Photoshop Xrefs

[Tim Nelson]

I wonder if that could possibly work or not. I'm just working on a really big colored site plan right now and am thinking if that really existed, it would make my job a whole lot quicker with not having to wait for large file saving, and RAM consumption, etc.

 

Or maybe it does exist in some way already & I just don't know about it?

[Ernest Burden III]

I wonder if

 

I think there is some sort of lower-res stand-in, haven't thought about it in a few years, so memory isn't good.

 

Can you explain a bit more specifically what you are trying to do?

[Tim Nelson]

Well for instance on my site plan. I have a lot of landscape symbols & layers that take up a lot of memory. Right now I have these all in a folder/layer set that I can turn off & on, but it doesn't really help too much with the file size or memory usage. Same thing with all the cars I need to put in.

 

It would be nice if I could just save out the layer set into a seperate file, and then xref it back in when I need it.

[cdos00]

Unfortunately I don't know if that is possible. I know that Illustrator has a reference capability to allow for Hi-Res images to be inserted in Illustrator documents. I agree, I think it would be incredibly useful for Adobe to allow something like that. I think it would be nice if they had a "proxy" object mode that would allow quick refresh and save times while allowing you to go to "full resolution mode" when you needed to print or show off in a presentation. We often times use Photoshop to output 2D renderings to suppliment our 3D renderings for Design Review Submittal. If we could reduce these files from the typical 140MB down to 14MB that would just be Awesome!!! Further comments would be very interesting!

[rpancake]

I don't know if this will help you or not, but I have put together a tutorial on automatic layer/folder photoshop file export. It will export all of your layers/folders into .png's that you could later add back in when you need them. It will also name the files in conjuction with the titles of the layers/folders. Hope this helps:

http://www.robertpancake.com/pages/tutorials/ps_layers2.htm

 

R. Pancake

http://www.robertpancake.com

info@robertpancake.com

[Tim Nelson]

Thanks for that script Robert. Is there, then, a way to re-import that file into the same exact location that you exported it out of?

[rpancake]

Hi Tim, as far as I know, there is no way to re-import the files automatically into the correct positions. To do it manually in PS, you could group all of your extraneous layers into one folder, and drag that folder onto the other photoshop file (within photoshop). This will retain the location data into the file. For some reason, photoshop will only drop layers back into the correct positions if they are contained within a folder (rather than dragging a single layer). This sounds confusing to me, and I am writing it. Let me know if you need clarification.

 

Robert