Transcripts
1. Photoshop Smart Objects Introduction: Hello and welcome to
this class secrets of working with Smart
Objects in Photoshop. My name is Helen Bradley and I'm a Skillshare top teacher. I have over 270 courses here on Skillshare
and over 168,000 student enrollments
in this class where we'll be looking at using
Smart Objects in Photoshop. We'll look at creating
Smart Objects, why you'd use them
and how to use them. We'll see how they work with Mockups and reusable
templates and how they can make
it easier to make editable patterns as well. By the time you've
completed this course, you'll have a good
working knowledge of working with
Smart Objects that you create and those
that come with templates that you find online. Along the way, you'll also have learned some handy tips and techniques for working
in Photoshop every day. So without further ado, let's get started exploring
the secrets of working with Smart Objects
in Adobe Photoshop
2. Pt 1 Make a Smart Object 2 Ways: In preparing my Class
plan for this class, I was left with a
bit of a dilemma. It's one of those chicken
and egg arguments. Do we talk about how we create
Smart Objects before we talk about why we would
use them or vice versa? Well, I've opted for the, let's talk about how
we create them to begin with and then we'll
look at how they useful. So I have an image open here. It's just a regular photograph that I opened inside Photoshop. It is a background
layer and it's locked. That's the way that
typically JPEG images, which this is are
opened in Photoshop. There are a couple of ways
to create a Smart Object. One of them is to right-click your current layer and choose here Convert to Smart Object. I'm going to do that right now. There's been no
change to the image. But if you have a look
in the Layers palette, which of course
you can get to by choosing Window and then layers. Here you'll see that there's
a little thumbnail icon. Be Layer is no longer
background layer, it's no longer
locked and it's got this funny little icon here. Well, that funny little
icon tells you that there is what's called an
embedded Smart Object. So what has happened
here is basically this image is embedded
inside itself. So it's sort of like
Russian dolls, if you like. And if I double-click on
this Smart Object thumbnail, you'll see that a
layer file opens here. It's Layer O1 dot PSB. And PSB is the
embedded Smart Object. And here we're back to the
background layer, it's locked. If I close this
embedded Smart Object, then I just go back to the file that has the Smart Object in it. Now, all of this can be
a little bit confusing. But after you watch
the next two videos where we actually see the implications of not using Smart Objects and
Using Smart Objects. And a lot of this is going
to be apparent to you. If you want to get an image
out of being a Smart Object, we can right-click here
and go to Rasterize Layer. And you'll say that
the layer is returned, it's got no little
thumbnail in it. It is unlocked and it is no longer a background
layer though, which is neither here nor there. That's not actually a
change to the image. Now there is a second way to make a layer as Smart Object. We're going to target the layer so that we've got it selected. And because Smart Objects are
useful in applying filters, there's an option
on the Filter menu, but confusingly it's not
called smart objects. It is exactly the same thing. There is no difference
between convert for smart filters and
Convert to Smart Object. Adobe just made this
really confusing by suggesting that these are
two different things. I'm going to click here on
convert for smart filters. I'm going to click Okay. And here it is. Here's our Smart
Object exactly as we would expect from what we
saw a few minutes ago. If I double-click on
this little icon there, I'm opening up the layer this
time it's called Layer O2, PSP because I already created Layer R1 and then
converted it back. But doesn't really
matter what it's called. It just matters that it's embedded inside
the original file. I'll close the Smart Object
layer and we're back to our original file that
has the Smart Object in it. Now like the Smart Object
that we created by simply right-clicking this layer and choosing converts
the Smart Object. This one can also be rasterized. I'm going to target the layer right-click and choose
Rasterize Layer. And then it's just taken back
to being an original layer. You'll just want to be
sure that you really do mean to convert it
back to a regular lab. Because in most
instances you would probably leave it
as a Smart Object.
3. Pt 2 Smart Objects and Image Size: One of the benefits of
working with Smart Objects in Photoshop is that you
can scale your images. So let's see what
that actually means. I have an image here, a little photo of a little girl with some
leaves on her head. It's 1,800 by 2000 pixels. Now what I did was
I scaled it down. I scaled it down to ten
per cent of its size. So it's quite a
pixelated result. And I saved the results. So let's go and have a look at the first pixelated version. You can clearly see the pixels
in this document because this image was scaled down
to 183 by 200 pixels. If we try to scale
it back up again. So I've closed it
and reopened it. If I tried to scale up backup
to the original image size by increasing it to
1,000% and click Okay, if we compare that
with the original, you'll see that the original
has a lot of detail in it, but for this particular image, scaling it back up to its
original size is not the same. Images lost all this detail because it was shrunk so small, saved and then reopened. So if you're going
to change your mind about the size of images, then you will want to
be using Smart Objects. And let's have a look at
the Smart Object version. So this is the version
where the little goal is embedded inside this
image as a Smart Object. Having done that, I then
scale the image back to ten per cent saved at
closed, at reopened it. And we've got pretty
much the same result as we had without the Smart Object, but we don't. So
let's have a look. Let's have a look firstly at
what this Smart Object is, because the image that
she's embedded in is 183 pixels by 200 pixels. But if I double-click here, I can open up the Smart Object. And this is the original image. It's 1,826 by 2000 pixels. So inside this document is embedded a much
larger version, and that's the benefit
of Smart Objects. Let's go back to this version of the document was shrunk
down, saved, reopened, looks like it's going to be a disaster when we
scale up backup, but it's not because it was a Smart Object,
Image, Image Size. Let me take that
back up to 1,000%. Click Okay, let's size
it so you can see it. And here is the
detail in the image. This was the original. Here is the little girl
who's been shrunk and resized here because
it was a Smart Object. It's re-size perfectly. This is the one without
the Smart Object and the detail is lost. The image is very,
very different. Look at the state
of her hair here. Look at the state
of her hair here. These are different results. Using a Smart Object, really, really valuable if you think
there's a chance that you'll be shrinking Images and you
might later change your mind. Smart Objects are going to give you the ability to do that without losing detail
in your image.
4. Pt 3 Smart Objects and Filters: Another advantage of Using Smart Objects is your
ability to undo things. So I took this
original image and I applied three individual
filters to it. In one of the versions
of the image. I didn't create the images of Smart Object and the
other one I did. And then I save the
file and reopen them. So this is one
version of the image. This is the one that
wasn't as Smart Object. I can't get back now
to the original image. There is no sign of the original image here
the colors are gone. It's hard to filters applied
to it and a can't be undone. But with the other one, I actually created it as a Smart Object before
applying the filters. Now the image looks
exactly the same, except over here in
the Layers palette, things are telling a
very different story because this is a Smart Object. When I double-click on it, obviously embedded
inside the image is the original image file. But these filters that I
applied are also removable. So I can take it from black
and white back into color. And I can also turn
off the filters. But better than that, I can go back to the filters
themselves and edit those. I'm just going to
double-click on this filter gallery and
I'll open the image back up inside the filter
gallery so that I could either remove or edit
either of these Filters. You can say here
are the two filters applied to the image. So they can be
removed or edited. And then I can simply go back to the image using Smart
Objects when you're using filters is almost a gimme
because it gives you the ability to come back at a later date and this
could be later today. It could be in three
weeks time and undo or to edit the effects
that you have created
5. Pt 4 Multi Layer Smart Objects: Sometimes when you're working
on an image in Photoshop, you may want to apply a
filter to multiple layers. So for example, here I've
blended two images together. I have an image of some flowers and the image of
the AGA Panthers. And I've done some work on
blending them together. But what I want to do is to tie these two images together
with a single filter. And we already know that Smart Objects and
Filters go hand in hand. So what I'm gonna
do is I'm going to target both of these layers. I'm going to click
on the first one, shift click on the second one, and they're both selected. So let's go up to apply
a filter to our image. And you'll see
that in this case, the only thing we can choose is to convert for smart filters. That's the only way
that we can apply a filter to two or
more layers at a time. So I'm going to convert
it into a Smart Object. And then I'm going
to apply my filter. So I'm going to
filter and I'm just going to use the filter gallery. I'm scaling my image
so that I can say it. And I did want to apply
this diffuse glow filter. I've already got it
pretty much set up. I like the way that
it's sort of blends these two layers together a bit better than they would
otherwise have been. So all I'm going to
do is click. Okay. Now as we saw earlier, what we've got is the
original layer as a Smart Object with this
filter applied to it, we can turn the filters on and off just using the eyeball. And of course, this filter
layer could also be removed by just picking it up and
dropping it onto the trash can. Underneath this are our images. So if I double-click on the
Smart Object thumbnail, I can open up the original file and this is embedded as
a Smart Object document. Here is the original
Daisy image that's got its mask on it and the original
Agora Panther's image. So I can just click
to close them. There is an issue here in
that if I wanted to get these images back out from
that Smart Object layer, if I go to this layer and simply right-click and choose
Rasterize Layer. What I'm left with is a single layer that's got
the filters applied to it. So I don't have my two
images accessible anymore. So I'm just going to undo that. I just press Control
or Command Z. In this case, I'm going
to right-click on the Smart Object
layer and there is an option here to
convert to layers. And when I do that, I'm going to have
my images back. I've lost my Smart Filter, but I do have a group that has my two original
images in it. So that is a technique
worthwhile understanding and being able to implement if you
ever need to get your images out of that
smart object for any reason, don't necessarily just rasterize it because of the
implications of rasterizing it and
flattening it and also applying any filters to it
6. Pt 5 Image Adjustments and Smart Objects: We've already looked at the situation where
you may want to apply filters to an image in Photoshop might
be one filter, it might be multiple filters. And that converting the image for smart filters,
in other words, converting it to a Smart Object
makes really good sense. Now there are some
other options in Photoshop that you can
apply that as sort of separated from the
image and make undoing things later on a lot easier and there the
adjustment layers. So let's just quickly have a look at a new
adjustment layer for, for example, something
simple like levels. So I'm going to apply a new adjustment
layer to this image. And I'm going to darken the
darks and lighten the lights. And basically I'm just going to totally
overheat this image. I'm not really concerned
about the aesthetics of this. I just want to look at what's happening in the Layers palette. Here you can see we're still got our original image layer, and this adjustment layer has been applied as a
separate layer. So it's removable. It's going to be saved
with the file provided. We save the file in a layered
format such as PSD format, then we could always
come back and say, Well, we're not sure what we were thinking
when we did that. So let's just undo it. Now there are some
adjustments in Photoshop that can't be applied using
adjustment layers. Those are the ones here on
the Image Adjustments menu. If we were to go and apply
a levels adjustment, the exact same levels
adjustment or as near as I can get
to it to the image. Let's have a look at the
differing situation here. With that type of adjustment, with Image Adjustments
that's baked into the image. So we would never
use that unless we were 100% sure where we'd
never want to undo it, it's not going to be
easy to undo if we do other things to
the image because we'll have baked
it in if you like. I'm just going to press Control or Command
Z to undo that. Let's convert this layer
into a smart objects. I'm just going to
right-click and convert it to a Smart Object. And let's go back and
reapply that adjustment, Image Adjustments,
the one that's supposed to be baked
into the image. Here's the levels adjustment. Let's go and overheat
the image again. Look what's happened here. Because this is a Smart Object. One of the rules about Smart Objects is you
can't destroy pixels. So you can't bake Effect
into the Smart Object layer, so it has to be applied
some different way. And here's the different way. It's being applied as a Smart Filter and it can
be removed at any time. Now, you might be
asking yourself, why would we even
bother doing that? Because we have a special
Adjustment Layer, Layer, New Adjustment
Layer four levels. While they're at
least a couple of these adjustments that
aren't available through the Adjustment Layer
Option and shadows and highlights and HDR
toning are those. So let's just go and get rid of that particular
adjustment and let's go and apply one of the
adjustments that cannot be applied as an adjustment
layer, Image Adjustments. Let's go to HDR toning. You can see here,
these are the ones that can be applied. This way. You can't apply these last four, but here are two that are not accessible as
adjustment layers, but which would be
available to us to apply as filters provided we're working with
a Smart Object, but shadows and highlights. With shadows and highlights, you want to be clicking the Show More Options
and then you can adjust either the highlights or the shadows so you'll
bring down the highlights. Or you could increase
the shadows, increase the lightness
of the shadows. You've got tone Adjustments, all sorts of things here. This is not a video teaching
shadows and highlights. I just want to make a
difference to the image. And you can see here
that this fixed, which would normally
be baked permanently into the image because
we're working with a Smart Object layer is
actually fully removable and fully editable
because I can just double-click on it to
reopen the dialogue, make changes if I don't
like what I'm seeing there. And it is a pretty ghastly
fix on this image. Then just click Okay, and the change has been made
7. Pt 6 Place Images as Smart Objects: Let's have a look now at a Creative example for
using Smart Objects. I'm going to create
a brand new file. I'm going to assemble
a couple of images together to make something that would make a nice printout. So inside my blank file, I want to bring in an image of a little girl that
I have on my computer. So I'm going to File and
then Place Embedded. And this is the
image I want to use. I'll click Place and I'm just going to size
it in the image, then just click the Check mark. Now something rather
surprising has happened here. If we have a look over in
the last pallet, this image, this embedded image, has been brought in as a Smart Object. And if that happens to you, you might be wondering why. And more than that, if it doesn't happen when you
bring in an embedded image, you may be asking
why it doesn't. Well, it's all to do with
your Photoshop settings. If you're on a PC,
you'll go to Edit and then Preferences
and General. On a Mac, you'll click the Photoshop Button and
then go to Preferences. And General there just
in a different place on each of those
operating systems inside the general preferences
is this option here. Always create Smart
Objects when placing, I've just placed
one image inside the other because I have
this setting enabled, then it's coming in
as a Smart Object. If you wanted not to, then change that setting if yours doesn't have that checked and you want your placed images to come in as Smart Objects, then obviously check that
and you'll be good to go
8. Pt 7 Patterns and Smart Objects: One situation in which it
is recommended that you use Smart Objects is using the New Pattern Preview
Tool in Photoshop. I'm going to show
you how that works. We're going to start
with a new file. Now I'm going to just create
a very simple pattern. So I'm starting with a document, 500 pixels by 500 pixels. I'm going over here
to the Shapes tool. Typically you'll see
the rectangle tool I've got selected
the ellipse tool. Up here. There are
three options. I'm using shape and I'm just going to
change the fill color. I'm going to one of
these light colors. I'm going to choose
this blue color. There is no stroke at all. So I'm just going to
hold the Shift key as I drag out a large circle shape. Now I want this to be in
the center of the document with it selected and with
the Move Tool selected, I get some options up
here on the toolbar. I'm going to click on these
three buttons here or this three dots and make
sure that align to is set to Canvas because that
allows me to then use the center options to center
this shape on the canvas. Now, let's go to the
Layers palette here. This icon down here
is the shape icon. It's not the Smart Object icon, but I am going to
right-click this and convert it to a Smart Object. So this is now an
embedded Smart Object. I'm going to make
a duplicate of it. So I'm just going
to drag and drop it onto the plus sign here. So this is an exact
duplicate of that shape. Let's go to the
Move tool and let's just move it out
or the way here, I want its center point to be up over the top corner
of the document. Now we can make it a bit
easier for ourselves if we choose Edit and then
free transform, that gives us these tools here. Going to turn on this check
mark and make sure that this center selector of
these nine is selected. That's identifying
the center point as the point at which we're
reading the coordinates of. I'm just going to set
those coordinates to 0.0. Make sure that this shape is directly over the top
corner of the image. Just click the Check mark. Now this is all I need
for my pattern if we go to View and then
Pattern Preview, we're going to be told that Pattern Preview works best with Smart Objects will have
already got Smart Objects. We're just going to click, Okay? And this is what we're saying. This is what our pattern
is going to look like. I'm just going to zoom out. And so we've got a
polka dot pattern. Now from the Pattern
Preview tool, we can go straight into
the patterns dialogue. Now I'm just got it open here, but of course you
can get to it by choosing Window
and then Patterns. So I'm just going to click
down here on the plus symbol. I'm going to call this
Polkadots and click, Okay. Now there are few things we
can do while we're here. And one of them is that we could change one of these colors. Let's go to the Layers
panel now I don't want to change the smart
object itself, but what I could do is apply of enough Effects to
one of these layers. So I'm going to choose this one, could be either of
them going down to the Fx icon and I'm going
to choose Color Overlay. And what this allows
me to do is to add a color overlay
to this last, I've got it set here
to Blend Mode normal. The opacity is 100 per cent. I'm just selecting a color. So what I did was I selected on the color area and I went
over to my swatches. Again. You can get to them by choosing Window
and then Swatches. And I just chose a
color from my Swatches. I'm using these light colors, so I use this color here. Let's just change it
to a different color. You can see that it's
as simple as just selecting on the color
you want to use. I'll click Okay, and Okay again, so in the Layers palette, we have our two
Smart Object layers, the original and the
duplicate that we made. And we've got this
effect that is Recoloring the dots on
this particular layer. Let's go back to our
patterns dialogue, and let's go and
add this Pattern. Now, this point you might be wondering why we would bother actually doing this
as Smart Objects. Well, let's have a look
at this situation. Let's go back to
the Layers panel. Let me double-click
on my Smart Object. And I'm going to select it, select the object itself, and I'm going to hold the
Alt key as I size it down. So I'm going to make
this quite a bit smaller and click
the check mark, and then I'll just close and
save my Smart Object layer. And this is now the
pattern we've got. Youth can say that we've kept all the effects
that we had. We've just re-size that the
dots inside our pattern. And so we could go ahead and save those again as Patterns. I'm just going to
call this small dots. Now one thing I do
want to look at is what happens if we go larger? So let's go back to
this smart object. Double-click on
it. Again, holding down the Alt or Option key, I'm going to scale this up, but I'm going to go larger
than the documents. So this is a really,
really big Circle. The problem is, it's bigger than the actual document itself. Well, there's a
solution for this. I'm going to click
the check mark to confirm the transformation. Then I'm going across
here to Image and I'm going to reveal all that just makes the document just a little bit bigger
so that we can see the whole of our sphere
circle inside the document. Again, I'm going to
disclose it and save it. And now we have a pattern
with a much larger.in it. So this is going to be larger
than the original because we made it bigger than
the original document, had to scale up the
original document. Of course, we can change the
color overlay if we like, just click on the Color
Overlay effect and let's go back and let's choose a
different color for this one. Let's go for orange
this time, Okay? Okay, again, open up our patterns dialogue and
we're just going to click the Plus symbol to add our
pattern into that dialogue. Now of course, at this
stage we're faced with the fact that we're still
in Pattern Preview mode, so we could go to View and
disabled Pattern Preview. Now, our document
just has part of these spheres showing it looks exactly the same
in the last panel. It's just that we're not in
that Pattern Preview mode. So to get back into that, we would choose View and
then Pattern Preview. And it's all going to
look exactly as it did previously viewed turn
off Pattern Preview. This is what your
document looks like. You can save it and you could
come back and repeatedly change the size of the
Polkadots in this pattern. Just re-save your pattern
over and over again. Of course, to use this pattern, a document I'm just going
to choose File New. I'm going to make a document
that is considerably larger. I've one here, 2000 by 2000 pixels in size.
That's just fine. Let's go to the Patterns dialog, and I'm just going to drag
and drop these patterns into the document so you can see what your patterns look like
as they've been prepared. If we go to Layers panel, you say that these are dropped
in as Pattern Fill layer. So I can just double-click
on this and I could scale a pattern
down if I wanted to, to have more dots inside
the finished document
9. Pt 8 Smart Objects and Pixel Editing: Now so far we've
been talking about the advantages of
Using Smart Objects. There are some disadvantages or at least some workarounds that you'll want
to be considering. I've opened up this image, I'm going to convert
it to a smart objects. I'm going to right-click
on the background layer, just convert it to a
Smart Object layer. Now at this point, if
I'm looking at, say, this dot over here
and I want to fix it up or perhaps the hair
that is in her mouth. I would go typically to the
spot healing brush tool. And as I try to draw
on the document, you can say that
I'm not actually able to do that because you cannot do Pixel level
editing to an image that is a Smart Object. So that means that you
can't do anything that changes pixels such as
using the Healing Brush, the Spot Healing Brush, the clone stamp tool, any of those tools. Now there are some possible
solutions to this problem. One of them is to actually open up the Smart
Object that Sell. So I'm going to double-click on Smart Object thumbnail here. This gets me into
the document itself. I'm going to shrink down my spot healing brush tool and I'm just going to paint
over the problem, anything that I see as an issue, I can clean up directly on the image and then I can
just close the image. It's an embedded PSB file. Just close it. Click
Yes to save it. And you can say that
the changes have been embedded in the smart object
version of the image, even though I was
not able to make the changes direct
onto the image. Now there are some
other solutions that you could consider. One of them is to add a new
layer to this document. Now some tools can be arranged so that they do their
work on a different layer. So for example, with the
Spot Healing Brush Tool, I can sample all layers. And what I do there is sample all layers to get
the area to fix, but the fixers would be
on this separate layer. I'm just going to have
a go at this hair on her face. I'm just
drawing over there. You can say the
fixes on this layer, but it's been sampling the
contents of the layer below. That is a possibility
that's going to work for tools such
as the Healing Brush, Spot Healing Brush, and
also the clone stamp tool. It doesn't work on
the Patch Tool. The Patch Tool doesn't have
that same option to sample all layers and to
put the solution or the fixed on a
separate layer. So just be aware of that. But most of these
tools can be used on a separate layer and certainly the clone
stamp tool as well. You've got to sample all layers, sample all layers to
get the area to fix, but put the fixed on a
new and separate layer. So just be aware of at anytime
you try and do something on an image and you're
prohibited from doing that. If you let me just
go and grab this and you get this cursor
that has a line through it, then that's telling you that
for some reason you can't do what it is you want to do
on this particular layer. And typically it will be in this circumstance that you're
using a Smart Object layer. And because you can't Pixel
Edit on Smart Object layers, you're going to have
to come up with some sort of work around. The workaround is going to
depend on the tool that you're using and whether or not it's possible to do the fixed
on a separate layer, or whether you just
simply want to go back to the original image by double-clicking on the
Smart Object thumbnail and apply your fixers. There
10. Pt 9 Smart Objects and Mockups - Dresses: One of the places where Smart
Objects are going to be used quite frequently
is in Mockups. Now I've come to this website, Mockup hunt.co, and I
found this Dress Mockup. When you download it, there's three different versions of the Dress in the file. It's free, it's awesome, but it does come at a
slight penalty because their website is covered
in advertisements. So I'd be super
careful when you're going through this
website to make sure that what you're clicking
on to download is actually the Mockup and not
an ad for something. There's a little bit tricky, but provided you've got
your wits about you, you should be fine. Now once you've downloaded
it comes as a zip file, you're going to unzip it inside. There are three
individual PSD files. I'm using the one
called version one. So let's swing across
to Photoshop where I've got it already open. And I now have the file
open in Photoshop. And this is what you're
going to see when you open up any of those three mockups from
that particular collection. We're going to open
the Layers palette up because this is
really important for us to see exactly what's
going on in this file. And it will pay to have
a really good look at these files before
you use them to determine if they're going
to be of value to you. So this element at
the very top is just the marketing
materials that doesn't contribute anything
to the Design, except it is the
marketing materials. So we could safely not
only turn that off, but we could also trash it and just get it
out of the way. There's a group here
called master Adjustments. When I click on and off, you can hardly see
anything happening here. In actual fact, there is a
little bit of change down the side here in terms of the shadows and
highlights in the Dress. So it is contributing something. I wouldn't get rid
of it. I think it's worthwhile keeping it, but it's not where
the patterns are. Let's go here and turn
the eyeball on and off. Well, they're still
all the action here is in this Mockup layer. Then let's turn
the BG layer off. Well, obviously that's
the background, so we don't need to do
anything with the background. We don't need to do anything
with the master Adjustments, but this Mockup area is containing the works
of this Design. When I open up its little
disclosure triangle, we can have a look
and see what's here. Well, there are six different
versions of the image here. And each one of them is being applied to the image in
a different blend modes. So these are adding the gloss and the texture to the design. Without those, the
Designs going to look very flat indeed. So these are doing
the heavy lifting, if you like, in
terms of the Design. But none of them have got anything to do with the pattern. So we can safely ignore those. These here, these red ones, these red layers are
the ones that are doing the work in terms of the
color and the Pattern. This layer here,
not surprisingly, is going to control all these
sort of orange elements. So when we turn them on and off, you can say that they are controlling these extra
elements for the pattern. And you can use those
or not as you wish. This element here is going to
control this piece in here. When I turn it off,
you can see that it is controlling this
part of the Design. This part here,
while we can already see in the Layer Mask here, probably what is controlling and that is the bottom of the Dress. Turn it on and off and we've got the body showing
or not showing. And then let's have
a look at this pace while this is the skirt. So we've got three layers
here that all have Smart Objects and they
all use this pattern. My assumption was when
I first opened this that the pattern would be
a single Smart Object. That's not the case. So
let's have a look at this. I'm going to
double-click here on this Smart Object thumbnail
icon to open up the Pattern. I'm going to my
patterns dialogue and I've got a pattern here
that I want to use. It's one that I've made. I've dragged it in.
I'm going to scale it down because it's
going to be too big. I'm going to use 20 per cent
because this is a PSB file. Good news there. All
we need to do is to close it and save it. Back in the Design, we've now got a new
borders for address. But as you can see, the Smart Objects not linked. And so the borders and the skirt itself are
two different objects. So to replace the skirt, we're going to need to go
and do the same thing. We're also going to be hoping in this situation that the scaling, if we set this scale to the same 20 per
cent that were used for the other element, the borders that
it's going to work. It won't necessarily
be the case. Some of these don't
work that way, but you will want
to just check it. And this one looks pretty good. It looks like the skirt Pattern
and the borders pattern, or about the same size. So now we need to control
this element in here. So it's going to double-click on this go and do the
exact same thing. Now if I were doing a lot of work with this
particular Design, if I said, I really
liked the design, but the way that it has been put together is just not working for me because I
would want to use it with a single
pattern, for example, single Photoshop pattern,
then I would be re-designing they've elements to make all of these Smart Objects the
same Smart Objects. So I could simply come
in and change one and all the others would
change accordingly. Now it looks to me
like this one would probably need to
be a bit lighter. And so because this is a
separate Smart Object, we could go back into
that Smart Object. We could light on it. So we could do, for example, adding a white filled
layer underneath it. So let's just go and add a white filled
layer underneath this. And then let's go and
dial down the opacity of the Pattern layer so that when it is showing
up on the Dress, it looks as if we're
actually having a look through the design into the back of the dress
that is a little bit light and we could
probably go lighter still. Now the oranges obviously
not going to work with this particular Dress pattern, but that's going to
be easily fixed. And very smartly, the person who designed this has
used a fill their, a solid color fill layer. So all we're going to
do is double-click on this to open
up this dialogue. And now we can come in just sample a color
from the dress itself. So I'm going to select
a sort of purple. It's a little bit
darker than the dress, but something that's
coming out of the shadows. So tonally it's correct for
this Dress. And there we are. We've redesigned this Design with our own fabric as a mockup. But as I said, if I were using
this over and over again, I would be developing
it a little bit differently for smarter used to make it just that little
bit easier to use in future
11. Pt 10 Edit a Dress Mockup: So in the last
video, I said that if I was using this
over and over again, I would probably redesign
it a little bit. The only thing I'm going to redesign is the Smart Objects. So let's have a look and
see how we might do that. Because it's going
to show my layers palette again so we can
see what we're looking at. The only thing I'm
concerned about is the three Smart Objects that
control the pattern itself. What I want to do
is I want to use a single Smart Object instead. The quickest and easiest
solution for this is to actually create a
brand new layer with my Pattern Fill in it. So I'm just going
to choose Layer, new Fill Layer Pattern. And I'm going to go
and get this pattern I'm working with. Now. Right now I'm going to use
a different color of it simply so that it's going to
be easiest for us to say. This time I'm going to use
the purple background, same Design, just a
different background. And I'm setting it to 20
per cent and it's too big, so I'm going to need to
drop it down. In this case. I'm just going to experiment
we sizes until I get something that's going to work best with my Dress, if you like. I think ten per cent
is pretty good, so I'm pretty happy
with that right now. Of course, what we've
got here then is a Pattern Fill layer with
nothing in the mask. So what we need to do is firstly get rid of this mask because
it's just in our way. So I'm just going to trash
that Delete Layer Mask. Yes. So now I've just got
a Pattern Fill Layer. I'm going to make
this a smart objects. I'm going to right-click and convert it to a Smart Object. So now we've got a Smart Object layer with our pattern in it. We need two more copies and
we need them to be linked. So I can just drag and drop them onto the plus symbol here. So I've got three copies. Now what I wanted to do is to crop them using the
masks that are here. So I'm just going to grab
this mask and I'm just going to drop it onto
this element here. I'm going to grab
this mask and drop it onto this one and this mask and drop it onto
this one and then turn off all these other layers. And what we see now
is that this is pretty much working
as we expect it to. The only issues are, is that this one is a
little bit dark, perhaps. And also this Design is seamless across
the middle seam here. Now, if you saw, you will know that it's
really highly unlikely that you're going
to get those birds feet to line up perfectly. So what I want to
do with the skirt is I actually want
to move the pattern so it doesn't look perfect
across this same line. So I need to do a
couple of things. Firstly, I need to unlink the skirt from
the design itself. So I'm just going to click
on that to unlink it. Then I'm going to the Move tool. I'm going to grab this
particular layer here, which is this Pattern layer. And I'm just going
to move it down. I could move it across. In other words, I haven't
lined it up perfectly once I've son at it just
is a little bit more realistic if
you do it this way. And then having done that, I'm just going to re-link these. So just a very small
move has offset the pattern at the sewing point and given us a more
realistic result. Now we don't need any
of these any longer, so we're just going to send
them to the trash can. This I'm just going to
double-click on it and let's go and sample
a color to use. Now, if I wanted this
but a lighter color, I've sampled the color out
of the Dress and I can go a little bit lighter or I could
go a little bit darker. You make your choice here, but you know that tonally, these are going to be within
the same tonal range. So that leaves us with
one final element, which is this little
piece in here. This is it. So what I'm going to
do is I'm going to add an adjustment layer that
only affects this layer. So I'm going to
target this layer. We can tell that this is
the one that controls this element because we
can see it in the mask. I'll choose Layer,
new Adjustment Layer. And I could use curves
or I could use levels. I'm just going to use levels. It's a nice simple
adjustment with levels. If we want to make this lighter, we can just drag on the
midpoint slider here. Just take it out to here. Now the problem is that I'm
making everything lighter. So it's really difficult to say whether we're actually having a impact making this element
lighter than this one. Well, the reason
for all of this is that adjustment layers impact
everything underneath them. But we want to use this icon
here, just click on it. And so that this adjustment
that we're applying right now is only going to affect
the layer immediately below, which is the layer that is controlling this
little piece in here. Now we can have at
this adjustment and just adjust it so it's
a little bit lighter. When we're done, we
can just close that. This is with that adjustment. This is without the
adjustments so we can impact that just a little bit. So having done this, I would now save this file, giving it a new name, and then to be able to use it for a different
Design at anytime, all we need to do
is to come in and double-click on any one of
these Smart Object layers. Doesn't matter which one. Double-click on our Pattern, Fill and go and get a
replacement pattern. So let's go back
to the pink one. Click OK and simply
close this down because everything should be in place except for the colors
around the slaves. And then it's as simple as just coming in here,
double-clicking on it, and sampling a pink color to Use and then
deciding whether we want to go darker or
lighter or a direct match. Smart Objects are
really going to help you put Mockups together. And most Mockup Design
should come with Smart Object that just
makes good sense. But whether you will need to
do a little bit of work on the Design file itself to make it work a little
bit better for you, is really up to whatever
is in the file. And certainly if I were
using this repeatedly, then re-designing it
just that little bit, take most of the design that we got free
from the Internet, but actually just setting it up so it's a little
bit more usable, a little quicker to
work with in future
12. Pt 11 Confronting Mockups with Problems: Before we finish up with
looking at Dress mockups, Let's have a look at this one. This is from a different site. This is a webpage that has 26 beautiful free Dress Mockups and there are some
really good ones here. I'm gonna give you
the link to this, and this is the one that we're
actually going to look at. But again, just be worn, they're covered in advertisements
and is a little bit tricky to work out which file you're actually
going to download, but this will download
as a zip file. Let's swing across
to Photoshop and have a look at it in Photoshop. I'm back here in
Photoshop with the Design open and I have my Layers
panel open as well. You'll see that the
actual design doesn't have the girl's head or any
other parts of her body. It's really just
focusing on the Dress. Over here in the last panel, we've got a layer at
the top here that doesn't appear to be
doing anything at all. And then a layer
that is everything. Now this layer that doesn't appear to be doing
anything at all, has a Smart Object
and also a mask. It's also set to
Multiply blend mode that might tell you that it
should be doing something. But here's the sacred, it's set to an opacity of zero. Absolutely no clue why this
is actually in the file. I'm just going to
trash it because we don't need it
and it isn't doing absolutely no work
in the file at a zero opacity
inside this group. Let's have a look
and see what we've got from the bottom to the top. At the bottom is the probably original
photograph of the goal in just a plain pink off white
dress, the background. Then there is the
Dress Isolated, put over the top. And in this case, the color has been removed from it so you can
see what it is. It's just the white
and shadows here. And that's reflected
up here as well. It's just added in again with a blend mode
of multiply to just darken those shadows
up by the time you put the pattern
into the Design. This layer here is the Design. If you have a look in
the Layer thumbnail, you'll see those
transparency icons. So in actual fact, this Design is just the flowers. It doesn't have anything
in the middle here. Then there is a brightness contrast adjustment that's doing a little bit of work In
lightening the image. And then of course, this
hue saturation adjustment, that is actually not a hue
saturation adjustment. It really is just the Dress, again, blended in
Multiply blend mode, which is sort of
darkening the shadows and also reinforcing the same
lines in this Design. So all the work is going to
happen in this layer here. So I'm just going
to double-click here to open the Smart Object. Now this has got a lot of
vector Smart Objects in it, none of which we need. But you can see that this is just flowers and
nothing in the middle. I'm actually just
going to trash those. Don't need those at all. And then we're going to
bring our Pattern in. So I'm going to the
patterns dialogue hinge, you might encounter
this problem. So I'm just going to show
you what's gonna happen. If I try and drag
and drop my pattern. You can see it's just
not working at all. Now of course we could go to Layer New Fill Layer Pattern
and fill it that way. But you can also do this. You can add a new layer to
this particular document, then go to your
Patterns and drag and drop it onto that layer. Dragging and dropping it into
the document doesn't work. It makes no sense to me
why it behaves like that. But this is Photoshop, so
just be aware that sometimes dragging and dropping Patterns doesn't work the way
you expect it to. Now I'm going to drop
this down to, again, something like 20 per cent and just see what it looks like. We'll just close it and save it. And here we are back
in the document. Now this has behaved
very simply, exactly as we might expect it. It's just a single element
for the entire Dress. Now you might
notice that there's something going on
with these birds. We've got some very small birds here and some very
large birds here, and it's just a single
piece of pattern. So what's happened here is that somebody has applied some sort of liquefy filter or some
sort of Displacement, map it to this layer. We can't see what it is, but it is stretched
to end distorted. That's having an impact on how
our pattern is showing up. So this may or may
not work for you. I think there's a really
good argument for finding some good designs
that work for you and sticking to them even if
you have to pay for them. But certainly having a good look at the Designs and
a critical look to see whether for the work that you're doing this
make sense or not. I think that this
wouldn't work for me because the birds are really
quite different sizes and it doesn't make any sense for my particular pattern to look like that on
a Dress like this. So just be aware, there are good designs and designs that might suit
different approaches. I think it works really well for what it was designed for, which was these
individual elements here with nothing in the middle. So it just looked better
with that sort of Design. Not quite so good with
the process that I was using to actually have it
filled with my pattern
13. Pt 12 Printable Collage: On the screen in front
of you is one of the key reasons why
you might want to use Smart Objects in a document. In this case, what we've
got is a Smart Object that different sizes that
would allow us to print an image on a
single sheet of paper. But here we're
getting six prints on the one sheet of paper. And it's very easy to
change out the little girl for a different image and
printed over and over again. So when you have a need for
a bulk process like this, Smart Objects are going to
be your next best friend. Well, almost your
next best friend because there's actually a few things going on here
that you need to work around. So we're going to talk
about how you would set up this document because although
it looks really easy, as though it might look like you've got
all the skills right now there's some nasty surprises you're about to encounter. So let's choose File New and let's go and
get a print job. So I'm going to click on Print. I'm going to choose
letter size paper. I'm going to use a
landscape orientation. I'm printing it 300
pixels per inch. I'll click Create. So as promised, let's have a look at the
problems with this. And the first thing is in
actually bringing in the image. If I choose File place Embedded and go and select
this image to Use, and then scale it. We've got an embedded image at pretty much the size that
we want to print it out. And it is a Smart Object and we know it's going to be
a Smart Object because my computer is set up to Place
Embedded as Smart Objects. And here it is, just going to double-click on the
Smart Object thumbnail. The image is the original
size at was on disk. It's 3,000 odd pixels
by 2000 pixels. Everything looks okay. Eats naught. Here's the problem. Up here on the tab bar, you can see that
the embedded image is a J peg its ally one JPG. That's a problem because
we've been talking so far that Smart Objects or PSPs. The problem is that when you use Place Embedded on a JPEG image, the smart object that gets
created is an embedded JPEG, not an embedded PSB file. And they work very differently. And we need an embed a PSB file. So setting up our document using Place Embedded is a problem. Depends on easiest solution. And this is the one
I suggest you use, is that you open the
image before you start. So I'm just going to File open. This time I'm going
to use this image. It's exactly the same
size as the other one. But in this case, instead of
using File Place Embedded, what we're going to do is
open the image up and then drag and drop this
background layer into our working document. So I'm just going to
click on that and drag. I've still got my left
mouse button. Push down. I'm just going to hover
over the working document. It opens up and I'm just
going to bring this down. I haven't stopped pressing the left mouse button and that's the only thing I'm
pressing right now is the left mouse button and
now I'm going to let go. And here is that image. We brought it out of this
file and over into this file. We haven't taken her away with just really
basically made a copy. Now, before you do anything
else, this is Critical. You're going to make
this a Smart Object. Don't re-size it because otherwise we're going
to lose our size. So I'm just going to
right-click here and choose Convert to Smart Object. Once it's a Smart Object, I can resize it. Let's get rid of this
problematical one because it's not in
the right format. Let's put this image up
in our print position. Let's double-click on a
Smart Object thumbnail and see what we've got. Well, we've got an image that's 3,000 odd pixels by 2000s, that was the
original image size. And up here on the tab bar, it's Layer 11 PSP. So it's actually a imbedded
PSP and that's what we need. I'm just going to close it down. Now. I'm going to
hold down the Alt key and drag away some
duplicates of this. And each one of these
duplicate is going to be a standalone Smart Object. And then I'll drag another one. And these can be all
different sizes. This is pretty much the kind of layout
that you might see. Kids, school Photos come out in. So you could fill your
sheet of paper up with a variety of different sizes of these images
if you wanted to, you could also rotate them. So let's just make a
much smaller one here. And let's rotate it. In this case, I'm going to hold the Shift key so
that I'm rotating it a perfect 90 degrees. And we could pop
a couple in here. So you can print as
many as you like of these on a single
sheet of paper, just using this
Smart Object layout. Now that we've got our
layout all organised, we're going to save this. I'll choose File and then Save. We're going to make sure that
it's going to be saved as a PSD file if there is
any other format day, I would suggest you
just save it as a PSD. I'm going to call this
Collage Mockup five. We will go ahead turn the
printer on, print this out. If we wanted to now make
this a different image, this is what we're going to do. We're going to double-click on the Smart Object indicator on the thumbnail of any
one of these layers. It does not matter
which one we click on. I'm just going to
double-click here. And this opens up the
imbedded PSB file. I'm going to import
the replacement image. And I can do this now
with a Place Embedded. I'm going to choose File
and then Place Embedded. I'm going to select the file
that causes problems in the first place because this is a different way of approaching, because we're
actually embedding it into an existing PSB file. Long-term, there are
issues if you just keep piling these layers
on top of each other. Because what you're
going to end up with is storing all
of these images inside the master image
and it's going to blow out every time
you add another image, it's going to get
X amount bigger. So if I've already printed this one out and
I'm happy with it, I'm going to just trash it. So I'm going to drag
it onto the trash can. So this PSB file here
only contains this image. At the moment it's
a Smart Object and it can stay as Smart Object. There's absolutely
nothing wrong with that. If it worries, you just
right-click and choose Rasterize Layer and then
it's just a regular Layer. Whenever you decide to do, you're just going to come
up here and close that. So I'm going to click
it's close button and you're going to save it. You absolutely have to save
it because you have to save the changes that
you've just made to this. I'll click Yes. And now, when we come back
to our master document, you can say that it now
contains the different image, but at every single one of these images has been
automatically changed. And so if you had 50 or
100 images to print, it's as easy as just double-clicking on the
Smart Object thumbnail, bringing in the next image. So I'm just going to
do Place Embedded. I've got another
image I can use here. I'm going to trash this one because I printed the last one. It's coming as a Smart Object. I can leave it that way
or I can rasterize it. It's going to have no impact
on the final production. I'm going to close this, say yes to saving it. And now I've got my mockup of all of the exact same
image at different sizes. Press the Print button
and I'm often running. Now you would simply
save this file so you can use it over
and over again. You only have to create it once and then it's done and dusted. It's just the case of replacing the image that you plan to print
14. Pt 13 Create a Printable Collage with Unlinked Smart Objects: In the last video, we had a look at setting up
a printing template where we printed the same
image over and over on the single
sheet of paper. Well, let's look now at the situation where
we want to print two or more different images
on the same sheet of paper. I'm going back to File and New. I'm going to again
set up a print job. So I'm selecting Print. I'm going to use
eight-and-a-half by 11, and I'm going to use it in landscape mode and
I'll click Create. Now, we discovered
last time that it was best to copy and
paste that image. So I'm going to go back to the image I already
have available to me. I'm going to drag it
out of here and into my main image and then
droste drop it there. Now, if you have
problems with that, I'm going to show you a
different way of doing it. You can just do select
all and then Edit Copy. And then you can go
to your new document and just do Edit Paste. You can of course use the
shortcut keys for that, so you don't have
to drag that layer, although if you can
get that to work, it's an easier way of working. Now before we re-size this, it's really critical that we
right-click it and turn it into a Smart Object so that we don't lose
that Image Size. And of course this is going
to be an embedded PSB file. So what I'm gonna do
is line this up for printing and I need a couple of copies of it
for this sheet of paper. So I'm just going to Alt,
drag a duplicate away. Now that we've got two
images here ready to print, we may want to put two
different images over here. And we can't do that using the process
that we've been doing because we know
that every time we make a copy of either
of these layers, we get the same layer
over and over again. So all dragging on an
image creates a duplicate. We know that dragging it
from here onto the plus sign down here is also going
to make an exact duplicate. But there is a
method that we can use to create a Smart Object, but a different
Unlinked Smart Object. What we're gonna do is right-click this
and we're going to choose new Smart
Object via Copy. Now what new Smart Object
via Copy does is it creates a new Smart Object the exact same size with the exact
same picture in it. But the link between
the two is broken. So let's just go and do that. And let's go and drag
this new one over here. And this time, because I want this one and this one
to be the same image, I can Alt drag. Now at the moment they're
all the same image. But let's see what happens
when we double-click on this one and
change this image. You can see that it's the
embedded smart object. Just going to choose
File, place Embedded. And I'm gonna go and
get this image again. Again, same process. I'm going to trash the
one that I don't want. You can or don't
have to rasterize, it doesn't matter,
but when you closer, you do want to save that. And look what we've got now. These two are the
same Smart Object. These two are the
same Smart Object, but these are not. So every time we
change one of these, we're going to
change both of them. Every time we change
one of these, we're going to
change both of them. And there could be 15 or 20 of these on the same
sheet of paper. Or you could have three sets. So you could have two of one and then two of another
and then to another. But what's important to
take away from here is how you make a copy
of a Smart Object, but unlink it from the original. And that's by selecting it, right-click and choose this
new Smart Object via Copy. Of course that's a
heads up as well, that you can't make a
copy of a Smart Object using this option if you expect them to have the
same image in them. Because anything you do
to this one that you're creating this way is going to be unlinked from the original. So just a heads up that there are different
ways of coping Smart Objects and the result of each can be
significantly different. So again, I would save
this as a PSD file so that anytime I can come in and just replace the images and
printed out again. And of course, this
layer could be way more complex and
you would make it for a more complex project because it's just
going to save you potentially so much time
in arranging layout
15. Photoshop Smart Objects Project and wrapup: We've now completed
the Video Training portion of this course, so it's Over to you. Your project for this
class is to make a Photoshop Design
Using Smart Objects. You can use either a
mockup, a pattern, or reusable template,
and post an image of your completed Design
as your class project. I hope that you've enjoyed this course and
that you've learned lots about working with
Smart Objects in Photoshop. If you did enjoy the course and when you see a prompt that asks if you would recommend
the class to others, please. Would you do two things for me? Firstly, answer yes, that you do recommend this
class and secondly, write even just a few words
why you enjoyed the class. Your recommendations will
help other students to say that this is of course
at De might like to take. If you see the follow
link on the screen, click it and you'll
be alerted when new classes are released. And if you'd like to
leave me a comment or question, please do so. I read and respond to all of your questions and
all of your comments. And I look at and review
all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much
for joining me for this episode of Graphic
Design for Lunch, and I'll look forward
to seeing you in another class here
on Skillshare soon.
Helen Bradley, Graphic Design for Lunch™
