Layers workflow, modify any adjustment anytime?

[Will J]

This has been puzzling me for a while:

As shown in the picture attached, I have a layer that controls the saturation at the top, but when I make changes to the saturation settings, the saturation in the blur layer below stay unchanged (originally the saturation layer was below the blur layer, as I first created the saturation and then made the blur layer... swapping them didn't help).

Another similar case here is the bottom layer, which is a raw image opened as a smart object from Camera Raw. How can I make let's say exposure changes in my raw and have these changes transfer to all the layers. My probleme here is that if I change the exposure in raw, then all the layer above still look like before I made the adjustments.

It makes the "open as smart object" function sorta useless for me: to have the ability to go back to camera raw anytime, if none of my layers are following the changes.

What am I missing here?

Thank you so much for your help !

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi Will
Without seeing the full layered file that would be hard to diagnose (e.g. blend settings, opacity settings etc. It would be just a big guess from what can be seen in the thumbnails of the image your provided. Any change you could share the layered file to have a look.

I do understand your issue with the Smart Object as changes only apply to the Smart Object Layer. There is a work around and that is once you have all layers in place, select the Smart Object and all desired lecels above (e.g. all but the Hue/Sat adjustment layer) and convert all of those Layers to a Smart Object. You can then apply camera raw to this new combined Smart Object and have it affect all of the Layers.

Hope this helps.
John Wheeler

 

[fredfish]

I am not near PS at the moment so this might not work - but what happens if you put all the layers above the smart object in to a group and then "Clip" the group to the smart object?

Just a thought?

 

[Will J]

Hi John , thank you so much for your time!
Would be glad to share the file, but it's size is over 200MB. So maybe I rather try make an example on a smaller picture so that I can share.

And about the second workaround you explained, I don't know if I did it the way you ment but It made one smart object out of 3 layers. So that the layers then don't exist anymore. It then robs me from the possibility of making changes to these later.

 

[thebestcpu]

I am not near PS at the moment so this might not work - but what happens if you put all the layers above the smart object in to a group and then "Clip" the group to the smart object?

Just a thought?

I don't think this would help yet it would be easy for you to try and verify.

 

[thebestcpu]

Hi John , thank you so much for your time!
Would be glad to share the file, but it's size is over 200MB. So maybe I rather try make an example on a smaller picture so that I can share.

And about the second workaround you explained, I don't know if I did it the way you ment but It made one smart object out of 3 layers. So that the layers then don't exist anymore. It then robs me from the possibility of making changes to these later.

You can access the layers by opening up the Smart Object, they are not gone.

Note that there is a difficult issue with one of your Layers in particular. If you have a healing Layer, what is placed on the Layer is based on the existing pixels below that Layer at the point in time the healing was done. (based on how you have it set up). If you go back to the underlying Layers and make changes (e.g in the Smart Object), the pixels in your healing Layer will not track those changes below. This is not because of the Smart Ojbect, it would happen for regular Layers as well. It would probably be better to do the healing within Camera Raw when you have the Smart Ojbect open.
Hope this helps
John Wheeler