I’ve just added a quick impromptu video tutorial on some of the features available in Photoshop for Layers, Layer Styles, Layer Masks, Clipping Masks, Layer Groups and Smart Objects.
Here’s the episode
Unfortunately, as this wasn’t scripted I realise I’ve missed out one of the biggest feature of Smart Objects and that’s the fact it can have non-destructive adjustments on it like Filters. You can edit the settings of an applied filter whenever you want by double clicking the filter in the layers panel in contrast to adding a filter to a normal layer and you only have Undo to save you. Multiple filters can be applied and subsequently edited at a later date with ease. Any sizing or rotating you do to the Smart Layer doesn’t effect the final quality as it would do if you’d reduced a normal layer in size, accepted it and then tried to enlarge it again.
Suffice it to say that there’ll be more detailed info in later tutorials specific to all the topics covered here.
Download versions
For easier downloading there’s a few different versions available (besides watching it directly in the browser here).
Right Click to ‘Save Target As…‘ in order to download them.
Enjoy.

