Working with Raw Smart Objects

Apparently my reply posts are disappearing, so I'll give this a try:

Conrad, thanks for responding. Your first response doesn’t work for me because I need to combine elements from 2 different raw files and also be able to sync the raw settings between them and back to the original raws.

I’m an architectural photographer. We use people in the photos. So, I have several images of the same scene where the position of the people is different. I use Bridge and Photoshop.

It’s easy to combine these images using layer masks, I’ve been doing it for years using rasterized images. However sometimes I’d like to change things in camera raw after the fact. Like white balance etc…I’ve started opening the raw files as smart objects for this reason. However, if I change the settings on an image in my layer stack using camera raw, then I have to remember the changes and then open the other images in the stack and manually make the same changes to them in camera raw.

What I’d like to be able to do is to open multiple raw images as layers in Photoshop (so I can use masks on the layers to change the people around) as smart objects and have any changes made to any of them (using camera raw) sync to each other as well as to sync back to the original raw files. Syncing back to the original raw files is useful as then in Bridge I can copy and paste these setting to any other images that I may want to work with to create the final image.

Do you use Adobe Bridge? It's possible to open and edit multiple RAW files simultaneously. You can also right mouse click on a file in Bridge, copy it's RAW development options and then paste those to other RAW files. I'm happy to provide more details if this interests you.

---

@jerib73913022 wrote:

I'd like to open 2 raw files as smart objects, drag the layer of one on top of the other. Then double click one layer to open it in camera raw and have any changes sync to the other smart object layer.

---

That is easy, it’s how it works if you copy the smart object layer using the Layer > Duplicate Layer command, or the Layers panel shortcut of dragging the smart object layer to the [+] icon at the bottom of the panel.

(If you wanted each smart object to edit independently, you would copy the smart object layer by instead choosing Layer > Smart Objects > New Smart Object via Copy.)

---

@jerib73913022 wrote:

I'd also like to have any changes made to the smart object raw in Camera Raw to sync back to the original raw file.

---

To do this, it must be a linked smart object. If you don’t know the difference, if you bring a raw file into Photoshop as a smart object, by default it’s embedded: It’s all self-contained in the Photoshop document, so changes don’t affect anything outside Photoshop.

If you instead bring a raw file into Photoshop as a linked smart object, then the changes write back out to the raw file (its XMP or DNG file). If that raw file is placed in other Photoshop documents as linked smart objects, those instances will update the next time you switch to one of those other documents.

A raw file comes in as an embedded smart object by default. To bring it in as a linked smart object, do one of the following in Photoshop:

• Choose File > Place Linked. 
• Drag the raw file from the desktop or a file browser such as Adobe Bridge, and hold down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key (Windows) as you drop it into a Photoshop document window. (Not sure if this works in Windows, some drag-and-drop operations aren’t supported)