P: Externally Linked Smart Objects

Shortest way I can say what I need is this:

When I "Place" a Photoshop file into a layer in Photoshop, I would like there to be a link between files.

And the longer version:

At the present time, when I "Place" a Photoshop file, I essentially import all of the contents of the PSD into my new project, and no linking is established.

I do understand the usefulness of the existing mechanism--when layers are converted, for example, to a smart object, it's very helpful. But when I use the "Place" command to explicitly point to an already existing file, there is a 100% chance that I wish to link to the file rather than duplicate its contents. (You could add a checkbox to the Place dialogue to confirm, if you wanted).

Consider the following use case, which occurred today:
An individual is creating background graphic art for a card game. Several other artists are creating foreground artwork, and a designer is creating text. Each card is designed uniquely, but uses one of only a few backgrounds, which are going through various revisions. In an ideal world, updates to the network-accessible background PSD would automatically be reflected in other artists' files, since the background artwork file was selected and "Placed" into their work. This does not occur, and we must instead check frequently and "replace" our smart objects regularly.

Even worse, no card is ever "done" as long as a background may get tweaked again--they must all be re-opened and re-updated. I do understand that we could have InDesign combine the several files and that program is more than happy to update links--in fact, we use InDesign to maintain a dynamically updated layout of all the cards--but realistically, the "card art" process as a whole is going on in Photoshop, and it feels like an oversight to have to re-point smart objects to their files every time we sit down to work.

Now, perhaps our workflow is going to be considered "wrong," or unrealistic, but I'd like to offer that the issue is more along the lines of a design consistency within the software. The ability to generate embedded smart objects is very useful but so is the ability to link to a file. The "Place" command already *seems* to perform this linking behaviour for many file types by requesting which existing file to place into the document, but ultimately, the file I choose is *not* the file I work with. This is somewhat misleading, inconsistent with the "Place" feature in other Adobe software, and offers essentially no added functionality over "Open as Smart Object."

Won't you consider it?

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE this feature.

I am a UI Designer and it would be great if I could have external links for things like headers, navigation, lightboxes, etc.

It's very difficult to design several different pages of content that are all in flux at the same time. When one element changes, I need to go back and change that element in several other files, otherwise other people on the team start to get confused by the discrepancies. This is the last big feature on my Photoshop wish list. Don't let us down Adobe! Thanks.

Thumbs up for this one ;-)
I thought about the topic state "under consideration"

Sure. I would like to "link" a photoshop file within another photoshop file, just like when you use include files when programming a website. So for example, if I am designing 10 screens for a particular website, and they share the same banner, if something changes down the line, I would only have to open the "banner" file and change that thing instead of having to open each 10 files individually and make that change. This would save a lot of time. Hope this makes more sense.

Adobe is a publicly traded company - we can't really discuss too many future plans.

How is things going on here?

Photoshop regularly brings my computer into trouble due to extremely big temporary data (SO .psb) collections on system drive.
Working file-linking would be a real dealmaker.
I absolutely support this great idea. (besides: never thought of it like that, great perspective)

@Adobe, how's the plans concerning this stuff?

So often we have things like headers and footers in designs that if you change one file you have to change all of them. How great would it be if you could do them as external PSD objects that you could access as a file and then update there and it ripples through all your docs?

Idea: support linked images in PS. Would be great to be able to "place" an external file as a linked image; to find instances of that linked image in my PS document; to relink; and most important, the properties of linked image should show the entire path and file name of the linked file, with a clickable widget to reveal the file in the computer's file system. That widget should be in the Linked Images Palette so we won't have to dig deep in order to locate that file on the computer or replace it.

Photoshop's Variables feature looks interesting and powerful, but it's more than we need most of the time. Mostly, we just need the things I listed here.

What do you expect from layers as far as merging? I imagine most includes would "include" all layers (as CanLinkIt does) but it sounds like that's not helpful. Can you describe what how you'd use those layers a bit more?

I use photoshop to prepare web screens. I would really like the ability to group certain layers into an include file (with all layers) that I can reuse independently. Just like you do when you program websites.The smart object are not it because you can't change the size or anything and it merges all the layers...