Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Placing a Smart Object
In addition to opening new documents as Smart Objects, and converting existing layers to
Smart Objects, you can also use the Place feature to import an image as a Smart Object.
1
Choose File > Place; the Place dialog box appears. Navigate to the ps10lessons folder,
select the ps1004.psd i le, and press Place. This places the parrot image into your
ps1001_work.psd i le.
When documents are placed, they become Smart Objects by default. Note the large
X on the layer; this is a bounding box that allows you to transform the Smart Object
before coni rming the placement.
2
Click and drag the parrot image until the bottom-right corner snaps against the
bottom-right corner of your work i le. Hold the Shift key, and then click on the top-
left anchor point of the transform bounding box. With the Shift key still pressed, click
and drag toward the center to scale the image down in size. Scale the parrot about
50% until it is just slightly smaller and the two images are not overlapping.
Scale the parrot so that it is approximately the same size as the toucan.
3
Select the Commit check mark ( ) in the Options bar, or press Enter (Windows) or
Return (Mac OS) to commit the change. Remember that because this is a Smart Object
by default, you can scale it back to its original size and still retain the original detail.
4
In the Layers panel, double-click the layer name, ps1004. When the layer name
becomes highlighted, type the name
Parrot
.
Editing a Smart Object
There are additional benei ts to Smart Objects besides their ability to be resized without
loss of detail. To fully understand these benei ts, you should know a little bit about how
Smart Objects work. When a layer is a Smart Object, Photoshop preserves the original
content of the source i le by embedding it into the current i le. In this exercise, you will
learn how to edit the contents of Smart Objects. You will also i nd out how multiple
Smart Object layers can be modii ed at the same time, how to replace the source for Smart
Objects, and even how to export the contents of a Smart Object.
