Adobe Photoshop is one of the best Designing and editing software applications which comes with many features that the creative minds present their ideas easily. Today we are talking about the important concept that is a smart object.

Basically, Smart Object is one of the features that preserves the original resolution of an image which allow users to re-scale the image as many times as user want without affecting the resolution of image.

There are two ways how can you turn a regular layer into Smart Object:

1) For convert a layer to a Smart Object, simply choose the layer you want to convert then Right click on the Layer then click “CONVERT TO SMART OBJECT” option.

2) Choose the layer > go to layer menu> Select Smart Object.

Why Smart Object is Better than the Normal Layer?

There is always been a difference between an Experienced and Newbie Photoshop users rather it their work or the way they do their work. If you are working on Photoshop regularly or have experience of using it that means you know Some of the drawbacks of working on a Normal Layer instead of a Smart Layer. Smart Object gives you freedom to do some experiment with your work with their Smart features like Retaining Image Quality, Editable Images, Smart Filter, etc.

  • Retaining Image Quality – If you are working on an image related project in Photoshop then the Smart Object is very useful. Image is always been the highlight of the project because of that the image going to resize for more than a time for better visibility or other reasons, if your image layer is regular layer than after every time you resize it it’s resolution going to be low but if you convert your image into SMART OBJECT before resizing it then it doesn’t matter how many times you resize it its resolution will not change.
  • Smart Filter – The Another reason why we should use Smart Object. After applying a filter to a normal layer or image you can’t modify the filter but the layer converted to Smart Object gives you a special feature for Filter’s that’s Smart Filter. When you apply a filter to a Smart layer it will become Smart Filter and going to listed below the layer which gives you a way to modify your filter at any time you want.
  • Editable Images – The images that are converted to smart object can edited throughout your work. If you saw some mistake or anything missing in the image you can edit the image separately by click on the Smart Object icon on the layer.

Drawbacks

  • File Size – Though Smart Object stores high resolution images with all the filters you have done to your work separately that makes the file size larger if you are saving it as PSD.
  • Slow Down the system – If in your file you have multiple Smart Object layers might slow down the performance because of the size of the document.
  • Some Feature not work – Some features like Eraser, Brush and blur tool will not work on Smart object because of that you may have to Rasterize your layer to work on it.

Smart Object is one of the Best and most useful features in terms of editing Because it gives you some freedom and Reflexibility throughout your work and make your work easier. It’s not like you have to make all the layer into Smart Object if you know that you are not going to do more work on the layer like Rescaling it or using filter’s than it is ok to not convert it into smart object that will minimize the size of the PSD saved file. ADMEC Multimedia Institute teaches about these types of concepts with practical examples to students. You can attend a demo session to understand how we train our students. Visit the official page of Adobe  Photoshop course in Delhi at ADMEC Multimedia website for better information about course structure.