Step & Repeat With Smart Objects.

[Trevor.Dennis]

This was such a big deal for me, and I very nearly missed it tucked away half way down this old thread from the days when our old friend JJMack was still posting.  It has annoyed me for years that FT Step & Repeat pretty much never works with Smart Objects.  There is a video tucked away near the bottom with a workaround that actually works.  The video over-complicates it a tiny bit, creating an extra layer that I found is not needed.

Starting with a Smart Object.

New Smart Object via Copy.

Rasterize the SO via Copy and do the first Transform.

Now delete that layer leaving you with just the original Smart Object layer

Select the SO and do the Step & Repeat (Shift Ctrl Alt T).

I have tested it a few times on Windows 11 and Mac Sequoia and it works every time.  You can edit any one of the SOs and they all reflect the edit as you'd expect them to.     I hope I am not the only person who nearly missed that link, and I hope some people are as pleased as me to discover the workaround.  

[Stephen Marsh]

A related topic here:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-ecosystem-discussions/creating-duplicate-images-for-multi-p...

[Trevor.Dennis]

Very cool Stephen.  I'll be using that script for sure.

[Stephen Marsh]

It's only for horizontal/vertical arrays (rows, columns, grids), which are best created in any other software except Photoshop, however, there is of course a valid need to do so in Photoshop for some users.

[Trevor.Dennis]

We used to have a useful array tool in the Trevor Morris Demonzon Tools panel back when Flash was still a thing.  That was a useful panel.