eXtRa CReDIt
You may be feeling more than sufficiently enlightened after this first level
of initiation into smart filters. If so, feel free to skip to the next exercise,
“Making a Magical Pattern-Generating Smart Filters File,” which begins on
page 251. But if you’re still craving mystery—and honestly, who isn’t?—I have
a puzzle for you: The Layers panel includes one filter mask that affects all
filters applied to a single smart object. But what do you do if you want to
apply different masks to different filters? Well, cue the Twilight Zone music:
The only way to pull off this feat is to travel through another dimension, one
where you can wrap one smart object inside another. That’s the signpost up
ahead—the next stop: Extra Credit.In the case of our composition, the odd man out is Median.
Much of its power is limited to the lightest regions in the image
because you set Median to the Lighten mode (Step 8, page 241).
Meanwhile, the mask limits the filters to the darkest areas.
As a result, Median produces a very slight effect. We need to
unmask the Median filter while leaving the sharpening effects
masked, as outlined in the following steps.- Duplicate the smart object. Press Ctrl+J (or �-J) to duplicate
the Smart Object layer and all its filters. Rename the layer
“Dummy.” We’ll come back to it in a moment. - Put the original smart object inside a new smart object. Click
the Smart Object layer to select it. Then choose Layer→Smart
Objects→Convert to Smart Object or press my keyboard short-
cut, Ctrl+ (or �- ). This puts the smart object, complete with
its smart filters, into another smart object container. - Open the new smart object. In the Layers panel, double-click
the layer thumbnail (still called Smart Object, but now without
the smart filters or filter mask) to bring up an image window
titled Smart Object.psb, which includes the nested smart object
and all your masked filters.
If you get the smart objects warning, it’s because you didn’t turn it off
back in the “Working with Smart Objects” exercise (Step 13, page 233).
Select the Don’t Show Again check box and click OK.- Turn off the Median filter. This and the next couple of steps are
devoted to the task of moving the Median filter from the smart
object you duplicated in Step 15 to the newest “parent” object
that you made in Step 16. This task, which sounds much tougher
than it is, means we won’t be needing the Median filter. Still in the
Layers panel, click the icon in front of Median to turn it off.
248 Lesson 7: Sharpening and Smart Objects