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Inspiring
November 19, 2013
Open for Voting

P: Ability to choose a Smart Object's interpolation method [2013]

In Photoshop CC, I think there should be a way to choose the interpolation method (Bicubic/Bilinear/etc) for Smart Objects.

When transforming a Smart Object, the Interpolation dropdown that's there for other raster transforms should be in that Options bar.

Smart Objects are far less useful when I don't have control of this interpolation, and I find myself avoiding Smart Objects because of this issue. I find that my smart objects look overly sharpened when I downscale them.

21 replies

Participating Frequently
March 10, 2018
That sets the interpolation for all objects at once. I need some objects to be Nearest Neighbour so the pixels look chunky and others Bicubic to smooth others out. I tried scaling the Smart Object I wanted Nearest Neighbour seperately and then saving that, no dice.
 Nearest Neighbour: Note how the train is crisp but the text frames are jagged. Each of the text frames is about 20% original size.
 Bicubic Automatic: Note how blurred the train is now and the text is noticeably smoother.
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Earth Oliver
Legend
March 9, 2018
you can change interpolation methods for smart objects by changing the preference...
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Participating Frequently
March 9, 2018
Doesn't address needing multiple interpolations.
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Participating Frequently
March 9, 2018
This feature is still very needed.Smart objects are so useful, but not being able to easily integrate scaled animated pixel art is killing me.
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Inspiring
February 27, 2017
Fantastic help, thank u.
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Inspiring
May 12, 2015
I agree it would be extremely helpful to have this on a per-smart-object level, rather than needing to switch my app-wide preferences depending on what kind of object I'm resizing. For now, I an resizing a copy of the layer as a dumb-object; but retaining the original smart object in case I need to resize/change it later. It's clearly not ideal, and specifying the interpolation method on each smart object seems like a necessary fix.
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Legend
November 26, 2014
FWIW - Bicubic was the default interpolation method CS5 and earlier. CS6 introduced "Bicubic Automatic" which selects Bicubic Sharper if the image/transform is reduced, and selects Bicubic Smoother if the image/transform is enlarged.
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Inspiring
November 26, 2014
Thanks Jeffrey!

I did some tests and I have a satisfying setup, now ... finally. :-)
Settings / General / Image Interpolation: "Bilinear"

Bilinear has the least glow (from sharpening) and fits best to my SmartClip workflow.

Testimage:
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Legend
November 25, 2014
While you can't control interpolation from the options bar, it does follow the interpolation set in the Preferences>General panel.
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Inspiring
November 25, 2014
What I can't get it is: why this option appears at Options Bar for "Dumb Objects", but it does not appear for Smart Objects as well?
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