I know I don’t speak alone when I say I would love to see Indesign’s link panel implemented into Photoshop. The ability to import external linked images into Indesign has been one of the most useful features I’ve come across and is poorly lacking in Photoshop’s smart objects. Although powerful, we would still have to open 20+ files just to change the color of a header from red to blue.

BUT WAIT! No need to zap your little Frankenshop to life yet. Check out these following tutorials on Photoshop Variables: the poorly named equivalent to Indesign Links! Although Variables are a bit more complicated, it sure beats suffering the consequences when your mutant program becomes self-aware. Eeek!

ADOBE VARIABLE BASICS:
All you need to know about linking out to an external .psd.

• Importing an external header .psd that will update over many mockups: http://bit.ly/9vvg1R

• Similar tutorial: http://bit.ly/fUbmNo

ADOBE VARIABLES & EXCEL:
Check out these tutorials about using excel spreadsheets in conjunction with variables.

• Create Mailing Labels: http://bit.ly/bo1N4L

• YouTube Video: http://youtu.be/bJV6ug1npyQ

Download the script here, and add it to your Adobe Extensions manager. Reopen Photoshop and voila! It will be under Window > Extensions. Fire it up, give it a few minutes and boom! No more annoying “copy 1,2,3…” and the resulting hair pulling.  It works for MAC and Windows.  No more of this…

Now, in retrospect, Photoshop has really made our lives so much easier,  so to bash Adobe’s poor decision making in adding “copy” to duplicated layers seems trivial. Just like the most current generation will never know what it was like to blow into a Nintendo Cartridge to get it to work, my generation will never know what it was like to design without the aid of the computer. Phototypesetting, paste-ups, rub-on lettering are these panels in Illustrator or something?

Anyway, thank you to Mike Hale for making all of our lives a bit easier, maybe you can make an extension to better Photoshop’s Pen tool? *Hint* *Hint*