Seems I am discovering loads with photoshop at the moment. Have you heard about smart object? Well I hadn’t since the last few days. Smart objects are like a psd inside a psd. It is treated like a single layer but can be composed with as many layers as you want.

I discovered it when I wanted to apply a border around a group of layers. Well doesn’t quite work, at least in CS2. There is not blending options for groups and if you want to keep the shapes and text as vector I don’t know any other way than smart object.

Right click on you group and select “Group into a new smart object”. now you can use the smart object as if it was a single layer. And if you want to modify it just double click in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail of the layer. Your object will be opened as a separate document where you can do your stuff. Then  quick save it and close. It will be updated automatically on the main document.

Even better, if you have multiple copies of the same smart object, updating it will update all the copies. Maybe I should read the manual one day…