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SophyK
Participating Frequently
December 1, 2019
Question

Where is the smart object file saved?

  • December 1, 2019
  • 4 replies
  • 18246 views

I really need to know where my smart object files are saved.

All I could found was a very old thread

https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/file-locations-for-saving-smart-object-psb-files/m-p/2310552#M8095

This is not answering my question.

All I need to know is the path, where exactly smart object files are saved.

Please, someone, advise me how to find them step by step!

Thank you in advance.

This topic has been closed for replies.

4 replies

New Participant
April 28, 2024

Maybe a little too late for a reply, but maybe for someone else in the future. It seems to save them in a temp folder. If you open the smart object, then click Save As... it will show you the location. It's a bit of a rabbit hole. I'd prefer it updated the original file in its original location, or just made a copy in the original location? But yeah.

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 28, 2024

@ScopusSteve 

 

That's what linked SO are, they are the original.

 

Embedded SO are as the name suggests are a copy stored within the doc, they are only temporarily opened and saved to the unique temp folder path when edited in that session. Quitting and restarting Photoshop and editing the SO again would reveal a new path that would be deleted after Photoshop was exited.

Earth Oliver
Legend
March 19, 2022

SO's are always cached to the startup drive and there's no way to change this location. I've had a feature request in for years to change the cache to the scratch drive, but no progress has been made. I think this is so absolutely necessary for those of us working on larger images, but Adobe doesn't seem to understand the necessity.

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2022

Yes, I agree with that. Smart objects can by nature be huge, and what happens if the system TEMP directory doesn't have enough space to hold it?

 

To be clear, that's a different problem than the one at hand. Here the parent application (Ai) won't open at all.

 

 

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
December 1, 2019

If it's an embedded smart object, it's, well, embedded in the master file. Or anywhere else if it's a linked smart object.

 

When you open the smart object to edit it, it's temporarily stored in the system TEMP directory.

New Participant
May 28, 2021

It was going right for me, the smart object files which i used to open for editing and save them.. they are not saved in TEMP folder in PC. They used to save in my defult folder from where i have opened my image and made it as smart object in a PSD file. And when i used to save them they would reflect in its original folder and after closing the smart object they would reflect on my psd file to. But from some days it's saves my smart object files in TEMP folder in pc....

Hoow can i solve this problem...???

Any solution for this ??

Please help

 

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Community Expert
March 19, 2022

The error occurs in Photoshop, why should it be posted in the Illustrator forum?

Renaming the file had no effect.

Logically the file isn't corrupt if my client can open the file and smart object on his machine.

Yes, I saw your post saying the file is embedded but I asked if it were possible to extract it manually.

 

So the short answer is that you guys don't know how or don't have the ability to extract the smart objects?

 

 


Unless the person has an Adobe Employee badge, we are all just end-users like yourself. I personally am not aware of any way to extract an embedded vector smart object if it does not open correctly in the associated vector program when the SO is double-clicked.

 

You mentioned that some of these files work for your client, but not for you and that you don't believe that the PSD is corrupt. I'm just curious what happens if you drag the embedded vector SO layer into another document and double click it there? What if you make a temporary change to use a different app to open the vector object? Good luck!

Participating Frequently
December 1, 2019

Here an explanation about where smart objects are saved: https://youtu.be/9xU7GBAJ_tE