Written By Steve Patterson

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to learn how to create and then reuse a photo effect as a Photoshop template using Smart Objects and Smart Filters. Smart Objects were first introduced in Photoshop CS2, and Photoshop CS3 takes them even further with Smart Filters. Both of these recent additions to Photoshop have the potential to completely change how you work inside the program, since they give you an amazing level of flexibility that simply doesn't exist without them.

To get the most from this tutorial, you'll need to have Photoshop CS3, since it's the only version of Photoshop (so far anyway) that comes with Smart Filters, although you can still do quite a bit simply with Photoshop CS2 and Smart Objects. Of course, you can still read through the tutorial even if you have an older version of Photoshop, if only to see what sort of features you'll be getting if and when you decide to upgrade.

Want an easier way to follow along with our tutorials? Download them as printable PDFs!

What are Smart Objects and Smart Filters?
If you've ever used a page layout program before, you'll be familiar with how Smart Objects work. When you convert an image into a Smart Object in Photoshop, you're no longer working on the image itself, even though it still looks like you are. Instead, you're working on a reference to the image, with the actual image stored safely in a separate file that Photoshop creates. The Smart Object is basically a container that displays the reference to the actual image. This is what allows us to create templates from Photoshop documents that use Smart Objects, since when we're done creating our effect with the original image, we can tell Photoshop to simply replace the image inside the Smart Object container with a different image, or more precisely, we tell Photoshop to reference a different image, and just like that, Photoshop swaps one image with another and the entire effect is instantly recreated using the new image, without having to redo any of the work!

So what are Smart Filters then? Essentially, they're the same as Photoshop's regular filters that we find under the Filter menu in the Options Bar. In fact, they're exactly the same. The only difference, as we'll see, is that when you apply a filter to a Smart Object, Photoshop converts it into a "smart" version of the filter, with the difference being that Smart Filters remain completely, 100% editable! Normally, when you apply one of Photoshop's filters to an image, the image itself is physically altered by the filter, and if you want to change the filter settings, you'd have to undo your steps all the way back to just before you applied the filter (assuming you haven't run out of History states) and then apply it again with the new settings. Not so with Smart Filters! With a Smart Filter, you can go back at any time, change the settings in the filter's dialog box, and have the new settings applied to the image instantly without damaging or even touching the image in any way. If you're familiar with how Adjustment Layers work in Photoshop, Smart Filters work essentially the same way.

As I mentioned, ideally you'll have Photoshop CS3 for this tutorial, but there's still plenty of things you can do when creating photo templates simply with Photoshop CS2 and Smart Objects. In fact, the only thing you can't do with Photoshop CS2 is apply a filter to a Smart Object, at least not if you still want to be able to use the effect as a photo template.

A couple of things to point out before we begin. First, even though we'll be creating a simple photo effect here, one that works very well with wedding photography, the effect itself is not the focus of this tutorial, although you're certainly free to recreate the same effect if you choose. The purpose of this Photoshop tutorial is to show you how to go about creating an effect using Smart Objects and Smart Filters so that you can then apply the knowledge to your own photo template creations. Second, in order to use a different photo with the template, it's important that the new photo matches the original in terms of image size, orientation, and resolution. If the original photo used was an 8x10 portrait at 300ppi resolution, any photo you replace it with should also be an 8x10 portrait at 300ppi resolution, otherwise you'll end up with unexpected results.

If you're simply using photos you took yourself with the same digital camera and haven't resized or cropped them, then all you'll need to make sure of it that you don't try to replace a photo in portrait orientation (taller than it is wide) with one in landscape orientation (wider than it is tall). If you need more information on image resolution and document sizes, be sure to visit our Digital Photo Essentials section of the website.

Okay, enough talking. Let's get started!

Step 1: Open The First Image You Want To Use

Before we can use our photo effect as a template, we first need to create the effect, so open the first photo you want to use with it. Here's the photo I'll be starting with:

With my image now open in Photoshop, if I look in my Layers palette, everything seems normal. I have one layer, the Background layer, which contains my image:

We're going to convert the image into a Smart Object next!