Overview

The PSD Importer is an Asset importer that imports Adobe Photoshop .psb files into Unity, and generating a Prefab of Sprites based on the imported source file. The .psb file format is functionally identical to the more common Adobe .psd format, but supports much larger images than the .psd format (up to 300,000 pixels in any dimension). You can convert existing artwork that are in .psd to the .psb format by opening and then saving them as .psb files in Adobe Photoshop.

Importing .psb files with the PSD Importer allows you to use features such as Mosaic to automatically generate a Sprite sheet from the imported layers; or Character Rig where Unity reassembles the Sprites of a character as they are arranged in their source files.

The PSD Importer currently only supports two Texture Modes: Default and Sprite. Other Texture Modes may be supported in the future.

Note: The Sprite Library Asset is no longer editable from the Skinning Editor of the 2D Animation from version 6.0 onwards as the Category and Label options have been removed from the Sprite Visibility panel. However, the PSD Importer will continue to automatically generate Sprite Library Assets if relevant data from a previous version is present.

Supported and unsupported Photoshop effects

When importing a .psb file into Unity with the PSD Importer, the importer generates a prefab of Sprites based on the image and layer data of the imported .psb file. However not all of Photoshop’s layer and visual effects or features are supported by the PSD Importer. The following Photoshop layer properties and visual effects are ignored when the importer generates the Sprites and prefab:

  • Channels
  • Blend Modes
  • Layer Opacity
  • Effects

If you want to add visual effects to the generated Sprites, you can add additional Textures to the Sprites with the Sprite Editor's Secondary Textures module. Shaders can sample these Secondary Textures to apply additional effects to the Sprite, such as normal mapping. Refer to the Sprite Editor: Secondary Textures documentation for more information.