Vector Smart Objects in Photoshop

Whether you use Photoshop CS2 or the new CS3, using smart objects in your photoshop files can save you hours by reducing your workflow considerably. Smart Objects are layers in your photoshop file that contain data from raster or vector files. These can be other photoshop files (if it is raster) or Adobe Illustrator files (if it is vector). The benefit to using an outside file as a smart object is that you can save the original source content and it will automatically be updated in the photoshop file.

This works particularly well with vector files. Let's say you have a logo done up in Illustrator and you'd like to see how it looks on a picture of a guy in a t-shirt. So you snap a photo of your pal in a plain white white t-shirt. Well, in the old days you would save your Illustrator logo as an .eps, open it in photoshop as a raster layer and drag that layer on to your t-shirt image. Not bad, but what if you didn't like the color and wanted to change the logo from (for the sake of argument) blue to red? Well, you would have had to open the Illustrator file, change the color, re-save as an .eps and go through the steps of placing it on the t-shirt ... again. But with smart objects, you don't have to go through all those steps. Simply place your Illustrator file (yes, native Illustrator file not just .eps) as a smart object by using the File > Place command in Photoshop. Your Illustrator file will show up as a 'Vector Smart Object' on it's own layer. Now, if you wanted to edit those darn logo colors, you simply right click on the smart object and choose 'edit contents' which opens it in Illustrator. You can now change the blue to red, or green, or even pink, and close and save the smart object file. Go back to your photoshop file of the logo and the t-shirt and viola, the logo layer is updated to reflect the new color.

Now that just saves a lot of steps and a lot of headaches! In time your photoshop files will include many Vector Smart Objects and you'll wonder how your work flowed without them.