Recently I went to a lot of trouble to figure out a problem that I had encountered when trying to open multiple “Smart Objects” in Photoshop into one document. I tried the “click and drag” method, “copy and paste”, “paste into”. I tried waving a dead chicken over my head and reciting ancient Druid incantations. Nothing worked. But I was determined to solve the problem. And I did……and posted a very detailed and laborious tutorial.
Moving forward. My son and I attended the “20th Anniversary of Photoshop” celebration in San Francisco. It was a great gathering. Lots of notable Photoshop gurus in attendance. This was a retrospective of Photoshop from the very beginning to the present and some insight into the future. The evenings presenters would demonstrate all the advancements made in PS. When it came to the “Smart Object” segment I was paying close attention as I really like to use this function. The first thing the presenter (I don’t remember who) did was to open multiple “Smart Objects”. I thought, very smugly to myself “Only I know how to open multiple Smart Objects into one document”. Then the presenter(my memory has not improved, so I still don’t remember who) proceeded to “click and drag” the multiple “Smart Objects” into one document. I was stunned. When did they make this function work. Did they do this just for this “fancy smancy” get together. I left that night feeling like a betrayed lover. My one shot at Photoshop stardom dashed.
Well, it looks like the secret to this move is to “click and drag” one “Smart Object” up to the tab of the target “Smart Object” and hold until the tab highlights and the target document is visible. Now the final trick to making this work. You then have to drag the outline of the “Smart Object” you are moving into position in the new document window and then release it. Voila.
So what did I learn from this experience? You can do just about anything in Photoshop in different ways……just some are easier than others. I think I will use the easy way.
Oh, and as to the look into the future of Photoshop. There is some amazing “Content Aware” capabilities coming in CS5. It will just blow your socks off. Also, and this is from Jeff Schewe himself, Photokit 2.0 will be released in conjunction with CS5. He says that all the sharpening features except “Creative Sharpening” are incorporated in Lightroom 3.0.
