Adobe Photoshop CS5 One-on-One

10. Fade the Smart Sharpen filter. Choose Edit→
    Fade Smart Sharpen or press Ctrl+Shift+F
    (�-Shift-F) to display the Fade dialog box.
    Then choose Luminosity from the Mode pop-
    up menu and click OK. Photoshop merges
    the new sharpness with the original colors,
    as illustrated in Figure 7-8. This technique is
    so extraordinarily useful that you may want
    to follow up every application of the Smart
    Sharpen filter with a preventative dose of the
    Fade command. Because whether you see
    the aberrant colors or not, they’re there, just
    beyond view, ready to spring forth when you
    print the image.

PeaRl Of WISDOm

Notice that no matter how sharp the whiskers, fur, and
big sweet eyes of our fuzzy friends get, the hindquarters
of the squirrel on the left never get any more in focus.
Focus is an optical attribute; sharpening is about
contrast.

Before Step 10

After Step 10

Figure 7-8.

Working with Smart Objects

One of the main frustrations when working in a pixel-based image
editor is, well, the pixels. In a vector-based program such as Illustra-
tor or the program in which this document was laid out, InDesign,
edits are nondestructive, meaning that no matter how much you
reshape or transform a work of vector art, it remains razor sharp.
But try the same thing in Photoshop—for instance, shrink a layer,
rotate it, and then scale it way up—and you’re faced with a soft,
blocky mess. And, excepting Undo and history, a pixel that goes
bad stays bad.

With smart objects, Photoshop offers a kind of pixel-protection plan.
You can put an image or a vector illustration inside this protective
container, and no matter how much you do to it, Photoshop holds
the original in its pristine restorable original condition. Meanwhile,
you can duplicate a smart object to create one or more instances.
Change the original and all instances update in kind. And finally,
you can place an Illustrator or a Camera Raw document and retain
a dynamic link between the resulting layer and the original docu-
ment data. (Photoshop embeds the original data inside the layered
composition, so there’s no chance of losing a linked file on disk.)

Working with Smart Objects 227