Importing Photoshop files
How a PSD is taken apart into layers and groups, which blend modes survive the trip, and everything Photoshop can hold that does not come across.
File ▸ Import ▸ PSD… reads a Photoshop document and rebuilds it as layers here, rather than flattening it to one picture. Celas Studio reads the format itself, so no Photoshop installation and no plug-in is involved.
The whole document arrives under one group named after the file, positioned so the Photoshop canvas sits centred on yours. Move or scale that group and the artwork stays together.
What maps to what
| In Photoshop | In Celas Studio |
|---|---|
| A pixel layer | An Image layer |
| A folder | A Group layer, nesting preserved |
| Layer name | Layer name, including non-Latin characters |
| Layer opacity | Layer opacity |
| Hidden layer | Hidden layer |
| A flattened file with no layer data | A single Image layer named Background |
Each imported layer keeps its own pixels, at its own size and position, and those pixels are stored inside your project. Once the import is done the PSD is no longer needed, and nothing you do here is written back to it.
Blend modes
Twelve Photoshop blend modes have a direct equivalent and carry across.
| Photoshop | Celas Studio |
|---|---|
| Multiply | Multiply |
| Screen | Screen |
| Overlay | Overlay |
| Darken | Darken |
| Lighten | Lighten |
| Color Dodge | Color Dodge |
| Color Burn | Color Burn |
| Hard Light | Hard Light |
| Soft Light | Soft Light |
| Difference | Difference |
| Exclusion | Exclusion |
| Linear Dodge (Add) | Plus |
Everything else becomes Normal, including Pass Through on a folder. Modes with no counterpart here (Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity, Vivid Light, Linear Burn and the rest) arrive as Normal, so a layer that relied on one will look wrong until you pick a different mode by hand.
What the reader accepts
- RGB and Grayscale documents
- 8-bit and 16-bit files: 16-bit is reduced to 8-bit on the way in
- Raw, RLE and ZIP-compressed layer data, including the predicted variant
- Canvases from 1 to 30000 pixels on a side
What does not come across
Photoshop holds a great deal that has no equivalent in a 2D animation scene. All of the following is dropped quietly, with no warning at import time.
- Large-document files (.psb): the import is refused outright
- CMYK, Lab, Indexed, Duotone and Bitmap documents, and 1-bit or 32-bit depths
- Layer masks: a masked layer arrives fully opaque, with the hidden parts visible again
- Clipping masks: the clipped layer arrives as an ordinary layer
- Adjustment layers: they hold no pixels, so they arrive as empty groups
- Layer effects and styles: drop shadows, strokes, glows, bevels
- Smart objects: only their rasterised pixels arrive, not the object
- Editable text: text arrives as pixels and cannot be retyped
- Guides, paths, colour profiles and blend ranges
Getting a cleaner import
- In Photoshop, rasterise smart objects and text layers that you want to keep as artwork.
- Apply or flatten any layer mask, clipping mask or layer style you need the look of.
- Convert the document to RGB, 8-bit, and save as .psd rather than .psb.
- Import here, then rebuild the pieces you want animated as separate layers.