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Lesson Info

Smart Object Templates

So this session, we're going to build on this whole smart filter spark after thing, even a little bit more, and talk about what I refer to a smart object templates, and always hesitate to say that on some level, because in some software programs there actually is on menu item called save his template, not in photo shop, so my worry is someone will go later on going where's, that template thing and there isn't one it's, just the nature of smart objects and smart filters it's as if they're a template, because you can just replace the existing contest with new constant have everything update so to me from that perspective, it acts like a template, and I refer to it is that is just not really called that it's just the nature of the beast and that's one of its many advantages, as you could create something for one particular purpose and then suddenly go, you know what? I might use this again? We'll just by the fact you say that is a psd and it has smartness in it means it has the ability to...

act as a template. So that's kind of one approaches just to realize, and as long as I say this is a psd and it has smart, I'm smart filters, it could be perceived as a template. With that in mind, though, when you know it acts that way I find myself going in thinking I want I should make a template for that because I gotta do this all the time. So even though it's again not a technical photoshopped term it's something that I do all the time so for example, when I just want to print something you know I have my nice epson inkjet printer in my office and I want a print a a page every time I realized I was doing the same thing, I was opening it I was thinking after sharpen for my printer, which is this much and I find that on my printer things print just a hair darker than I'd like. So I um I always adding adjustment layer to tweak it just a little bit because I know you know all that kind of stuff but I realize every single time I was doing that over and over again I thought that that's a lot of work. Now some people would say quite correctly that well, you could make an action to do that and that's fair enough, but I find for certain things it would take the action would take ten or fifteen steps to record as opposed to just doing it toe one photograph so let's use that as an example first I want to prepare something for print so I'm not going to do all the setting so I normally would for the sake of time, but basically I've got eight by ten photograph or a piece of paper I should say and I want to make sure that any time I'm readyto print a full screen page first of all it's ready to go so in order to do that, I'm just pick a photo choose place in photo shop now, any time you do that, it always starts off by scaling it to fit on one of the challenges that we face today that hopefully someday will change what I've been saying that for like the last ten years that the format of digital cameras is actually eight by twelve and yet every frame you ever see and every place it still it still goes eight by ten I was like really can't someone just make eight by twelve paper and frames but anyway, so one of the ways that that I use this is as a cropping tool because normally if you go in if you open a document and you have to crop it it's a fairly permanent crop because you're removing information but if you make a document that's a size you want, then place your image in if I scale it up I know that in effect is like cropping because now I've said that's the principle area of this photograph if I hit, enter to finalize that now I have a smart object sitting on its own layer that I can decide where do I want a position it within the confines of the size of this page. So I do that first and say, ok, so now I know without any worry, this is an eight by ten or if it's eight and a half by eleven or thirteen by nineteen, whatever size you're doing, I would make a document that size and place the dot the image in and the background layer really serves no purpose because I'm covering up the whole thing. I'm not leaving a border anything so and I could actually I really wanted to delete the background layer, but it really wouldn't make that big a difference so that's, step number one next, I always feel like I want to sharpen before printing coming out of the camera photos look good and you can do all these things will try pause and wants to make them super sharp, but from a printing standpoint, every single photograph, both there tends to need a bit more sharpening before printing one of the problems challenges, I should say with sharpening has always been that when you want to sharpen something for print, it almost always looks too sharp on your monitor. But it looks good when your prints a lot people under sharpened because they're doing it based on what their eyeball see on the screen and one of the realities that most people find is that in order if you if you know you're going to print, this is the key question if I'm putting on my website, I wouldn't sharpen it as much because it is what I see on the screen, but if I know that the intent of this is that printed out on my printer, I know settings that work well because I sat there and I tried a bunch of things and my eyes keep telling me that's too much if I look at on the screen so there's two things about scharping that usually cause people grief when preparing for print is first of all, they don't look at it one hundred percent view they're looking at scale down when you looking fit and window views scharping looks horrible you have to view to one hundred percent and secondly, you have to just accept the fact that for proper print sharpening it will look too much to your eyeballs. When you look at the image on the screen, the average person has to go wow that's too sharp so they pull it back and then when they printed is not the sharpest would want to be so with that in mind I know there are some settings that I use and say uncharted mass that when I'm preaching on my printer, having tested it, I know that these are numbers that I had great success with. I'm not in any way, saying they are perfect numbers for everyone. This is based on literally taking the same photo and trying different settings, and based a little bit on technology of the resolution for printing, it determines the radius and all that kind stuff, but this is not a class on sharpening, but anyway, here's a good example to my eyes, this is bordering on too sharp, but that's, okay, because I'm doing it for print now, because I placed the document in from camera it's, automatically smart, therefore, the filter is also smart, so I don't have I could pull it back if I really want to. In this case, I won't. And then, depending on the situation, I might also, and this is a very non technical way of doing something for print is to add and adjust my like curves and maybe writing it up just a little bit, because I know that no matter what I see on the screen, when I print, my printer tends to be just a little darker and that's a very nontechnical, non calibrated way, that's going to also drive some people crazy when they hear me say that but it works for me because I know this is for me for my printer based on testing that I've done okay, so now this image is ready to print so if I had my printer here I would hit print and you we'd all sit and watch it print and go gosh, that looks lovely and it's perfectly sharp for that particular printer. So now at this point the tendency would be tok close and don't say this because I've already printed it and then go on to the next one but then one day it occurred to me, but I do this to every photograph that I'm printing on my printer, so why would I do that over and over again? If what I see right here is again could be viewed as a template because everything in there I'm always going to sharpen that much I'm going to always add that curves adjustment layer, but at the same time if I bring in one a photo that already happens to be a little brighter, I might just turn off that adjust player. But the key point is I'm not building it from scratch every time, so I would say this is a psd and I would call it some very clever name like start here when you're printing dot psd here something that reminds me what it's for and then when I had come to do my next print I have a couple of options I can either place into this document and copy the smart filter which would be ok but kind of longer or try just right clicking and choosing replace contents and then I have to go and find that file which is in here somewhere that bloods and it's tough to see which one it is not that one we'll do it place because it's camera it's still starts there which is important now if I've already adjusted this I could just click ok but if I certainly know what the last minute so I want the shadows to be a little opened up here whatever it might be I could still do that click ok and then it's going toe pop it in there and print I mean is ready to go because already sharpened because when I replaced the contents of the smart object the smart filter is already been applied to this when I used to use actions I have to go okay play and would go block team sharp man it would have to sit and watch these steps happen here as soon as that came up on the screen is ready to go because it already has been sharpened all I'd have to do perhaps is think about the fact that if I want tio aiken readjust the kind of left right orientation because of the you know, eight by ten verses eight by twelve nature, but even that to me is simpler than the alternative going crop tool because the crop till doesn't remember eight by ten us you tell it to this case might document sizes in effect doing the cropping already for me and if I was doing fifteen photos for a low portfolio caution, be something next print next are to be more specific play replaced contents move left right print next if I really wanted to preserve these each one, I could go save as if I wanted a safe version, but for me this is mostly already have the raw file edited the way I want I just want to print it and so it's like I don't I don't print directly out of those other programs that like like room that you could I use is because I know it's already set to go. This becomes my just basic full screen are full width printing document just a quick question where's that ray's replaced contents, but I mean he wasn't under it's actually a the easiest way to get to it is wherever you have the smart object you just write or control click right beside it pops up this menu and one of the options is replaced contents now the key to that working is or let me say the other way the one time where it would not work, which I very care, very cleverly demonstrated by accident yesterday is I picked the photo, which was a very different size. My show's replace contents, the sizing was way off, so they have to be relatively of a similar size. So if you're always working on raw files where you generally have them a particular size that's going to help at worst, it would be way too big and have to scale it down. But the fact that I started this one with the place command means place will automatically try to scale it to fit, so sometimes that will help. But don't be shocked if you do replace contest, go well, what happened there, it's? Because the sizing was so different that they just couldn't scale it to fit the same way. So this is probably the most simple example I can think of is a quote unquote template, because it's just a way to print more easily. Now, if I I was really thinking on my feet, I might also include in this template a my favorite black and white adjusting layer so that on the fly I could decide do I want a print is in black and white or not, if not hide the layer? But that's just built into this little template I just stick that right on top and say yeah, you know what? Let's put a my favorite black and white in there too just in case and then each time I replace contents I just decide color or not oops, sorry color or not so even though we have presets where we can easily get to a particular preset combination of this black and white adjustment or whatever putting it billion the document as an option on or not I've even talked with a person that took this concept and so they print on two different printers and they found that they do slightly different sharpening so they have to sharpened filters and they just turn on the appropriate one for whichever of their two devices they're sending it to print on to which they are sending it well, you know what I mean? So this and again that the broken record time saves a psd call it whatever you want just by the nature of a psd that contains this information and in the layers panel means it acts like a template and I keep stressing that because no matter how many times I see this, I still get comments like I went looking for that template command I'm like no it's not there it's just think of it like a template call it whatever you want but it's that's the beauty of it to me is it's a time saver were saying do this once established ok that's a great amount of sharpening that I like for this image for this printer next one replace contents part of what I think is so beneficial about this is that there's so many options we can now build on top of that for example at this eleventh hour I go to print this and I'm really distracted by this little well pile of something in the field that I want to not have their well I can quickly add a layer and clone over it and then print so it still doesn't mean that you're like oh well, I've got to live with that you could still look at this or say in the line of horizons lost let me rotate it inside the confines of this document so the step number one is it's cutting the chase if I just want to hit print but if I still realize at this last moment there's something I want to tweak I still can just do it using our the mess we talked about so far like, you know re touching on a separate layer or adding an adjustment with a mask or whatever it might be those air still available to you it just means that for the most part the basic operation of saying senate to print is ready to go makes sense okay, so that's example number one and every time I demonstrate this I'm always tended to save it but I know I'm going to demonstrate again and somewhere I have my own actual template so I won't really save it the other possibility is to say I want to go up one little much is exactly the same principle but I want to do some just take it up one little notch further and that's I want to create a series of photographs where have like ah white border with my name across the bottom maybe a little stroke around the outside so it's exact same principle just one extra little step so I would take my photo and shoes place in photo shop no it's not busy you know why you keep thinking that again it always going toe I'm doing this with raw files by the way these could be j pegs no difference there's happens minor ross so it's taking this first trip to camera raw but I've already adjusted them I just click ok it's going toe scale it to fit the confines in this case I want that kind of white border effect so I just scale it to say there hold on a second let me do that one more time I want to do it slight variation is to make sure so I mean revisit that place in photo shop okay actually works better to say established this as a smart object first, and then scale it, so I'm going to just press enter, even though I do want a bit of a white border on it, this is going to help me with my subsequent photos, so now I would scale this down to say that size and position it wherever I want one little trick you can do if you're as I was there, I was completely eyeballing it. It is a left right, a very quick way to center something as you do, commander, control a for select all, and then with the move tool, you click on that a line center and by telling it to select all it's saying select align it relative to the page, usually the align command alliance relative to other layers. This is a quick way of saying align it relative to the page look at that didn't move it all day I was banging on in that case that was rare, and I also want to have maybe a stroke on this a little bit, so I'll do inside. Oh, by the way, let me just mention this because this is one of the small little changes that they'll be often makes that I think is absolutely wonderful, I wish they'd been this for years but one of my friends that adobe who's, a product manager there a few years ago, said, you know, everyone out whenever I talk to people about what they like is a change in photo shop it's usually not some big crazy feature it's like, I wish there was a check box that lets you now blah, blah, blah. So a few years ago, they started doing that with photo shop, where not only the big features, they also do these smaller enhancements, and they called them jd I features for just do it and the way that this bryan o'neal hughes did it is he post them excel spreadsheet and said for the next week, take a break or whatever else you're working on and do as many of these little things as you can, and the first time I did it was think c s five, I want to say, and I was something like sixty eight little enhancements that at the surface you're like, but like this one made me so, so happy because in layers style, this stroke in particular would always default to read as the color and outside as the style, probably about the two worst possible choices for a stroke could you put a stroke outside the corners, become rounded instead of square, so you almost always want the stroke inside on what used to happen is every time you go to the stroke you know you just used it five minutes ago it would be back to red and outside again I was always like please stop doing that and I one point said they said, well, what would be a better default? And I said, well, couldn't we just make it, like, make my own? So down here at the bottom of this button made me so so happy make default so I can say I always wanted to be inside instead of outside make default now from now on every time I go this stroke it will not have to force me to go back all the time so I just throw that out as an aside, but when you're a longtime photos appeaser, you'll discover that every so often a girl he liked that little button come from and that's what the history of it is someone else enough people said, can't you just make a default button? They went okay, so kind of cool. So anyway, I put that on there again because it came in from cameras a smart object I could do the same idea where I do whatever sharp bring I'm dual different style just to show you it doesn't matter what you used for sharpening and so really the main difference now is in addition to just put in the photo and sharpening I also put a stroke around the outside I could add a drop shot whatever you know stylized that the way you want it doesn't have to be on a white background it could be on a pale background you anything you want so it's the same principle but that we're building a little bit by saying add some type but here's a good example every time I do this I don't want to say what was that typeface and how did I make it look and go and find it from other document it's just always there because it is part of my template so now I print this one and I'm ready to go the next one same idea replaced contents and I just have to go and find it I wish there was a way to do it more directly through like bridge or light room or something but unfortunately the moment you have to do it kind of by file name which I usually look at and kind of say which one I don't remember which one I used the first time okay that one must be this one then okay? And again you will notice that when I hit place it's going to take a first trip to camera raw because I'm using raw files of these words jake pegs it would just automatically you'll write in and replace the other one I click ok and it's going to replace the contents while still putting the stroke and the layer style around the earth and the sharpening. Now this one's ready to print now they wanted to keep these each time I would go save as save a copy, then go replace contents in this case again that this was the purpose of this was just to simply make a series of prints for a portfolio case or something, and don't necessarily want to keep them with this. I mean, that's your choice. But the nice part is same ideas just building on saying, I also want this. And you can see each time you can add mohr aspects to it and that's part of the psd file what I would personally probably do since I already here is replaced contents, and then go save as j peg and make a little flattened version that I know I have in case I need to print it in the future, and then you keep using this as my template for future ones. So this is just to show you kind of the example of where we can start it's all the same concept. We're just taking it a little step further each time. Ok, so here is an interesting example. This is more of a kind of a designer thing where when someone designs a logo for someone some kind, seeing it on, like a black what logo on a white piece of paper people kind of like, ok, but imagine able to show them in context, here's what your love would look like if you had, like, say it on a coffee cup or whatever you want. So this is just a stock photo I found that happens have a coffee cup and this leather thing, and I want to be able to show someone this would be what your logo would look like in not just on a business card or a piece of paper, so because I don't really know yet how it's gonna look, the simplest way for me would just be too on a layer, just make a rectangle and fill it with some color, too, so I can see it, and then right away make it a smart object. I want one for the cup and one for the portfolio thing, so I duplicate because we've talked about a couple times. Now, whenever you duplicate a smart object, it's, a clone of the first one, so we'll take this first one and bring it over here, it's a little big, so I'm going to scale it down and may be rotated a bit, and then I can use in when you were here and free, transform this little button up with the top allows you to do like this kind of mesh transformation so you can do things like curve it a little bit, so it maybe makes more sense, like it's following the cup a little bit, and it will say this would be a thing where in real life I be getting zooming in closer and making sure it looked perfect. But for now, we're going to say looks good to me any time you put something on top of another object that has shading sometimes to make it look realistic, it just looks like it's kind of slapped on there, so if you play around with blend, most like, say something like multiply even what makes it look really dark right now, it will mean if there's shadows in the cup, it will kind of make it look more like it's following then on the second one, I'm gonna move it over here and I want to try and make it look realistic on this portfolio things so I would be rotating and this is where knowledge of one key keyboard shortcut is really important, because just by nature of free transform will not ever follow the shape of this just won't, because it's trying to do horizontally vertically so holding down the commanding control key lets you go to the individual corners and now you can manually make it fit this way, so you're kind of looking at the perspective angles of the different parts and making look the way you want and then still want to make a little smaller down here just a bit smaller now this one I want to make it look like it's kind of m boston or d boston, I guess you'd say into the leather, so it doesn't just look like a screen print, and I would do this ahead of time. So again, I'm ready to move on and say apply this logo in there, so the way I do that with is with a layer style called bevel and in boss, and this is one of the rare times actually use most of time. I just stick with inner bevel is the one that tends to work the best, most the time for most situations, but for this kind of thing, there's actually one called pillow in boss, it actually does you can't you won't be able to really tell until I show you the finished version with the logo, but usually I put this in here and play around saves a little bit to get the look that I want, I will be able to tweak them after the fact, so I click ok now with that first couple of examples I said replace contents because I knew the photo that I was using as a replacement was the same size as the first one, but in this case I did all this work and literally of this way to show you now I think I'm not sure my logo is the right size or not, because I don't want to suddenly come in giant or, you know, too big or too small so a simple way when you're dealing with this kind of thing, and by the way, of course I would say this is a you know what? At this point to preserve all of this template nous go to either one of these two because that's, when you have, remember whenever you duplicate a smart object it's, a clone of the first one, so I double click on either one of them and it says, well, you're smart object was just this big blue box, so now I go and find the logo that I want place into photo shop and size accordingly, and then I don't want the blue background, so I hide it and I hit safe. So what I've just done as it has updated the contents of my smart object and the smart object was initially just a blue square that I copied and then transformed the fifth each of those two objects, so now if I go back there, it is I've got logo on the coffee cup and local look like it's in boston to the and I mean, when you look pretty close I mean, I think that looks pretty good considering it was like a thirty second little hey, let me do a quick pillow one boss kind of thing, but the beauty of all these kind of template ideas just like we talked about presets is that generally speaking when you do it in the most ideal manner it's still not cast in stone in other words, if I look at this one, I think I need that devil in boss needs to be a little more in this case or a little less it's still there I could just double click on it and say let's intensify this may be just a bit more maybe make this even darker or like whatever you want I mean that's kind of the point is that anything is in this particular case having black in here maybe looks too dark so I might go in and say let's pick the brown instead making a darker brown so everything is subject to change its just by nature it's already said, take that square oriented logo, make it hit the right perspective and do that devil in a boss to make it look like it's actually into the leather and depending on the logo or the design you might also decide to change a blend mode as well depends on the situation so that's an example where and I kind of did it fairly quickly, but you can imagine if you invest a little bit of time to make it look perfect for someone who does spends half their time designing locals for someone imagine difference between sending a j peg that says here's your logo versus that and here's what it might look like and I've seen I didn't I want to do in this case it would have taken too long, but I saw on a, uh, there's a stock photo site that I go to and they had in one document they had letterhead, business cards, envelopes like everything you part you traditionally put your logo on, you could imagine doing the same thing copy, copy, copy, copy and make them fit and I go bang, put your logo and say here's what you're locally and all these different things and be like, wow, you're a genius because you did all this work and what you kind of did, but he did it once you know, the menu next client, you replace their logo and done boom, so yeah, I love that kind of thing because anything that involves saving time that's a good thing, okay, so if it was me, and in this case, it is, I would say that, you know, client name and then undo and go back to my little blue placeholders ready for the next project. You don't have to do that, but to me, if you don't otherwise you start building up this context, dogma has all these layers, and there are all these logos, whatever, which I suppose is in the horribly bad thing, but to me, each one, I'm kind of starting saying, ok, yet now applied this template, so that kind of idea again, you can take it to any level you want, and it still doesn't change the fact that we might also incorporate masking in this case, I was able just go slap it on there, transformative it to fit. But here's another example, I want to show someone well, if I did business cards for you, here's, what they would actually look like printed, so I took a stack of some of my business cards and turn him upside down, so they're white took a photograph of it, so this is going to be the start of my template. Um, this one is a raw file, thankfully, because I think I want to change the exposures to a little bit more looks better now. To make this my life simpler, I can't be quite as arbitrary this time the first time you said at make a blue square, in this case, I want to make sure that the size of this smart off just going to match up with an actual business card size, so I made a new layer to contain it, and I'm going to use my marquee tool because it doesn't. I don't have to do like shape players or anything, but what I will do is instead of just eyeballing it, trying to make it right, especially because the existing cards on here ole on different angles, I'm going to go into this option called fix ratio and a business card is always three and a half by two I shouldn't say always some now are british measurements darn those british people with their weird measurements? Sorry, he's kidding. I was there's, a wonderful company that does beautiful business card printing from the u k called mu dot com was seen and they're wonderful, and I was all excited to my whole design there like it's forty seven millimeters by I'm like, really furnishing came from the continent. It's the british complain about it, this is much do they really that's funny, I was just it doesn't I don't mind working in millimeters, but it was just the size wasn't the same that was like not three and a half was like three point one seven or something I'm like anyway so that's not the british fault it's someone else's so you know is because I put in three and a half by two as I'm moving my marquee tool it's keeping that same ratios don't have to worry about being incorrect, so I'm just going to say there, but at least I know now this when I ultimately put in my finish business card it's the right orientation so once again I'd do the same procedure, fill it with a color and then right away convert to smart obviously want to do that before I start duplicating or transforming because initially it still has to come in straight and then be oriented based on the next step, so in this case I need one, two, three, four so four copies now I'll try and do this relatively quickly and it won't be incredibly accurate, but you get the idea here, so I want to show you some techniques that I would use along the way, transforming something to fit on object below can be extremely challenging unless you do one little thing and that's take advantage of the fact that you can temporarily lower the opacity and or blend mode so if I'm transforming something, I really want to see what I'm doing I will often changing those couple things I might not leave it that way, but now it's going to hold a lot easier for me to transform a cause I'm seeing what's underneath commander control t and now I do exactly the same method before with holding down the commander control key to allow me to individually move each corner to fit now, depending on the cards that you're using as a temple and again, this is one I shot myself, but you can certainly find templates out there. You may need to go into this mesh warp kind of thing where you can push edges just a little bit to fit. I'm not going to for the sake of time and I can already tell it's not ideal perfect, but you'll get the idea, so now I would put the opacity back up. I said, I'm gonna keep multiply because if there's any kind of lighting happening, I want to make sure it doesn't just look like I slap something on there. So now after repeat that operation again, I'm going to go through this it's quickly as I can without messing up too much in fact, let me do this to make my life simpler and temporarily take all three layers and just change them right now, too multiply in the lower opacity because I want to keep doing that ok, so now back to our story free transform command key or control key space bar lets me scroll over so I can stay zoomed in and it's really helpful to have that little keyboard thing highlighting right on top of where you're working just getting I would normally not have that turn on except it's wonderful for learning it was really annoying when you're trying to see what you're doing okay? So again I'm gonna say that's fine, so that was good to go now go this one that's where it gets little trickier because this one has to fit a business card that's starts here and has covered up by another one so free transform I'm gonna move wherever you're going to rotate automatically wants to rotate around the center, but if you move it to the corner and it's a lot easier, he said and picked the wrong key there we go so now I can get closer but ultimately still going to do the same thing of holding down that commander control key when you have this kind of perspective that's almost always going to give you the best amount of control and at some point you may have to do a little bit of kind of eyeballing if you're moving close to an edge and it starts going places where you don't want it to that may be because this thing called snap is on by default, which sometimes is really helpful in our times. Like in this case, it's not helpful at all because trying to help me by snapping to the edge and I don't really want it too. So you may have tio turn that off. Okay, so now, in this case, I need to mask this one so it looks like it's behind the other one. So any time you can use existing information that's going to make your life simpler. So this is the business card I want to make it look like it's behind this one here. So any time you need to make a selection from something commander control click on it will load that as a selection. Now on this one that's my current layer I want a mask it as we learned about it in the world of layer mass. Whenever you have a selection and you click add layer mask it's goingto make the mask, keeping the selection, hiding the rest. In this case, when you think about it actually want the opposite. I want to say hide everything except this election so the two ways to do it the first way, which works ok, is to add the layer mask and then inverted, but if you already know going in like in this case I know just by looking at him there layer mask is the wrong way around then you throw in the good old option or all key when you click on the add layer mass bun and automatically adds the mask in the opposite way so that way I don't have to do all those extra steps and then let's just finish this off with the last one now I'm deliberately doing this really time to show you that initially it's going to take you a moment or two to do this but then you'll see from now on how fast it's going to be every time I want to use us and I would not do this unless I was someone who designed business cards for people because if I don't do that then this would be a lot to do for like a one shot deal but if you're doing it as a gosh I do this all the time kind of thing that's the whole point of this okay so we'll get it fairly close then finish this guy off his best we can and retrospect I realized afterwards boy could have made my life easier if I taking a photo of these business cards on like a piece of wood that wasn't white because having white cards on a white background is part of what's making my life a little more challenging here yeah okay and same idea I need to mask this one with this so will you let's put all of these make sure they're back to one hundred percent in multiple all right so that painful thing to watch would be the thing you would do one time and I cut to the chase that a little more quickly I'd normally be a little more careful about zooming in but that's kind of the point is that say it took me on our at worst to really make this look accurate probably would take an hour including taking a photograph or two of the cars looking the way you want or finding a stock photo save this as your template now in this case again because I'm uncertain of sizing instead of choosing replace contents like they did with that example with the cup I just double clicked open this here I have a business card and you can see it has a whole bunch of layers and has a group and has all this typical designed so I've deliberately kept this as a layered photoshopped file so that if I need to I can make adjustments to it I just want to show you what that looks like so in here this is my contents document I choose place in photo shop and it's a good thing I didn't just to replace contents was conceived by nature the size is a little smaller so I would just make sure it fits like this enter and save it now whenever you save the contents it's not very dramatically interesting until you go back to the quote unquote template and see now my business cards are all there nicely looking the way they want and I can send that file to someone to say, well, here's, what your card you know, imagine so again instead of just trying to sell someone on a flat piece of artwork, you can do this writing and I've seen people take this with photography to say I have a stock photo I took or a photo I took myself of ah frame in someone's living room on a bit of an angle and I put my photo in there when I want to show someone here's what it would look like hung up on the wall so I'm not in any way suggesting this is a designer on ly thing it's the concept is invest a bit of time in creating something like this that then you can just use over and over again ok, just to prove a point though, so I do all this and at the tenth last moment I'm like, oh hold on a second I think I spelled his name wrong that would be bad so I've done all this work well this is multiple copies of the same smart objects of the same principle applies I want to edit the contents I double click well this case member I placed the cart into there so I'm not seeing all the pieces but I do see this as a smart object so I double click on it to get to this point hey, now I confined the type that I want to fix and now this is where the fun starts because in our toe work backwards I have to go save save save to kind of work back up to change the other way so if I close and save this one it updates this one if I close to save this one head on face that one now for many people seeing this guy thing the first time it's that moment of eye where you're just like what just happened there but it's frankly much harder to sit and watch this happened and trying for what's happened in the first time you do it if I ensure you would it really feels much more logical than it does watching isn't it's as I said before it's kind of like I run into a roadblock where I might now that's not gonna work how can I you know, proceed that in many case well make that a smart object and I start off with a almost like a placeholder and then say, you know, how can I adjust that so and again this khun b has complicated auras simple as you want could also do um I want to do a print for someone I'm going to save room on my printer I wanna have two or three prints and I attempted to show this yesterday and it failed miserably because of the size of the photos let me do it properly this time so we're gonna place I should have said I just use place because it saves a step otherwise you'd have to open it would be a separate document you have to drag it in if it's too big you have to scale it down so I like the fact that this is doing a lot of that for me automatically hit enter and then transform which kind of seems like I'm redoing but I found a few place and transform it saying you're smart object is this size and it tends to work better if you bring it in my smart public is initially this big and I'm scaling it down to smaller sizes that just a lot of the time I find works more effectively simon is that one here now remember said a couple times whenever you duplicate a smart object it's an exact clone of the first one so if I want more than one of these on the page I'm just sticking them on here let's take both of these and move them up just a hair in the gym up a little bit and then take either one and duplicate that I'm really conscious about mike. Ink on my printer's I want to make multiple copies for them, but I don't want to you know I don't have like four by six paper anything I just print on eight by ten and try and squeeze as many on as I can and since I don't seems like the days of wallet size photos I just disappear everyone used to always have wallet size so you could stick one in your wallet so let's make a wallet size as well, since we can whatever and you can imagine you could as many as you could fit of different sizes I'm doing these by I not worry about specific size of if you really want he could do it more by measurement and if this is just for me to save space on my printer but if I just wanted to say that someone hey, you know what there's just some freebies for you and I want to give them the print out without me cutting them all down a size I might even add my logo or something on the bottom and that becomes part of this template idea so once again in this case because they're all the same one replace contents has been allow me to go and find whichever one I want to use to do that replacement I always do that I think which one the outcast and one click ok and hardly any time at all. Says let me replace those contents and then I'm ready to move on that case that work really nicely because I made sure this time the photos were the same size yesterday when I tried to kind of on the fly just arbitrarily picked two dozen photos and was like, failed miserably, and that was a lesson and make sure it's the right size now here's a little extra tip that I discovered because one time when I was doing this here's, what happened and think this is important this happened to be, and I'm sure will happen to other people I was using camera on camera, you have the option of saying, what size do you want if you want to convey to a certain size? And I had for a project I had gone in and said, make sure they're all have a width of, like, say, eighteen hundred pixels, so I had like ten images that I know I had gone into and said made the with eighteen hundred pixels, but then why did replace contents? Two of them were like half the size I was like, how is that possible? Because they're all the same size and I was like, completely mystified because normally and photo shop, if you do things by pixel measurement, the pp I resolution is irrelevant hours if you open a file that's four thousand pixels by two thousand pixels of seventy two or four thousand pixels in two thousand was that one hundred twenty seven they both look exactly the same size and photoshopped, but apparently not when you choose replace contents, because when I looked at them two of them, the resolution said one, forty four so even though technically they should have, I thought, come in the same size they didn't. So normally this resolution thing is not that terribly important except for printing, but in the area of replacing contents in camera or a smart objects it can cause an issue. So it's now no longer an issue for me, because I now know that whenever I'm worrying camera, I have this always set the same way, so normally people don't really worry too much about that unless they're specifically opening it in camera for printing the way I work around that now is what the first thing I showed you is start with that basic printing template and that way I'm placing into an existing document that I know is the right measurement and resolution. So when you place a document into their what it says in here is irrelevant because you're putting into a document and is taking on the resolution of that document. So when I did that first example, I would have said new document eight by ten, two hundred forty fifty french whatever the number I used for my printer and then from then on, I don't have to worry about anymore because that's built into the document so that's yet another advantage of doing it through this kind of template method is that that's already established don't have to worry about okay, a said later on after lunch and talk more about the camera raw light room, smart object how you can take advantage of that specifically, but this is one part where if you run into a problem where you're it's mystifying to you as to why that replaced contents thing doesn't work when you you're convinced as I was there the same size it's not just the size in that case that makes difference that resolution. I've never seen that anywhere else and folks up where that matters because normally it doesn't a lot of people these days don't even work with labs where they say don't care what resolution to give us a song? Is it six thousand pixels wide? We'll make it work. So whether it's seventy two or three hundred doesn't really matter, we'll do that part, but for whatever reason in this case it dot did actually make a difference okay, home on your own printer it would make a difference, wouldn't it? Well, sort of what I'm saying is the difference will be righted this step when I'm making my document here I would say I know my ancient likes two hundred forty pixels per inch then when I hit place whatever it says in camera doesn't matter because going into a document that I've already established is x two forty two, fifty whatever it might be that's aside, conventional wisdom is always pointed three hundred on your ancient pressure to forties good I'm just I'm really stingy about I don't want to give away too much resolution I don't need to think makes bigger file so I discovered and I'm not saying that everything is the same, but most inkjet printers I've ever worked with, no matter what they say their resolutions you know, like I'm a two hundred forty d p I printer two twenty five to two forty pixels per inch seems to work really well for those and I've even put a big you know, thirteen by nineteen at two hundred fifty french it looks absolutely fine so that's just an aside but if you always do everything a three hundred it's ok, nothing wrong with that except now your files were just a little bit bigger than they necessarily need to be for no riel huge gain unless you all of your friends come to your house with the loop but they look at your photographs up close and go I can see some pixel ization on there yeah mine don't do that actually have a little velvet ropes they can't get too close to the screen with me images on the wall so they can't do that ok so remember this example that I I showed you before with the wall I don't want to redo it but that's the same concept if I was doing a whole series of photos where I wanted to put someone's name on there or something then I could do that very easily because I just do it once and then have the filter already there so any project you're looking at we think I might re do this and I think for me the important thing to stress and I've already said this one where another I want to make sure it's really kind of punched into your head little pit is that sometimes you might start right from the get go thing okay, I have a project that I'm going to do this for twenty seven photographs so definitely start thinking like could I leverage this kind of template concept to make that easier? But the other side of it is you do one what appears at first to be kind of a standalone project and you think you know I might use that again I mean personally for me I'm the savings the psd anyway so even if you're from now, I think, hey, wait a minute. I did that thing on that wall. It's already ready to go and that's the I think they both the beauty of and also the importance is that because we don't have to specifically say, savors, template. It already is a template waiting to be used. Do you think that that way?