Editor › Features › Smart Objects and Smart Filters
What are Smart Objects and does PhotoAIA support them?
A Smart Object wraps layer content so transforms and filters stay non-destructive. PhotoAIA supports creating them, editing their contents in a separate tab, replacing contents, and stacking editable Smart Filters with their own masks.
Why non-destructive matters
A normal filter rewrites pixels. A Smart Filter records the operation instead, so you can change its settings, reorder it, disable it, or mask it later without any loss. Scaling a Smart Object repeatedly does not compound quality loss the way scaling raster pixels does.
What is supported
- Convert one or more layers to a Smart Object, or create a new instance via copy.
- Edit Contents opens the source in its own tab; committing writes back as a single history step.
- Replace Contents, with a policy prompt when the new artwork has different dimensions.
- Smart Filters: add, reorder, toggle, remove, and mask each filter independently.
Interoperability limitation
Smart Objects and Smart Filters are a PhotoAIA and Photoshop concept, but PhotoAIA cannot yet write them into a PSD. On PSD export a Smart Object is flattened to pixels, and the compatibility report tells you before the file is written.