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Smart Objects

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With Smart Objects you can

Perform nondestructive transforms. You can scale, rotate, skew, distort, perspective transform, or warp a layer without losing original image data or quality because the transforms don’t affect the original data.

Work with vector data, such as vector artwork from Illustrator, that otherwise would be rasterized in Photoshop.

Perform nondestructive filtering. You can edit filters applied to Smart Objects at any time.

Edit one Smart Object and automatically update all its linked instances.

Apply a layer mask that’s either linked or unlinked to the Smart Object layer

You cannot operations that alter pixel data. Such as painting and cloning

You must first convert it into a regular layer.

To make a smart object layer editable:

Either by right clicking or from the layer menu:

  1. Duplicate the smart object layer
  2. Rasterize it
Text as Smart Object By converting a text layer to a smart object you can then apply a filter to it without rasterizing it first. This also works with other vector layers.
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