Mastering Photoshop Smart Objects: Creating a Star Wars Crawl

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The Star Wars opening crawl effect is one of the most instantly recognizable elements in modern movies. True, it wasn’t totally original, being inspired by the opening crawls in Flash Gordon movies of the 1940s. But George Lucas and friends made it iconic. And now you can make your own animated crawl effect in Photoshop, with the help of Smart Objects. In the video below, Photoshop Master Jedi Bart Van de Wiele demonstrates how. Check it out, and may the Force be with you.

Originally published January 22, 2015

Bart Van de Wiele is a LinkedIn Learning author and public speaker currently working as a Principal Solutions Consultant at Adobe. Visit his website at bartvdw.com.
  • Pamela Sparks says:

    The Force is strong with this one… I’m glad to see you using your Photoshop Jedi Master-y for good instead of evil, Bart.  ;o]  But seriously, that is really cool – I must confess I never thought about SO’s for animation.  And you make it look so easy!  I wonder if Lucas and Spielberg shake their heads when they see stuff like this, thinking of all the long hours spent in post-production back in the 70s…  ;o) 

  • Guest says:

    This was SO cool…thanks for sharing those techniques with us.  I really have no reason to use the animate feature in my regular workflow, but based how this tutorial used smart objects, I suddenly understand them and can see lots of ways they will be useful.  YAY!

  • jungleboy says:

    Impressive and nicely presented. Thank you!

  • Claudia McCue says:

    Obi Wan Adobe oobie doobie do! Or, as the hated Jar Jar Binks would say, “Me so amazed!” This is fantastic!

  • Milt Zlatic says:

    Is there a link to download the files for this? Thanks.

  • Neil says:

    This is amazing! Good work!

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