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Creating Smart Object Templates

I've shown this before on Creativelive. But I show it almost everywhere I go, because it really helps people understand the power of how we work with these wonderful things called smart objects. So first of all, let's just do it like this. Uh, okay, So I'm just going to make a new document, and I'm gonna temporarily say I want to do a eight by 10 so I'm gonna prepare. This is if I'm gonna print this on my own printer. So I set up the size and that's what I'm going to use when I want to do is I want to end up with a photo one here that has a border on it and has my name across the bottom so that every time I'm ready, toe do a sample print. I'm not building it every time from scratch. Okay, so we'll use this one to begin with place in photo shop. And for now it is. Click OK to whatever it says, and then we'll scale her down. Santa put her right there. I want to put a very slight stroke around the outside, so we're going to go to the layer style called Stroke and I Usually I would do only...

one her 1.5 buck and do a little more to see. Can see that I'm actually putting a stroke on their Take my type tool and type in some text. Get much smaller but spread it out even smaller. Nap now. I didn't in any way plan this to go. Oh, wait, Is that centered properly? So one of the things that's always in my head because I'm lazy is that trying to figure out the math. If you have any layer, select all the for the move tool and then it goes. Click on this button to say center, because now it's centering it relative to the entire document. Still not 100% sold on that look of that type of. For now, we'll just stick with adults. May be make it lower capacity. Now, if this was something I was about to print, the final thing that I would do would be to sharpen it is whenever I'm gonna print something, I want to sharpen it so because it's already a smart object, cause it's we place it in as a camera smart object. I would go ahead and do whatever kind of sharpening. And for now, I'm going to do numbers that are too high. You probably enough. You can even see it on the screen. Yeah, that's horrible. Don't ever sharpened like that, especially on someone's face, especially someone like that. So let's get this bigger so you can see. So now I would hit print. But I would also very quickly hit save as printing template because now that I've done this, if I have other photographs that are also of this exact same size, because I know I do, because this is a standard size that I use now if I want to print one of the groom instead of starting from scratch. One of the built in features of smart objects is, you know, we've been talking about looking at the contents of the smart object by double clicking and open that separate window. The other choice they always have available is to say, replace contents. That means keep the container, as is in this case, the container is this big with a stroke around it with a sharpened filter applied reach inside that container and put a different content. IE photo inside and just updates, so it's ready to go. So it's a simple is this. Once I've done all this work, save it this way and then right, click and choose. Replace contents. This works if you're replacing contents with the same kind of information. Me. In other words, it's a tall photograph that's the same size. If I picked the wrong one, that was a smaller, photographed with wrong orientation wouldn't work so well. So that's the right one. So I hit place because it opens a camera offers. I can make adjustments if I need to. But we're gonna assume I've already done that and I click. OK, in the matter of a couple of seconds, it says, Okay, print because it here's what happened It put it in the right size. The stroke is still there, and it did the sharpening for me, so I didn't have to go in and say, Oh, wait, gotta sharpen it that Scharping's already applied to that container, and I'm just replacing the contents. So if I had a Siris of 12 photographs, I want to print with exact same layout. I would do this once. Make a layout, save it and then just go replace contents. Print replaced contents print. Now if you wanted to save a version of each one, you certainly could. But for me, this is more a one off printing template to make a print. But I could print save as groom, replaced contents, print save as bride and end up with different versions. I wanted to. The main message I'm tryingto share with you here is this concept means you do a bit of upfront work once and then that's it. This is ready to go, so I probably make two of them. One for tall photos, one for Landscape Now, Any time I want to print something, I just open it. Go replace contents, put the next photo in and ready to go. Now, before I address your question, I've picked a sharpening amount, which, frankly, for this demonstration was way too high, obviously would have the right amount, but because of smart filter, I can still edit it so you don't have to leave it as is. If you bring in one photo go who in this case that's too sharp than just tweak it so nothing stuck. It's almost like a template slash preset, where you're bringing everything in its doing everything the way you want. This could include on adjustment layer above this, doing something or whatever or logo that's on another layer. So it's sort of over the top of the corner of my image. Whatever you want, the key element is along with double clicking, too. Look at the contents. You can also white, click and choose. Replace contents, and this happens automatically its contents. You need to go to a folder that already has the files to replace. You can't have five or six different photographs open replace from those. You could do that if you're doing the drag on trouble sleeping mask kind of thing. But in this case, when you choose replace contents. The thing that happens, it says, from where would you like to get that file? So you just have to know it's in that folder and named accordingly. Now, for me, what usually happens is exactly this. I look at a folder and there's like a bunch of raw files like which one is it? So I'm using the Mac operating system. So on the Mac, I know that I can tap on it just hit the space bar and it brings it up. Okay, that's the one I want and then hit place so you can replace Raw and J pegs correct, and that the biggest factor on this is size. So if you have, I'll just replace with that one. Also, in your forgot that that was a J peg had made smaller. It would be all out of whack. To be like I don't want to do would probably scale it down really small or just look weird. You can't transform you can to a degree, but if it's too small than scaling it up, won't really help. So as long as they're close, you know it'll work fairly well. If you were worried about it, you could also potentially do it in a way where you placed in the photograph and then add a layer mask to say, Make sure it's sort of Crump to this size. That would be another choice, But often with this I'm saying I want to take the photo as is. I just want to say next and then print. Now, hopefully many of you are sitting there thinking, I wonder if I could use it for fill in the blank. The answer is yes to whatever you're thinking, because I'm doing it for a print. But if you have any project where you're thinking, well, I've got to do a bunch of I don't know photo business cards with someone's photo on it. And I need to replace all their photos or whatever it is anything where some of the elements stay the same and the others changed per person. This is just a nice way to do it, whether it's for printing or for a Web banner for your website or whatever it ISS. The key elements here is when you place the photograph in the first time, it's gonna be smart. Make sure it's set to the size you want at any other effects, like in this case, a stroke layer style thesis mart sharpen, filter whatever any elements that will never change, like text and logos, etcetera, and then save it as that PSD. And even though it doesn't say it anywhere, it's like we've created a template that makes sense. Okay, so let's take it a little step further here again. I also shown this idea before you actually let me show one. I think first I just reminded me, um, you may recall earlier. I think it was right before we took a break. I took the photo of the girl sitting there and said, You can do to photos of the same one check before I to this that I have something that I can use. I guess I'll have to use this one against. And I know these are the same size. Okay, so we'll do it with her first. So sorry. We're gonna use Usually use you later on. Okay, So here is an example where I might say, I want to do that same kind of thing of two photos of the same person, but do it in excellently smarter way than kind of a one off thing. So I'm going to just duplicate and because she's already smart, when I duplicate is an exact clone, so I can take the smaller of the top one, make her smaller like this, Put her up here it enter, take my marquee tool, add a layer mask, and then take this one free transform much bigger. I don't like that. Maybe then do some kind of a little smart filter of fact, like Ghazi and Blur, and then lower. So this part is kind of somewhere to what we did trying to make it that, and just to make this look a little nicer, let's at stroke around it white. And of course, we could also put you know her name. Whatever. Um, if we really wanted to just why not? Let's try taking one other step. Let's take another one of her here and on this one unlinked the two so I can free transform her because she was so enamored with her jewelry. She's really want a close up of just that because, you know, that's pretty common that people would want that I got nothing. So now I've got this simple little layout thing, and it's but it's one photograph that smart used three times with different sizes and different masks. So this is another form of template. That 1st 1 I showed before was just I just said duplicate scale the end, and there was nothing about it that made it kind of reusable. This one does. Now let me warn you in advance when I first say replace contents. It's not gonna look very good because in these photos and made perfect sense to zoom in on her mother to make perfect sense. But I made it make sense to say Zoom in on her hair clip and everything else. When I replace it with another photo, it might be zoomed in on his nostril. I don't really know yet, but it's still gonna be faster than me building this from scratch for the next photo. So I come in here I choose, replace contents and doesn't seem to want Remember where I was, which is not very helpful. And let's try this and see what happens so again starts in camera. I hit. OK, okay. It's somewhat interesting. I mean, there are parts of it like this one here, actually work. OK, I could just move them over, unlike over there. This one, this extreme close up of his shoulder isn't working for me all that well, so might that. And I might decide in this case that this is in the wrong position. But I don't have much more room to go, so I'd have toe live with that, but and that's gonna happen. But the main point was only one photo trying to make it into something that's a little more interesting without building it from scratch every time. So the tricks that make this work and I want to point this out to make sure, is when I created this me go back when I first created these, each one of these was a layer with the mask. I want to make sure however, it will make my life easier if I unlinked them. Because that way, when I choose replace contents, the mask stays put. And I could move the photograph out round within that. So if we choose to do this again, place contents. Thank you for forgetting where I was again. This time let's try that one place. Okay? Now, when I look at it, I can just Okay, that would actually worked out pretty well, This one down here, though, it needs to be slightly different. Maybe we're just showing fixing his cufflinks or whatever it is. I'm able to do that because it's already on links. So the mask is staying put in each case, and I'm just moving the contents around inside. I can still scale up or down if I need to, because in this case, it doesn't look that great to be cutting him off completely. So I might make him even larger. Which again I normally have said before, You don't want to scale things up in this case because we're doing things like adding effects and making it blurry and lightning the opacity and whatever I want. Those are all possible because smart objects aren't that smart, that you can suddenly scale it three times the size without losing quality. It doesn't change that, but it does mean for this kind of layout situation, it's nice to be able to say, I'd like you did say, keep everything else the way it is and change to a different image. Now I'm gonna take my life in my hands here and try something. I have no idea what's gonna happen. So I didn't plan is ahead of time. So if we choose, replace contents, but I'm gonna try and see what happens. I picked one that I don't know if it's the right size or not, and it's this one. So let's see what happens. Yeah, see, that's what happens when you have one. That's the wrong size so could I try to fix it? I could, but at a certain point, seizures, say abort and try something different. So that's kind of that thinking that might happen to make the point that it's not all golden. You have to make sure that the ones you're replacing are of a similar size. Or else that's exactly what will happen. So and if it does happen, you say, Okay, never mind. Undo. And then hopefully you have another template that's of a smaller size or something like that. Good so far, with templates and people understanding what's happening. Yeah, I think you covered all the questions that people have. Okay, so here's another example of the benefit of doing this is to to invest some upfront time to create something as a template for future use. So in this example, I have This came from through a friend of mine who's a wedding photographer, and he was talking to other photographers. They're going to this debate about, you know, should you give your digital images away and some people like never do it, and other people like we're gonna do it. Charge a premium for it. So he decided that he was going to make his images available, but at a very high premium. So if you want all the images, digital files from your wedding, it's another $3000. So he decided he's going to do that. He wanted to make it like, Look at what you're getting So he came to me said What I'd love to do is in my sales presentation. Show them look, you'll get a DVD that looks like this of your images and not like this, cause that would be boring, he said with their photo on there. So what I want to do is put the wedding couples photo on the cover and on the disk. But it took me 45 minutes to do it once. I sure don't want to have to that every time. And I said, Why don't you make a smart object template? And he went because he hadn't heard that term before, cause that's just a term that I use that most people have never heard off, So this is what you do. I'm gonna cut to the chase eventually and show you the end result because it would take a good half hour 45 minutes. Do this really accurately the first time. But then the beautif is once you've done it the first time, then it's done. So this starts with a stock photo that I found just a blank DVD disk and cover. Then I added a layer, and that layer is simply ah, placeholder that I know is in the correct ratio of my raw files. Now, you could do this with an actual photo to start off, but to me it just easier to say, Let's just do it this way with this place holder. So before I do anything else, I need to make this a smart object. Let me hide this for a second and figure this out. I need one, 234 cause you can see can you see there is a reflection of the case and this so I need four copies of this same smart objects I want to be. The same is to be on the cover on the disk and reflected below. So 12 threes and I have four of them. So I take the 1st 1 and this is where the work begins. I do free transform. I lower the opacity and I say, Okay, let's try and make this thing fit. And at a certain point. And this is where normally I would zoom in closer, going to each corner scales proportionally. What I want to do is I need to follow the angle of the DVD covers. If I hold down the command key on the Mac control for Windows, I can scale each corner or move each corner independently and make it fit the way that I want. And again, in a real project, at this point, I'd be going zoom in closer, make sure it looks really good. Hit, Enter, Put the opacity back up. But if we look at this for a second, the DVD is casting a bit of a shadow that I'm no longer seeing. So I take this photograph and change the blend mode to multiply, or this layer should say, Now we're getting that nice little shadow. Then I'd have to say, but it needs to have not be on this disc like that. So I'm gonna take that layer and add a layer mask so it looks like that now, rather than have you sit and watch me for the next 25 minutes while I do the rest of it, that's the process you have to go through is now. You take the next one, drag it on top of the disc oriented, add a layer mask and eventually, through the magic of preparing ahead of time. You get this now. In this case, I just happened in my place holder to have exes in it, just for the so I could see what I was doing. But if you look closely, you can see there's one on the cover. There is one of the disc reflection reflection on the reflections, frankly, were the hardest part to make it look semi realistic because a reflection of something it's on an angle is quite hard to do. So it was a matter of flipping it and transforming it and adding layer masterwork, radiant. So I'm not gonna lie. This took 45 minutes to an hour, and that's because I know OK at photo shop. So for some people, it might take a little longer the first time. But it's an investment that will pay off in spades, because now I'm ready to use this for anyone where I know that first wedding couple are coming in and they kind of suggested we might be OK with spending some money, Get our files. Okay, so I want to really sell them on it. So in this case, instead of choosing replaced contents because I don't sure if it's the right size or not, I want to avoid that. In the example I showed before there were camera raw files, I pretty much had to just choose replace content because you can't go and look at the contents the same way because this is just a placeholder. If I double click on any one of these, it's going to open a file and say, There's your placeholder. So now I can go and find this is actually a three layered Photoshopped document because it has the photograph, a little semi see through white bar and their name. So there's actually three layers in a photo shop. So if I choose to actual, just do it this way and easier for you see? So there it is. There's the three layers. I select all three, and I just dragged them into this contents document. I see. It's a good thing I didn't just choose replace contents because the sizing is way off. But that's why I did it this way. So free transform. Now I scale everything down. Fit like that. Close this one, too. Safe confusion. I don't need any more. So here's my placeholder. That was just that shaded box. Now it has thes three layers. If I hit, save and come back here first ones ready to go, right? It's got on the cover on the desk, a little reflection if I'm looking at it And I say I really like the way on this one that the Texas kind of cut off I mean that you can't see the ampersand because it's a little too high up. I can't change it here, so I have to go back to the contents. One. Take these two and say, Let's just drag that down a bit, Save it at updates. So now I would say this is a J peg that I'll use in my sales presentation to Janet and James, and they'd be like, we're gonna get that like, Yes, it looked just like that. Then I say that out. Now I could either go back and put it back to my place holder again. Get rid of these other things if I want to do that parts optional and save it. So now my template is ready for the next one. So now when the senior comes in and says, Oh, I'd like one of those two. In this case is only one layer. It's easier just to say place in a photo shop. And now I couldn't place her and they're hit. Enter, Save now the only thing after you notice again that the smart, obvious and the mass or not linked together. So now on this one, I could easily just drag her down toe fit. So that's an example I want to share, if you because yes, it did take a bit of effort to get to that point of creating a template. But I have this philosophy that I think is a fairly good analysis. The way things work in a photo shop the first time you try something never done before in Photoshopped. It might take you two hours the second time. It'll take an hour. The third time it will take 27 minutes. Thereabouts, because path The thing is you're kind of going reading notes or kind of try and do something once you've done a couple of times and it's like, Okay, now I kind of got the swing of things. So to create a temple like this the first time does take a bit of effort here. Now, maybe I should change the blend mode to multiply and do this, but then the next time you do something similar, it takes less time and one of things that is a personal by going to get on my little soap box for a moment. Here is one of a personal pet peeve I have is when I see photographers posting things they say. I went out today and I was just kind of practicing. Just taking shots is too, you know, practice my camera. People practice photography, but I don't practice photo shop. Seriously, why not? I mean, this will take you much less if you just for fun one day, say I'm gonna build a temple because I have 20 minutes of extra time. So let me practice and do something in photo shop with no goal in mind other than to practice when we practiced other crafts Why don't we practice photo shop and what really makes me part that pisses. I mean, makes me annoyed about this. Is that no se? People go but photo shop so hard? Well, then practice it. Don't complain about it. If you're not willing to go in and say, Well, I was practicing with smart objects, said people like, I don't get those smart objects. Yeah, because you're trying to do it when you're deadline is like five minutes from now on a project that's not the time to try it. That's why I find a bit of time in your life and just say I'm going to just go and do something in photo shop for no other purpose than to try and get better at it. So that's get off my soap soft box now. But so, but that's always been a pet peeve of mine. People talk about practicing and rehearsing, you know, like actors and musicians rehearsed all the time. Why don't we rehearsed a little bit with what we're doing with such an important tool that we're using? So experiment? Practicing this for, like, five or six minutes, you have to take two hours just try a few things. So you kind of go. Okay, That's smart object thing, kind of getting a bit more and then life will be so much easier you'll be happier.