SMART OBJECTS

[Inquisitive]

Does affinity photo have the equivalent to adobe photoshop "smart objects" whereby I can use affinity affinty photo to CREATE MY OWN SMART OBJECTS???

Looking forward to the response.

[Pšenda]

https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+objects+site%3Aforum.affinity.serif.com

[Inquisitive]

I followed the link and all I saw was a number of topics with no definitive answer to my question. Is there somewhere else that I can get the answer to my question???

[Old Bruce]

On 4/4/2021 at 4:40 PM, Inquisitive said:

Does affinity photo have the equivalent to adobe photoshop "smart objects" whereby I can use affinity affinty photo to CREATE MY OWN SMART OBJECTS???

Looking forward to the response.

Been years since I used Photoshop so I am not up to speed on everything that smart objects can do.

Having said that I will say that the closest thing to them are embedded Photo Documents. The embedded document can be treated as its own Photo Document meaning you can edit it by double clicking in the new Photo document and the changes will be saved in that new file not the original file.

New Document with Embedded Document (smart object(?))

Editing the Embedded Document, the changes will be in the New document only, not the original.

So I guess the answer to your question is ... sort of, kind of, not an exact set of features from Photoshop.

[Mark Oehlschlager]

@Inquisitive , Old Bruce is correct: you can place and embed one Photo document inside another, which behaves like a Photoshop Smart Object. Double clicking the embedded Photo document will open the embedded file in its own window for edits.

What is not possible in Photo is the ability to convert an existing layer in Photo into an embedded document (equivalent to a Photoshop Smart Object). The work-around is to cut the layer to the clipboard, create a new Photo document from the art you cut to the clipboard, save the new Photo document, then place the new document into the original Photo document as an embedded file.

Hopefully, in a future version of Photo, there will be a more direct way of converting layers into Embedded Documents / Smart Objects.

[loukash]

On 4/5/2021 at 1:40 AM, Inquisitive said:

Does affinity photo have the equivalent to adobe photoshop "smart objects" whereby I can use affinity affinty photo to CREATE MY OWN SMART OBJECTS???

Unless it's a Pixel type of layer (or mask), every other object in an Affinity document is more or less a "smart object". Stack them, group them let them interact as you see fit.

8 hours ago, Mark Oehlschlager said:

you can place and embed one Photo document inside another

You can even place a linked instance of the document inside itself. It creates a weird "infinite loop" effect. Don't know if it's of any practical use, but fun to experiment with. Don't be too surprised if you encounter a crash though.

Edited April 6, 2021 by loukash

[Inquisitive]

Thanks to all the people who replied to my question you're respective responses have been appreciated. As a relative newbie to affinity photo I have a lot more learning to do. Cheers.