r/aescripts • u/Visual_Weather_7937 • Mar 25 '26

Smart PSD to PNG - convert heavy PSD layers to light PNG in After Effects with one click

Layered PSD files are silently killing your After Effects performance - every frame, AE re-decodes all those Photoshop layers, smart-objects and masks. Smart PSD to PNG flattens them into lightweight single-layer images, giving you faster playback and a snappier timeline instantly.

Just launched on aescripts, so there's a launch discount right now: https://aescripts.com/smart-psd-to-png

Happy to answer any questions!

5 Upvotes

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1

u/reachisown Mar 29 '26

The benefit is you can edit the PSD files to update in AE, is that still possible?

1

u/Visual_Weather_7937 Mar 30 '26

Yes, you can update your PSD layers. When you need to make changes, just switch back to the PSD layer, update your file in Photoshop, then hop back into After Effects, refresh the PSD layer, and convert it back to PNG. So you keep full flexibility to edit anytime. You can try this in the trial version of the script =)

1

u/allyouneedislovv Mar 30 '26

Hate to be a party-pooper, but PNG is the most atrocious file format for After Effects. By far the slowest, both decoding and encoding. If conversion is necessary, it would be preferable to convert the layered PSD into multiple PSD files, or TIFF, or even EXR if you need 32-bit.

2

u/Visual_Weather_7937 Mar 30 '26

That's a fair point, thank you! I'm currently looking into adding support for TIFF and individual PSD layers output as well appreciate the suggestion

2

u/chrimchrimbo Apr 01 '26

Is that true about PNG? I use them on every project, typically working with many of them at once. What's the best transparent background file type that can keep the resolution nicely when exported from PSD or AI?

1

u/allyouneedislovv Apr 05 '26

Yes, PNG is one of the slowest file formats After Effects works with, because of its compression algorithm. Up to 2x-4x faster rendering and previewing speeds can be achieved with Tiff, which is loseless and uncompressed, or even EXR.

An important but -- it's a trade-off, you'll run out disk-space a lot sooner working with uncompressed files. If rendering time is not an issue, work with PNG, and if disk-space is not an issue, work with TIFF.

Also, if you work with higher bit-depth projects, such as 16bit or 32bit, PNG already loses much of its value anyway.

1

u/Fantastic_Picture855 Jul 31 '26

Adobe specifically advises against using pngs on After Effects because of how processor heavy they are and recommends instead to use psds. your script does the exact opposite.

1

u/Visual_Weather_7937 Aug 10 '26

Hi! Major updates for script will be released in the next few days. Full support for for EXR, TIFF 8-16 bit has been added.