Adobe Photoshop CC - Advanced Training

How to package your Photoshop file to include linked images

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hi there, this video is all about packaging files. What is packaging files? It means that I've got fonts that are included in this PSD that I've made, there's also images that are linked to it. If I send them just the PSD, they're going to open it, and it's going to say, "Hey, I'm missing some of the linked images, like this image here." It's also going to say, "I'm missing some of the fonts." We're going to fix that with Photoshop's package feature, which is perfect for exporting images. Not so good for fonts, but I'll show you a little hack using Illustrator to get the fonts as well. All right, let's get started. 


To get started, in your '17 Exporting' folder, there is a PSD in there called 'Final Artwork', open that up. Now I've made this quite small just to keep the file sizes down in your exercise files. And I want to show you the different things that happen. So file packaging is pretty easy, we'll go to 'File', and we go to 'Package', let's get that out of the way. Where are we going to put it? I'm going to put mine in my desktop to make it nice and messy, I'm just going to click 'Choose'. And what it will to do is that it will use the name of your file, 'Final Artwork'. That's the kiss of death, calling anything final. But anyway, let's look on our desktop. You can see there, Final Artwork Folder gets generated for you. So it names the folder for you. Puts a copy of the PSD there, and any links that have been used. 


So what are the links? Let's have a look. So in my files here, I've got a bunch of different things. I'm going to make this a bit bigger so we can see. So this Blueberries image here is not-- it doesn't have any little icon here. You'll notice that in my exports it didn't appear. So I've got that image and I've got the background. Why did I only get those two? It's because down here, the background is actually a Creative Cloud libraries image. That's why I did this, I went to my libraries, and went - here it is there - and I drag this out. And because it's connected to my library, and not actually embedded in this document, when I go to package, Photoshop includes it. Something similar happened to this option here, can you see this one here? When I brought this image in, I went 'File', and instead of using Place Embedded I use 'Place', 'Linked'. You can see the little linking icon there, so it's linking to my hard drive. It gets included in the package. But there's lots of other things that didn't, say this splash here, that was just embedded in the document. It's a Smart Object, which is cool, but it is not included in the package because it's actually embedded in here. It was either copied and pasted in here, or use the File, Embed. 


So you've got three options, you can just leave it the way it is, and have some of them embedded, some of them not, so that your package document is a bit of both. You could go through and say, actually there's banana here, I want to link it. To do it you can right click it, and you can say 'Convert to Linked'. Basically it will just say, where do you want to put the banana? I'm going to stick mine on my desktop. Randomly messing up the desktop, and now it is linked to that file called Banana, now to be included in my package, so I've got some consistency. It also makes the PSD a bit smaller in terms of file size, because it's not included in here, it's just linked. Alternatively I could go through and say, actually I don't want all these linked. Just going to right click them and say, 'Embed this Link'. I'm going to embed this one, and then nothing will be included in that package. And you won't need to go 'File', 'Package' at all. 


One of the things you didn't see up here, that was fonts. For some reason Photoshop does not package out the fonts, I can't make it happen. I've tried my damnedest. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign do, but Photoshop doesn't yet. But there is a trick to get the fonts out, but there's a few conditions that need to be met. And pretty much this file here breaks all of them. What you can do is just open up in Illustrator and then use its File Package. And it will pull the fonts out. Why won't it work with this document? It won't work with any layer that has a Layer Style, in our case it has a Drop Shadow. I'm going to click 'Clear Layer Style'. 


The other thing that won't happen is that, see this R here, it has a Drop Shadow, if I delete the Drop Shadow, but it's still behind this splash, it's not going to work. So I'm going to save this file here, and let's go into Illustrator. Let's open up that file, 'Exercise File 17', "Final Artwork'. I just want to make sure Convert Layers to Objects is on. Click 'OK'. What you'll notice here is that this font here gets converted to actual editable text. Photoshop and Illustrator worked together and they say, "Well I'm just going to remake this in the font." Perfect. That will get included when I export. 


What won't happen is, see this R back here? I'll zoom in on it. We see the text here is perfect vector. Zoom in. Lovely. But let's look at this R up here, because it's all behind this, it's being smushed and turned into pixels, so it just doesn't get exported. So if you're just looking to get the fonts out, you might have to do some, like hacking just to get this R up on the top, no Drop Shadow, just so that Illustrator can go through and pull the fonts out. 


The other thing that won't happen is, if I pick another font, and it-- I pick a Typekit font, say let's use this one here. Adelle, because it's a Typekit font, Adelle, this TK font, it's not going to work. This font here though, it's Arial, it could be anything as long as it doesn't have TK next to it. O type fonts, Open type will work, TTs will work, but not the Typekit. You are only allowed to use Typekit because you pay for your Creative Cloud license. And if the other person on the other side has a Creative Cloud license, the fonts will go with it perfect. If they don't, then they're not allowed to have them. 


So let's say we've got this far, let's go to 'File', it's in the same sort of place, it's called 'Package'. Where am I going to stick it? I'm going to save this document. Where am I going to save it? On to my desktop. I'm going to make a folder called 'Packaging Example'. Man, it's getting insane. Stick that in there. So I need to save it first, and then though, when I go to 'Package', I'm just going to make sure I include the fonts. You can see, it won't let me have Typekit fonts. It says, "Hey be careful about the restrictions of fonts", you say, "Don't worry, I will." 


Now on my desktop, here's Packaging Example, there's my Final Artwork. And where did I say the package were going to? I did not check that 'File', 'Package'. I put mine in a weird folder, let's stick it on the desktop. Inside that lovely new folder we made. Make sure the fonts are included. Do it twice. There it is there. There's the ai file, which I don't really need, because I got all the images out of Photoshop, but there's the Arial that I used. Pulled out of your hard drive, ready to be sent on to the next person. Bit of a hack, might not be worth the time and effort, but you also might be desperate to get the fonts out. But remember, no Layer Styles, no Typekit fonts, make sure they're at the top of your layer group, and use 'File', 'Package'. 


We use Illustrator to just get the fonts, and we use Photoshop to get all the linked images. Combine them together, we have a completed package file. You might be watching in the distant future, they might just have fonts in Photoshop, just check first, it hasn't been there forever so far, so you might get lucky, and they might update that. You might not have to do this kind of hacked version. That's it for this video, Packaging. I'll see you in the next video.