Photo Effects Templates In Photoshop CS2 / CS3

Step 9: Replace The Photo With A New Photo

At this point, our basic photo effect is complete. You can save the document now if you wish. We're now going to see how incredibly easy it is to use our Photoshop document as a template by replacing our existing photo with a new photo! This works with both Photoshop CS2 and Photoshop CS3 (welcome back, Photoshop CS2 users!).

Keep in mind what I mentioned at the beginning. When replacing one photo with another inside a Smart Object, you need to make sure that both photos have the same width and height dimensions, the same orientation (portrait or landscape), and the same resolution, otherwise things won't work out the way you expect. If you try to replace one photo with another and suddenly the new photo is either too large or too small inside the document, something was different between them, and you'll need to correct that before trying again. You'll find lots of information about image size and resolution in our Digital Photo Essentials section of the website.

Assuming that the next photo you want to use with your template does use the same dimentions, orientation and image resolution as the original, let's swap them! Select either "Layer 0" or "Layer 0 copy" in the Layers palette. It doesn't matter which one you select since, as I mentioned previously, they're both copies of each other and both referencing the exact same photo, so replacing the image inside one of them will automatically replace the image in both. Then, with either of them selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen once again, choose Smart Objects, and this time, choose Replace Contents:

A dialog box will pop up allowing you to navigate to the new photo on your computer. Once you've located it, double-click on it to select it, and instantly, the original photo is replaced with the new photo inside the document! All of the Layer Styles we applied to the top layer have been applied to the new image, and if you're using Photoshop CS3, the background image on the bottom layer even has the Gaussian Blur filter applied to it, all without redoing any of the work:

And there we have it! Thanks to Smart Objects in Photoshop CS2 and the new Smart Filters in Photoshop CS3, it's easy to create photo effects that can be reused as templates any time you need them!

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