exactly what IS a vector smart object?????
aitchmal0ne (220 points) | Wed, 2010-02-10 21:51I have a jpeg logo a client wants recreated, BUT I don't have any idea what the fonts are and it's a complicated logo. I have a trick of opening an image in Illustrator then pasting into Photoshop. It "says" it's created a vector smart object, but I feel like this is too good to be true. Is it?
::heather malone
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I believe it's similar to placing a file in InDesign - you can simply edit the original file in its native program and the changes will be reflected in your current layout.
Says the web:
Smart Objects are layers in your photoshop file that contain data from raster or vector files. These can be other photoshop files (if it is raster) or Adobe Illustrator files (if it is vector). The benefit to using an outside file as a smart object is that you can save the original source content and it will automatically be updated in the photoshop file.
It just means that the original resolution is preserved I think.
A smart object is, in effect, a file within a file. This can be vector, raster or a mixture of the two.
When you copy and paste from Illustrator to photoshop the vector paths, fills and gradients you created in Illustrator are packaged into a smart object that can be scaled and adjusted like a regular layer. Editing the smart object (usually by double-clicking the layer icon) will open it up in illustrator - and saving the illustrator 'file' will commit the changes back to photoshop.
Smart objects don't have to be vector. You can change photoshop layers (or layer groups) to smart objects too.
I'm not entirely sure how this would help you with the recreation of a logo though.
It sounds like you have opened the jpg in illustrator and then cut and pasted it from illustrator into photoshop. At this point it has pasted in as a (vector) smart object. The 'vector' part of that is sadly not illustrator/photoshop converting the image to vector - it is the extra vector code that illustrator used for the bounding/crop-box around the, still raster, image. Double-click the smart object and you will be taken back into illustrator, but the image will still be rasterised.
What you'll need to do is either use live-trace in illustrator as a starting point (it's not great for logos) or trace over the logo itself. What The Font (myfonts.com) is handy for font recognition.