P: Smart Objects: Auto-convert JPGs to PSD

That's your view on the subject Chris - I know other folks at Adobe who disagree. Considering you aren't the CEO, then your decision is not final, therefore this should be reopened.

Charles, thank you very kindly for your care and initiative here. It is appreciated, and is what will save Adobe from itself, at least the part that's about products. And other matters also, if those having high seats will listen.

Chris, from someone who has more education than you do, would observe that there are many more things to learn than you evidently have. You are really lacking in bedside manner, to put it bluntly. Please learn about emotional intelligence, or ethnology, or what best world novels are about, or any other way you like how it is better to be kindly and helpful with others.

You can edit it just like any other smart object -- the warning that tells you to save to the same filename and format is there for a reason. You should not ignore that warning.

This is all about a simple user mistake. It is not insulting to tell you that it was a mistake, and we are not ignoring your comments -- but you made an obvious mistake in saving your document to a different filename or format. After you do that, Photoshop can't see your changes to the original file because you saved changes to a different file. We have looked into this, and there is no reasonable way to make it work otherwise. When you edit the smart object, the application is looking for changes to the original file and if you save your data to a different file -- the application really can't know that you did that, or if it was intentional or not.

Just because you expect the sky to be green, will not make it green. Nor will anyone go out of their way to paint it green no matter how many times you repeat your expectation.

Yes, there are many reasons to keep the smart object data in the original format that was placed -- that is a large part of the power and flexibility of Smart Objects. Just because you don't understand that does not change the truth of it. There are too many downsides to list -- you don't just throw away the user's document and convert it to something else (potentially breaking their workflows) without a really good reason.

No, because it is solved and not under consideration.

Would it be possible to unmark this issue as Solved, and perhaps mark it as "in consideration"?

There is no mistake by the user, there simply is an intention/expectation. Current Photoshop behavior does not meet our intentions/expectations, which is to be able to edit the Smart Object like any other Smart Object.

Saying this is user mistake is not only extremely insulting to us, it's also not the way product design works. If several of your most expert users report an issue, it should be looked into and considered by several members team, not shot down point blank as user mistake by a single individual contributor.

If research shows that not every user's intentions match the one by the commenters on this feedback (images should be re-saved as PSDs), then the solution is to add a new option to Preferences so both types of users are catered for.

However, I cannot imagine any user NOT wanting a JPG/PNG to be converted to a PSD in order to have it be editable, I can't think of any use case where a user would prefer a flat file over a PSD. What are the down-sides to it? File size? Anything else?

Thankfully Chris is not the sole decision maker at Photoshop, he's an engineer - his opinions are heard but not final. So now that PM, UX and Research are involved, they can look into the issue and, if they deem it appropriate, add it to their backlog for the next release.

Hi Charles, thank for the offer. I really appreciate it. I will try to get in touch with you tomorrow. I wanted to respond yesterday, but we had a major storm. The trains didn't go anymore and I had to drive for two days having no time to work on the computer.

Thanks
Marcus

Unfortunately that is not at the heart of the problems covered in this topic, all which boil down to: an edited child file was saved to a different filename or file format than what the Smart Object is tracking.

The suggested change would not alter the mistake of saving to a different file.

I should have noted I've already talked to Edward. Please be in touch!

Hello Charles, thank you for the kind invite to a discussion. Edward Sanchez also had a good suggestion to allow Photoshop to serve both creator intentions and customer expectations...

May I quote the now-removed-but-disputed post:

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But here's a solution that doesn't conflict with any of the counter arguments (however weak and illogical they are) -> add a new -snip- option!

As a subset of "Always Create Smart Object when Placing", add "Convert placed image files to PSD Smart Objects".
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I'd be happy to chat about this. It would make SmartObjects even smarter!

Thank you,
Paul