In photoshop, anyone who’s scaled an image down, changed their mind and then tried to stretch the image to its original size will know of the pixellated mess that occurs.

This can now be avoided with the Smart Objects feature. It allows you to scale the image like a vector object. You can reduce and enlarge a photo without loosing the image quality. This feature is only available in photoshop CS2 and above. By using the Smart Object feature, the original image is embedded in the layer so any resizing that occurs calls on the original hi-res version.

1. To add a smart object, all you need to do is go to File > Place.

2. Choose your picture and click place. Your image will open with a bounding box around it. Use this to scale the image. Hold down Shift key and drag the corner point. After that press Enter to confirm your selection.

3. This is your Smart Object layer. Your Smart Object should have a little page icon in the bottom right corner of the layer’s thumbnail.

Now, enlarging and shrinking the object is no longer a problem with Smart Object in Adobe Photoshop.