Free Transform not working on Smart Objects

[danielp68451207]

Hello,

I’m wondering why Free Transform & warp doesn’t work on a smart objects.

When used on a selected (marching ants) smart object:

• Ctrl+T doesn’t create transform handles
• Edit -> Free Transform is greyed out, as is transform

However, I can go to Select -> Transform Selection and I get the appearance of solid lines and 8 ‘handles’ of an apparently working “Transform” and the option of clicking on a warp icon. The handles can be manipulated and the lines move appropriately, both transform and warp, but the selected item does nothing, only the marching ants change shape. If the checkmark is clicked to finish the transform, the marching ants take the new shape, but not the pixels.

Is this a bug? If not, what am I missing? I see numerous videos of people free transforming smart objects.

I’ve tried this on 16 bits/channel and 8 bits.

Thank you for your thoughts and help!

Dan

**

Adobe Photoshop Version: 21.1.3 20200508.r.190 2020/05/08: 73760933ad5  x64

Number of Launches: 354

Operating System: Windows 10 64-bit

Version: 10 or greater 10.0.18362.900

System architecture: Intel CPU Family:6, Model:14, Stepping:9 with MMX, SSE Integer, SSE FP, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX2, HyperThreading

Physical processor count: 4

Logical processor count: 8

Processor speed: 3600 MHz

Built-in memory: 32668 MB

Free memory: 17949 MB

Memory available to Photoshop: 29916 MB

Memory used by Photoshop: 60 %

[JJMack]

Free Transform works of smart object layers to transform the object pixels used for the smart object layers pixel content. The Marquee Selection tool does not select pixels within a smart object layer's object. Photoshop tools can not change smart object pixel content. If you have marching ants you can use Transform selection to change the marching  ants selection. The selection does not apply to smart object layer's  object target a normal pixel layer to free transform selected pixels

[c.pfaffenbichler · Accepted solution]

If you want to Transform and/or Warp a Smart Object you must not have an active Selection. 

[danielp68451207]

Thank you c_pfaffenbichler and JJMack,

With what you said I went back and discovered my error; making a selection before (trying) Free Transform.

In my experience, I’ve most often needed to select some odd shape on a rasterized layer - not select the entire pixel layer. Free transform worked great then.

It seems that on a rasterized layer, the only way to employ Free Transform on anything less than the entire pixel layer is to start from an active selection (marching ants). The same is not true on a smart object.

This next part is off topic a bit, but I just searched Free Transform in helpx.adobe.com (again) and read the first result that seemed like it should have been comprehensive. No mention of this distinction. Is there a better way to learn these confusing nuances that seem so prevalent in PS?

Thanks again for everyone’s suggestions and help!

[Radu EN]

90% of problems are because of a small selection forgotten somewhere.

[Dung25328809kjue]

I face the same problem. I open a new image in Photoshop and choose the selection tool to create the mask for this image. Then Ctrl + T it works again, I can resize it. Don't know the reason why but you can try it.