not, so now what I could do is double click on thumbnail for any one of these layers they all refer back to the same smart object when I double click on it, it shows up as its own document and rumor had a layer mask sitting there I could modify the layer mask now I can come in here and say, well, look at that chunk that doesn't quite look right this one doesn't quite look right if I grab my paintbrush tool and I paint with black when you work with a layer mask black hides things and so I can come over here and as long as in my layers panel, the layer mask is active to see its corners or highlighted, whereas if I was over here I'd be painting right on the picture itself, but as long as that's active the paint goes in here I can come over here and touch this up I'm going to simplify it a little bit I don't if you remember from when we're doing retouching, but if you hold down the shift key with photo shop does is when you click in one spot and then you click some where else it connects the dots between those two spots with a straight line. Didn't we use that on some telephone lines in a picture before? I'm just using it here to draw straight lines when I'm painting to get a nice, smooth shape and just kind of simplify this, but you can see all the spartz spots here where I have like little chunks of trees and other things out there, so I've just might not spend the time to get this to look just right. The beginning might not know if it's worth while until I've already made that composite, duplicated it multiple times and rotated it, but afterwards I can come back here, this is easily and update this, and when I save it and close it, that other document that has multiple copies of it is going to update on the switch over and paint with white if I want to bring in the areas back in a later mask, white brings things back. You can switch between painting with black and paying with white by pressing the letter x on your keyboard, what ex does is it does the exact same thing is clicking this will double arrow. And that exchange is your foreground and background colors, so if you're sitting there painting on a mask with black and you know, I wish I could paint with white right now just hit the letter x, and you've just switched those two colors. So anyway, I've modified this mask, maybe I also come in here decided want to adjust the image, I'll come in here with curves and see if I want to add a little contrast to this, they could have some areas at it to others, and now I'm just going to say, then close that command s for save and then I'll hit the little xto close it. Now, if I try to close it before it's done saving in the lower left, it gives me a progress bar. If I try to close it, it might warn me to say, hey, we're not actually going to close this until I'm done saving, but I can try and it's going to update that other file. The only reason it's taken a while right now is this is a high res picture, I think it's like five thousand some pixels on the with, but there you see it updated. If I choose undue, you can see my update, and so that means I can use this multiple times before it's perfect and then I double click on the thumbnail for that layer see it as a separate document and I spend the time to perfect it on lee once I think that it's worthwhile uh and so it's kind of interesting the other thing I could do now is if I were to find another object to put in there and I haven't planned this ahead of time so I'll just pick a random object I could come in here and all I'm going to do here is select this I'm not going to be precise because we don't need toe create a masterpiece here I'll just get part of this all right I'm going to use to move tool uh and I'm just going to drag this over here there it is and maybe I'll scale it so it's in the same space and I could rotate it could have turned this into a smart object first that way the scaling a rotating could all be undone wait iran but I didn't think about it so I didn't do it okay now let's see what happens if I save that command us it should save it back into this document might take in a moment to save down here in the lower left you see where it says saving but now once it's done it's updating the other document and so suddenly we could have started with one image but later on decided to use a different one camel to see all those so thou therefore, if you used smart objects, you could start off with a placeholder image, but just says, I know I'm going to put some picture here going to start with this one, it looks okay and use it within your design scale. It rotated, add drop, shadow, whatever you need and later on double click on it and go back and change it to something different, so I just choose un. Do you see the difference now, as long as you use a file format that supports layers mainly photoshopped file format, but you could also use tiff when you save the image will have these smart objects in it, and it will, when you open it again, be just like it is now and that I could double click on the thumbnail for it in whatever the content of that smart object is, will pop open and do its supper document, and I could make changes? Uh, but that's kind of interesting didn't know what that would look like when I plopped it in let's say this image just in case we want to get to it later on don't just use photoshopped file format, nothing special when I say that, and at the bottom it gives you a progress bar and photoshopped cs six, you can actually try to close the document while it's saving don't worry about it. You try to close it when it's saving, you know, just say, hey, it's still saving? It'll close once it's done, and I could close these other documents cause that one's already saved into it and this one since I have the contents out of it, I don't need it anymore, and I just say, don't save this one, but you get the idea that smart options are kind of interesting in that they they can encapsulate that info on what you do, some interesting things with a whole bunch of other things they allow us to dio let's, take a look, I'm going to just grab the text tool and I'll put some text in here. No, there are certain things you can't do it a text because text is a special kind of layer it's, a layer that you could edit later, you could come over here to the layer if you double click on the the little letter t that's there that represents the text, it would bring you back into editing them text and would select it all. I could go over here and choose a different typeface if I'd like whatever I want, and because you're able to make those changes, this is not like a normal layer. Instead, this is a special area that we can edit. And that means there are certain things we can't do to it things that would usually involve editing individual pixels that make up this layer like I can't come over here and use the retouching tool and try to re touch it. It'll say I have two rast arise at first, which means make it so it's no longer really text it's a picture of text, you know it made out of pixels, but we could get around those limitations in for some features and photoshopped leasing smart objects, for instance, I would like to blur this. I'll go to the filter menu, choose blur, and if I tell it, I want to do a motion blur it's going to give me the same warning that, hey, we needed make this so it's no longer text, so instead it's made of pixels instead so we can actually blur it's conta dance and I don't want to do that. I want to keep it so it's editable text. So what I'm going to do is turn it into a smart object first, whenever you turn something into a smart object, it's a acts as if it's merged those layers together into a layer that's made out of pixels, and now I could come over here to the filter menu and I'll be able to blur this with the motion blur but I can still edit the text. The only thing is the text is inside the smart object so in or be able to get to the text I need to edit the smart option. So I go to my layers panel, I double click on the thumbnail for that layer because that's, how you always edit the contents of a smart object. And when I do, I see the original contents that I had at the moment that I, uh, ended up doing this, and I can come in here and edit the text. Now, let's, see what happens going to choose, reveal all to get the little extra in there, and then I'll save and close this. And now you see that we have a different text blurt and so you see how we're getting around some of photo shops, normal limitations by uh, putting into a smart object, it's a lot of other things we could do similar to that. For instance, here I just have a rectangle and I have a pattern applied to it and you can apply a pattern. Anything you want, all you need to do is have a layer and at the bottom of your layers panel, you have the letters, fx right here. One of the choices in there is pattern, overlay and that's going toe just cover up the entire contents of your layer with whatever pattern you choose right here, you click on this little long click in this area and you can choose any pattern you want. I think we made one here brushed metal the other day didn't cut my eyeball by scale it down to pattern, but where's scale anyway. Eso if I apply a pattern well, let's see what happens if I try to change this shape? If I come in here and go up to the edit menu, choose free, transform and scale it or come up here and actually tell it to warp it what's happening is the pattern is being applied after the scaling or warping. The pattern itself has not changed. It's just is transforming the contents of that layer once it's done, it puts the pattern on top, so the pattern is not changing, so choose, undo and let's throw that thing into a smart object. Now it has no idea the individual pieces it's made out of its as if I'm urged all that stuff together into one piece, it thinks of it like just anything made out of pixels. And now if they come here and I try to warp this it's going to warp the contents, regardless of what it's made out of, and the pattern doesn't get applied later, it got applied permanently inside that smart object so I come in here and do any kind of transformation I want to get that if I want to change the pattern I just go into the smart object double click on the smart object to see its original contents double clicking the thing that is adding the pattern which is my layers panel then change it to something else saving close this is it remembers how it was distorted some updates it so I think that allows me to do a lot of things that I wouldn't otherwise be able to dio here's another instance this eyes logo for the cover of a book that I read it's a book that's no longer in publication what I used to do is write books that would tell you on ly what's new when a new version of photo shop came out but now the update photoshopped what four times a year is their plans and I don't know how book publisher is going to deal with that s o I don't update this book anymore but here I have a logo in that leg is made out of multiple parts I have this little flame I have the little blur that's behind the text I have the text itself and some other elements here and I'm just going to take all of those pieces in select them and let's say I wanted a warp them I wanted to bend this stuff well, if I go to the edit menu when you have more than one layer active warp is great out, you cannot work more than one layer at a time you can warp individual layers but not more than one well, just put it into a smart object when you do something that's a smart obviously access if you merge those layers into one so now the warp command works fine, no problem working that, but then I decided I want to make changes to it we'll double click on the thumb now so you can see the original contents of your smart object maybe I changed the look of the flame maybe I changed the look of the word too so it's a little easier to read that it's three words and then I say even updated well, it remembers the warping, so I'm able to make those kinds of changes. So if there's ever something that usually doesn't work on multiple layers at once it's ah filter that would work on the individual layers, but you needed to treat these six layers as if they've been combined together. Turn into a smart object before you apply the filter. In fact let's talk about filters for a moment, usually with filters if you come in and do something like blur picture and you make it nice and blurry let's say saving close this image and then later on in this side a man is too blurry. Well, if you didn't use a smart object, this is all it's got it has no idea what the original look like if I go back back to the filter menu in chiu's, gazi and blur, the only thing I can do is blurred again, meaning blur this already blurry stuff even more right, but let's, look at how it works with a smart object I'll choose undo a few times until we're back to the version where we haven't applied the filter I'm gonna come in here and convert to a smart object and I did that before I'm going to apply the filter so now the filter is actually thought of as being different the way adobe uses the terminology is now they calm smart filters if they're applied to a smart object so let's go over here and blurred again, and if I go back to the blur or the filter menu and choose blur again, it is going to add blur to the already blurry picture just like it would with a normal one. But look at how it's actually doing it in the layers panel it actually attach is the blur's to that layer as if their recess aries and I could come in here and turn off the eyeball for one of the blur's turn off the eyeball for the other one and see what it would look like with only one of the blur's being applied or I come in here and I just double click on the name of the filter right here, and it brings me back into the filter is if I've never left it, and I could come in here and reduce the blur, you can't reduce the blur afterwards with normal layers, but with smart objects you can. I'm gonna undo this a few times until I get back to the point where I didn't have any smart filters left there's one other thing that I like to do quite a bit, and that is there's, a filter that I use for sharpening an image. I use it not for every image, but when I want a special look to an image, and what that is is I go to the other choice under filter and choose high pass and with high pass. The problem is you get all this great stuff and there's a way to get the gray to go away. Usually you'd have to work on a duplicate layer where you have the original layer underneath you apply the filter to a duplicate of that, and then you would change the blending mode menu, which is the menu up here that top your layers panel to a choice called overlay. But I didn't work on a duplicate layer. Instead I applied it to a smart object and so it's showing up right here is kind of an accessory to that smart object in all I need to do is double click on this symbol on the right that will allow me to change the blending mode that's used when that's being applied I'm gonna change it overlay now you know if you can tell with this filter is doing if I turn off the eyeball next to it maybe you'll see here's before here's wanted updates after can you see a difference but what's nice about it doing it is a smart filter is aiken double click on the word high passed they will send me right back into high pass and the filter is not permanent. I can kill in here and adjust the settings at any time and actually see it updating in real time on my picture get it dialed in just right and that can just be there anytime I wanted. So the way filters are applied to smart objects is they show up this simple accessories on the layer sitting right here the eyeball controls of its visible or not double clicking on this allows you to change the capacity or the blooding mode and it's just going to show you a stack of filters here if you apply more than one it also comes with a mask right here, so if I didn't want it to apply to everything, I could click on that mask and then if I paint with black somewhere it's going to tell it not to apply the filter wherever it is that I paint with black, so maybe a paint over here on the left side with black as they leave that part alone, so I don't want to draw your attention to it. Maybe I don't want these other ones because I just want that front one to really stand out. And if you look in the layers panel, any part in here where I've painted with black prevents the filter from affecting the image, but none of it is permanent. I can throw away that just click on the name dragut to the trash and the filter would go away. That could be a year from now. I can do that. Um, I could double click on this smart objects, see its original contents, put in a different picture, and it would suddenly have that filter applied to all sorts of things that khun d'oh. And so I find working with smart objects to be just much more versatile, a couple more things smart objects, I just double click on a raw file. And when I double click on a raw file it brings me into camera raw we've done that many times before so you probably used to doubleclick in a roth found you get in here well whenever you're in here you notice that there is a button that says open image and that's usually your porthole the photo shoot if you want to work in photo shop you click that right watch what happens to that button if I hold down the shift key it changes from open image to open object room what that means is make this a smart object before it even gets completely open into photo shop so once didn't photoshopped it has theory jinna ll raw file encapsulated into a smart object so if I look in the layers panel you see the thumbnail sitting on top of the the layer telling me it's a smart object but what's special about this is that layer contains the entirety of that raw file the entire raw file is sitting in that layer every little bit of the data from the raw file so what that means is when I double click on the thumb now for this layer to edit its contents instead of just showing me a picture sitting in a document it shows me where I came from where did I come from the moment I told it to turn it into a smart object did nine was nice sitting in camera so when I double click on this thumb nail, it brings you right back to camera to say, hey, you don't have to be done adjusting this image click ok and it updates so it's embedded the raw file into a layer so the camera settings they're not permanent and that could be nice because maybe I just throw in that raw file in two by document I'm not sure if it's really worth optimizing yet because I don't know if it's going to work out for this composite and then I can scale it, I can rotate it, I khun blur it with a filter I can add drop shadows I could do all sorts of things to that image to see if it's going to work out within my composite and on lee if I decide that yes, it does look like it's going to be a good image for this do I double click on the thumbnail for that later and I spend the time to optimize the picture because I might not have, you know, figured out if it's worthwhile to spend the time doing that yet. But remember, though, if you ever duplicate a smart object, doesn't all the duplicates look back to the same original? Well, it was a problem with that when it comes to raw files, I'm going to duplicate this layer by typing command jay and I'm going to make the thumbnails of my layers panel larger just so you can see the actual picture in there one way of making the thumbnails larger is too press the right mouse button when you're on this empty area right here below all the layers if you do that, you can choose how large they are now I'm gonna double click on that top layer and I'm going to make a change I'm just going to make the image a lot darker when I click ok, watch what happens looking my layers panel you seem both change well sometimes you want on lee one of them to change because I want to use a different version for the sky, different raw processing settings for the sky and the settings that have right now for the bottom of the photo but when I duplicate him they both think they're the same thing and so if I double click on it, make changes they both update, but let's, get rid of that top one there's a special way to make a duplicate layer independent of where it originally came from if you simply duplicated it thinks of all duplicates is being perfect clones of the original change the original all the clones update if you don't want them to update, you need to do the following instead of typing command j to duplicate something, go to the layer menu choose smart objects and there's, a special command here called new smart ob fifty a copy. The key wording there is new smart object meaning not just a duplicate of the one that's already there a brand new one that's independent of the other. So when I choose new smart object via copy, it looks as if I just copied that layer. But if a double click on the thumb now for the layer and it brings up camera raw, any changes I make right now will not affect the other layer that was there so I could come in here possibly and see if I can get that sky toe look a little more interesting. I'm not going to make a masterpiece here, but, uh, you get the idea, click ok and now if you watch my layers penalty, we have two interpretations of the exact same raw file, but in order to do that, I needed to go to the layer menu and not just duplicate the layer, but say, new smart object, he a copy. Then I can add a layer masked by clicking on the circle inside the rectangle icon, and if I use my paintbrush and paint with black, black usually hides things so it will hide the layer on working on in, therefore reveal what's under it when I paint and I could then double click on either one of these layers to make additional changes maybe a double click on the bottom layer and make it look a little bit warmer because if that son was really out, this might have a different feeling to it. You make it a little bit darker, so you have more than one interpretation of a raw file and decide I want this in the sky this somewhere else and you spend as much time as you want working on that map. Ask, you know, there's the building over here that we're kind of halfway across and you could see dark at the top of the building light at the bottom. It could always go in with the quick selection tool, see if I can get that selected a little better on my mask paint with black, you know, that kind of stuff it's up to you, how much time you want to spend what? That that's really helped me pertaining to the question I had yesterday in terms of landscapes and the way you mentioned yeah, this is way easier. Yeah, this could be ways. This is with one raw file. This sound like you also were bracketing your exposures when you might take a bright in the dark one. This could just be a stack of two raw files they don't have to be two interpretations of the same raw file if you have where your camera was on a tripod, let's, say, and you had to take more than one shot, one bright, one dark, you could just open them both. The smart objects stack them on top of each other. You'd be doing the same kind of editing, and these could be out of two separate photos. In this case, they're out of one, but depends on what you need.