Adobe Photoshop CS5 for Photographers - Martin Evening [226]
1.
We'll now examine in more detail how you would use a Smart Object in Photoshop. Here is a photograph of a book that shows a couple of my promotional photographs, where let's say I wanted to place the male portrait image shown on the right so that it matched the scale, rotation and warp shape of the photograph on the right-hand page.
2.
I used the move tool to drag the photograph across to add it as a new layer and then went to the Layers panel options and chose ‘Convert to Smart Object’. This action preserved all the image data on this layer in its original form. I then went to the Edit menu and chose ‘Free Transform’. Because the layer boundary exceeded the size of the Background layer, I had to zoom out in order to access the corner handles of the Transform box.
Quick tip
In these situations it is useful to remember that you can use the keyboard shortcut to quickly zoom out just far enough to reveal the transform bounding box handles.
3.
I then scaled the Smart Object layer down in size so that it more closely matched the size of the photograph on the page. I also dragged the cursor outside the transform bounding box, in order to rotate the photograph roughly into position.
4.
After that, I clicked on the Warp button in the Options bar (circled). This allowed me to fine-tune the position of the Smart Object layer, by using the corner curve adjustment handles to modify the outer envelope shape. I then moused down inside some of the inner sections and dragged them so that the inner shape also matched the curvature of the page.
5.
I was then able to edit the Smart Object layer any way I liked. To do this, I went to the Layers panel fl y-out menu and selected ‘Edit Contents’. (An alternative option was to simply double-click on the Smart Objects layer in the Layers panel). In the example shown here, I added a Text layer plus a Curves adjustment layer to turn the photograph blue. I then closed the window, and as I did so this popped the prompt dialog shown here, reminding me to click ‘Save’ in order to save and update the master Smart Object layer.
6.
Here is the final image in which I added a Curves adjustment layer in a clipping group with the Smart Object layer so that the shading matched that of the original photograph on the page.
Selections to paths
An active selection can also be converted to a path by clicking on the ‘Make work path from selection’ button at the bottom of the Paths panel. Alternatively, you can choose the ‘Make work path’ option from the Paths panel fl y-out menu.
Photoshop paths
The selection tools are mostly nice and easy to work with, but there will be times when the standard selection tools just won't give you the precision you are after and you'll really need a more accurate way to define an outline. This is where the pen tools and vector paths come in.
Granted, it's not easy to master the pen tool, but if you are planning to work with large files you will find it quicker to draw a path and convert this to a selection rather than rely on the selection and paint tools alone. Figure 9.56 shows a summary of how a pen path can be converted to a selection or a vector mask that isolates an object.
Figure 9.56 This illustration shows how an active path can be converted to a selection. You can also use a path to make a vector mask (from the Layer menu choose Add Vector Mask Current Path). Also highlighted here are the Paths panel buttons. The Fill path button fills the current path using the current foreground color. The Stroke path button strokes the current path using a currently selected painting tool. The Load path as selection button converts a path to a selection. Clicking the Create new path button creates a new empty path and you can remove a path by clicking the