Automatically created smart objects save very slow compared to normally created ones.

Question

I'm sure I came across this bug here or on Reddit somewhere, but I can't find the posts anymore.

Anyway, since a couple of Photoshop versions I notice, that when I drag an image in a document and it creates a smart object automatically, if I make some changes in this smart object, it saves extremely slow.

But when I rasterize the smart object first, and then create a new smart object of that layer, it saves super fast.

So there's something wrong with the way Photoshop automatically creates these smart objects.

Latest Photoshop, Windows 11, AMD Threadripper 3990x (also on 3970x), RTX3080Ti, 256GB DDR4 RAM, NVME SSDs for Software and file storage.

davescm · Answer

You are comparing apples and pears. A smart object is a container which displays its content at the pixel size of the main document, but the content itself could be any size and contain multiple layers and even further nested smart objects. From your description it sounds like the first smart object (call it SO-A) contains only one layer but the size of that layer, and the bit depth, is not given in your post (you could check by opening the smart object).

When you convert to a rasterised layer then you get a single layer at the document pixel size and bit depth.

When you convert that to a smart object (call it SO-B) then the content is one layer at the pixel size and bit depth of the main document.

To get a meaningful comparison, between SO-A and SO-B, you need to know what the content of each smart object is in terms of pixel size, bit depth, layers etc.

Dave

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