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Hey, everyone! Howard Pinsky here with a short tip on why you should be using Smart Objects,
whenever you get the chance.
Here's a free template that I released a few days ago on IceflowStudios.com, which is perfect
for designers looking to showcase their business cards on their portfolio, and if I select
the layer that contains the image of my business card, you can see, in the Layers panel, that
it's been converted into a Smart Object.
Now before I get into why this is so important, let me first show you how frustrating this
edit can be if you don't use a Smart Object.
Over in this document, I have the back of my business card. To make the transport easier,
I'm going to merge all the layers with Command or Control Shift and E, or Merge Visible under
the Layer menu.
Once the layers have been merged, I can drag it over to my template document. Now comes
the fun part! This layer needs to be transformed to fit the slanted business card. Entering
Free Transform Mode with Command or Control T, I can now hold down just Command or Control
to edit the perspective of this layer. Each corner can be dragged to match the perspective
of the business card.
Now, while this certainly did what we wanted, editing the card at a later point would require
you to repeat that whole process. What a pain! Let's now look at the smarter way, using Smart
Objects. Hmm, that joke sounded better in my head.
Anyways, as I said earlier, the business card layer is a Smart Object, and just like any
Smart Object, a simple double-click on the thumbnail's layer will bring up the containing
document. Now, any changes you want to make to the business card's design, can be made
right here. You can either create your design right in this document, or bring in a design
you've already created.
So let me hop back over to the back design, but this time, instead of merging all the
layers, and losing all that data, you can simply drag the layers of this document over
to the Smart Object's document. Then once you save the Smart Object, with Command or
Control S, the template updates with your new design.
And the best part of this, is it's completely editable! At any point, you can double-click
on the Smart Object, and edit away. Your changes will appear on the cards once you save.
And that's how you can use Smart Objects to quickly and easily update designs like this,
which again, you can download for free on IceflowStudios.com.