Smart Objects (Smart layers)

[jonathancharles]

Hi Affinity

Am concerned you do not understand the full power of Smart Objects, I notice (reading your facebook replies) that you believe they are merely about lossless layer resizing

Smart-objects offer hundreds of creative and practical uses as well.  I mention some of the reasons below, but note these are just my uses, power-users might have even better uses

Photoshop lets you choose between "New smart-object" and "New smart-object via copy. (don't worry if you don't understand the difference yet, this list should still make sense)

• When you duplicate a smart-object multiple times, you can (if you want) change just one single smart-object and all the smart-objects in your document change. These many objects can still be manipulated in your master document, but you can return to your smart object and add or change stuff that effects every instance

 

• Example - I add a country fence in front of a scene - built with 60 pieces of wood, but the client decides it should be new timber with rounded tops instead. I go and change my one smart-object piece of timber, boom, the whole fence is immediately changed

 

• This can create very beautiful effects very quickly, but it is also very practical.  When we design a new app icon/branding, we make just one icon and then we have a prebuilt template (which 1000s of people download and use too) we can automatically see what the icon looks like on iPhone, iPad, in the app store, in a promotion, etc etc

 

• Also we use smart-objects to build a final design, where many many components have been created separately. So you might have a number models whom you have airbrushed from a shoot separately, each with lots of different layers, effects etc, everything still exists in this original document, and you can either edit your final version or dig deeper to each individual file

 

• This also helps keep your master project tidy with certain things nested away

Remember creatives don't just use Photoshop for image editing!!! High end users will only come to you if you maintain an open mind.

If you have any doubt about the smart-objects prevalence: in Google there are 1,290,000 results for the three word search photoshop smart object.

This article is good http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-smart-objects-in-photoshop--cms-20268

Please please reconsider including some sort of smart-objects.

Very very very excited about your software. Desperately want to ditch as many Adobe products as possible

 

[anon1]

I think the (real time) embedded document function of Affinity will at least do some functions :)

https://vimeo.com/105872832