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Hello,

 

I just bought Affinity Designer and I'm trying to use mockups that were created in Photoshop but the problem I encounter is I can't edit the Smart Objects so basically, if the smart object have some text I can't edit it or move it around etc,... my question is if Affinity Designer is capable of editing smart objects imported from PhotoShop.

 

Best Regards 

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Hi luisameglio,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

No, currently Affinity isn't able to edit Photoshop Smart objects. They will be rasterised on import.

PSD is a poorly documented (proprietary) format and as such third party software are not able to fully support it.

We do try to provide the best support available but at this point there's still no way to work with Photoshop's smart objects in Affinity.

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At some point, but we have a lot of other features on our roadmap which also need to be done.

 

A lot of the outstanding PSD import/export features are going to be quite big jobs, so they will get done as time allows.

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  • 2 months later...

Separated mode is only available in the Mac versions. For Windows it is not needed.

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  • 7 months later...
On 6/4/2017 at 8:16 AM, MEB said:

Hi luisameglio,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

No, currently Affinity isn't able to edit Photoshop Smart objects. They will be rasterised on import.

PSD is a poorly documented (proprietary) format and as such third party software are not able to fully support it.

We do try to provide the best support available but at this point there's still no way to work with Photoshop's smart objects in Affinity.

 

THis is the only thing missing in order for me not to go back into photoshop!!!!

 
 
Willy Pimentel
M1 Imac 16gb Mac os Ventura Latest 
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  • 9 months later...
On 6/4/2017 at 1:16 PM, MEB said:

Hi luisameglio,

Welcome to Affinity Forums :)

No, currently Affinity isn't able to edit Photoshop Smart objects. They will be rasterised on import.

PSD is a poorly documented (proprietary) format and as such third party software are not able to fully support it.

We do try to provide the best support available but at this point there's still no way to work with Photoshop's smart objects in Affinity.

Hi MEB

I respect the validity of your comment about PSDs. However is there any plans to bring the functionality of smart objects to Affinity?  It's a very powerful and useful feature. 

Best 

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  • 5 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/7/2019 at 1:49 AM, ashf said:

Surprisingly an online image editor Photopea can read/edit Smart Objects.(Not just as single raster layer)
So why not on Affinity?
https://www.photopea.com/

@MEB - valid point. Any response?  And if you "struggle" to read PSD files, then why not create your own smart objects functionality, allowing 3rd party developers to create templates and mockups in .afdesign format. 

Cheers,

Helmar

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Hi Helmar,
We never said we wouldn't try to add support for smart objects or that it wasn't possible, quite the contrary, however we are limited in time and resources (programers/coders). Things are being implemented as soon as we can/as soon as they are ready.

Regarding our own solution have you checked embedded documents? Check this video for reference/context. It's old but still applies.

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Hi MEB,

I know my response won't be appropriate, but the subject is more than 4 years old now, so I'm not sure where "time" comes in. WRT resources, can you put a handle on it in terms of man-hours and Euros? If you can, and if getting the right programmers is not a problem, then why not crowdfund the baby? I am sure the money will come in fast, so that you can allocate resources to it.

You know, where's a will, there's a way, and even if you charge 30 Euros for this feature alone, it will be taken up in a heartbeat, because it allows lots of PS users to finally cancel their subscription.

Re: embedded objects. No, not yet. Will check out the video right away.

Cheers,

Helmar

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Hi Helmar,
A considerable amount of requests were created as soon as the first release (1.0) come out - so yes you will find a quite few (old ones) that aren't yet in the program. This doesn't mean we haven't been working on the apps all these years, moving on according to what we planned as well as adding user's requested features whenever possible.

Since then we expanded and/or implemented various (other) new features, advanced with cross platform expansion (Windows, iOS) and recently completed the suite with Publisher. These things were necessary to keep expanding the user base and ultimately funding further development (as you probably know all minor updates are free so we get no money from them). New platforms and new users help us sustain grow until v2 of all apps come in.

Work on third party file formats/support - like smart objects or editable text export support just to name a couple - or any non-planned major features usually require quite some time/resources (besides heavy testing) and as such it's not always possible to pick tasks like these at will without compromising the balance of the whole development. We have been getting/hiring new programers for quite a while now however that's not as easy as it may seems and even when we do hire there's always a considerable period of time required to get acquainted to the code, workflows and the rest of the team.

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One problem with Adobe  smart objects is that they encompass a variety of different functionalities. Some of these can be replicated in Photo, albeit in a different way. For example Live Filters and Live Ajustments allow you to return to a filter/adjustment to alter the parameters. Another is, as @MEB said, embedded objects.

Another problem is that Adobe  controls the code for smart objects. There is nothing to stop them altering this code should they wish to thwart the competition. This could generate a Red Queen situation. Perhaps they do not perceive photopea as enough of a challenge.

John

 

Windows 10, Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Designer 1.10.5 and Publisher 1.10.5 (mainly Photo), now ex-Adobe CC

CPU: AMD A6-3670. RAM: 16 GB DDR3 @ 666MHz, Graphics: 2047MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 630

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23 minutes ago, John Rostron said:

Another problem is that Adobe  controls the code for smart objects. There is nothing to stop them altering this code should they wish to thwart the competition.

Common practice, Affinity pretty much does the same with their file formats here.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
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14 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Common practice, Affinity pretty much does the same with their file formats here.

I don't think Serif has changed the native Affinity file format (there is only one of those) for any reason other than when it has been necessary to support some new feature or function that has to be encoded on a per file basis. It is one of the things that makes it harder to add requested features than many people think.

All 3 1.10.8, & all 3 V2.4.1 Mac apps; 2020 iMac 27"; 3.8GHz i7, Radeon Pro 5700, 32GB RAM; macOS 10.15.7
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1.10.8; Affinity Designer 1.108; & all 3 V2 apps for iPad; 6th Generation iPad 32 GB; Apple Pencil; iPadOS 15.7

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The point is more, most vendors do keep their file formats completely proprietary, so does Affinity here and so does Adobe with certain of their file formats too.

☛ Affinity Designer 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Photo 1.10.8 ◆ Affinity Publisher 1.10.8 ◆ OSX El Capitan
☛ Affinity V2.3 apps ◆ MacOS Sonoma 14.2 ◆ iPad OS 17.2

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I thought just have Affinity read Smart Objects as a nested layer(or an embedded affinity file) helps users big time for now.
I'm not expecting full compatibility to read/write Smart Objects right now(though from a long term perspective, it might be nice)

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Biggest point about Smart Object is that Affinity rasterize it to single layer.
if a Smart Object layer is small, it will be unusable sometimes because of low resolution.
Most of case I need Smart Object compatibility is for that clients send me a psd file that has Smart Objects.
 

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  • 10 months later...

Just wondering if there have been any updates regarding this topic/feature? I do a LOT of "edit contents"/displace/psb work in Photoshop (blech) for mockups and things like that. This is easily my most used feature that appears to still be missing in 2020 after this topic was started in 2017 and a few years before that in the referenced post above.

I'd really love to make the jump to Affinity on a permanent basis, but I cannot live without this feature that I have to use daily. I've tried every other recommended workaround and nothing comes anywhere close to how it works in PS.

*praying hands* haha

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Hi roh821z,
Welcome to Affinity Forums :)
Yes, there was a few improvements. You can now import PSD files with smart objects (they will be converted to embedded documents in Affinity which when double-clicked on canvas open on a new document tab for editing similarly to what Photoshop does). To enable this go to Affinity Photo Preferences, General section and tick Import PSD smart objects where possible. Note that not all Photoshop features are supported so a few things may still fail to import correctly. I advise you download the trial (currently 90 days) and check if it fulfils your requirements.

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Hey, thanks for the info! I (think I correctly) did what you instructed, but I'm now seeing this pop-up when I double-click on the layer. In Photoshop, I would right-click the layer where it says "Replace This Screen" and then choose Edit Contents. Here, I double-clicked the new sub-layer that shows up called "Perspective" and it just opens that toolbar. If I double-click the Replace layer instead, it doesn't do anything. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

Untitled.jpg

Edited by roh821z
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Hi roh821z,
You have to double-click the embedded object on canvas (or alternatively double-click its thumbnail in the layers panel or click the Edit Document button in the context toolbar if you have the Move Tool selected) to open it in a new document tab. The Live Perspective filter you see there is nested/applied to the smart object itself and will affect its contents as a whole - it is NOT the content of the smart object itself.

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Hey! I could not get the double-click of the embedded object on canvas to open anything, it just showed the outline of the image. Double-clicking the thumbnail in the layers panel gave me the aforementioned screenshot from my previous post. However, Edit Document *DID* work. Yay! Thanks so much. I'd really like to know about the other two things though.

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