Working with Smart Objects in Photoshop and Illustrator


Truth be told, I'm a big Illustrator user. I usually use Photoshop and Illustrator together almost every day. I often create vector artwork in Illustrator, paste it into Photoshop, and inevitably want to change the artwork. So, I'd change the artwork in Illustrator and re-paste it into Photoshop. As you can imagine, this process is slow. With Smart Objects, it's a lot easier. I insert the artwork as a Smart Object and Photoshop links back to the original file for editing and automatic updating.

Step One

A great candidate for a Smart Object is a logo. Typically, logos are vector files created in Illustrator. If you were to simply copy-and-paste the logo from Illustrator into Photoshop, then every time the logo changed you'd need to re-paste it into Photoshop. Smart Objects make this process a lot easier. First, open a design in Photoshop that you'd like to insert an Illustrator file into.

©ISTOCKPHOTO/THOMAS POLEN

Turbo Boost

Remember that vector Smart Objects work the same as rasterized ones. In the first tutorial in this chapter, you replaced multiple instances of the photo with another one. The same thing holds true for vector Smart Objects, as well.


Step Two

Now choose File>Place. Find the logo on your hard disk and click Place. You'll then see another Place dialog where you can just press OK to select the defaults.

Turbo Boost

If you convert a file with a color Smart Object to a grayscale image and convert it back to color again, Photoshop will remember the color informationjust be sure not to rasterize or flatten the file in the warning dialogs.


Step Three

Next, you'll see the logo appear with a bounding box around it on your image. You can resize it as needed (remember it's a vector graphic so you can make it as large as you want) and move it into place. Press the Return (PC: Enter) key when you're done and you'll have placed the vector file into your image as a Smart Object.

©ISTOCKPHOTO

Step Four

Now, let's hypothetically imagine that a client requests a change to the logo (you know how those clients can be, right?). It could be simple or it could be complicated, but let's stick with a simple color change here. Since you placed the logo as a Smart Object, just double-click on the Smart Object layer's thumbnail and Illustrator will launch (if it's not open already). The logo will open inside of it because Photoshop knows that this is the default editing application for vector files. Now, using the Direct Selection tool (A), click on one part of the logo and change its fill color to a light green.

Step Five

Choose File>Save (or just press Command-S [PC: Control-S]) and Illustrator will save the changes. That's not all, though. If you switch back to Photoshop, you'll see that the changes are automatically reflected in your document without you having to re-paste or replace anything.

Turbo Boost

You can't paint on a Smart Object layer but you can cheat a little. Create a new empty layer above the Smart Object and choose Layer>Create Clipping Mask. Now, anything painted on the empty layer will only appear on the Smart Object where there are pixels.




Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic
The Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic: Automating Photoshop to Get Twice the Work Done in Half the Time
ISBN: 0321441656
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 113

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