Making Photoshop faster using smart objects

[Geoffc]

My wife and I each have a PC with Lightroom 5.x and Photoshop CC installed. Mine has 8GB and hers has 4GB. She has been complaining that Photoshop has been running slowly, especially running Nik plugins (60+ secs to load). I went through a process of ripping all the junk off the PC to make the install as nimble as possible but it still wasn't right. I think one issue is the D7100 file size vs. the previous D300. This got me thinking that if I reduced the file size things would run faster. In reality, unless we print, 1600 pixels on the long edge is probably great for most online requirements. The only problem there is that if you spend hours on an image that you've resized for Flickr or a competition what happens if you later decide you want to print it? Enter smart objects. I'm not suggesting that my workflow is yet optimal but this is what I do:

1. Load image from Lightroom into Photoshop as a smart object. You can convert in Photoshop if you forget.
2. Resize the image using image size. I did wonder if it's better to run define to remove noise before this step or afterwards. My gut feeling is before, but I may be wrong. Resizing my D800 files reduced them from 170+MB in Photoshop to about 15MB. They are larger when it re-save the TIF but not anything like the full size version.
3. Perform all you normal edits and Nik filters etc, finishing with sharpening.
4. Save image back to Lightroom.

Having done this my saved TIF file is sub 100MB rather than 400+MB. I'm not sure how it achieves this and it's early days yet. Now if I decide I want a full size version of the edited file with all of the Photoshop changes I reload it into lightroom (Edit original from Lightroom). I then go back to Image size (In the image menu) and put in anything up to the original dimensions. It goes through a bit of heavy processing but it appears to be back to the original resolution with all of the edits still applied. This is not the same as up-sampling a smaller image. I tried the same routine without the smart object bit and it was no where near the original resolution quality.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I thought it was worth sharing.

 

[BackdoorArts]

Interesting application of Smart Objects. When I have some time I need to try and wrap my head around it. Knee jerk is that it's the overhead of storing and reapplying edits to print vs. storing a flattened Tiff/PSD file. My D600 PSD files are sub-100MB flattened, while my D800's are around 200-300MB, which can get quite large. I could/should get in the habit of reducing the short side of those I know I'll never be called to print do a large print of to 11" or 13" instead of 20", but I never think of it.

 

[Geoffc]

Interesting application of Smart Objects. When I have some time I need to try and wrap my head around it. Knee jerk is that it's the overhead of storing and reapplying edits to print vs. storing a flattened Tiff/PSD file. My D600 PSD files are sub-100MB flattened, while my D800's are around 200-300MB, which can get quite large. I could/should get in the habit of reducing the short side of those I know I'll never be called to print do a large print of to 11" or 13" instead of 20", but I never think of it.

Jake,

Try this. Launch a raw from lightroom as a smart object. Now close and save it which will make a Tif. The original raw when I just tried it was 38MB and the Tif is now 172MB. Now do the same again but go to image size and reduce it to 1600 pixels on the long edge. Save the file and I now have a 65MB Tif. Reload that 65MB Tif, go to image size and put back the original dimensions. Save the image back to LR. When I do this I can't tell the difference between the original raw and the file I've been re-sizing when I use the compare view. I'm going to use this workflow moving forward to save space as well as speed things up.

I think this use of smart objects is normally discussed for transforming objects in layers that would normally discard pixels but I thought it was worth a shot. I would be interested to see if it works the same for you, or if I've missed a trick.