From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Introducing adjustment layers - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Introducing adjustment layers

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- [Instructor] Adjustment layers are a powerful way to make non-destructive edits, like changing color or tonal values in an image or to a portion of an image. In a perfect world, if we have access to the original RAW file, then we should make those types of adjustments in Camera Raw, Lightroom Classic's Develop module, or the edit stack in Lightroom to maintain the highest possible quality. But there are times when we don't have access to the RAW file, or maybe the area that we need to select and change is easier to select in Photoshop than it is in Camera Raw. So to add an adjustment layer, we can select the Layer menu, and then New Adjustment Layer, and select it from the list. We can also add an adjustment layer using the Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. And we have an entire Adjustment panel that we can also view from underneath the window menu. At the top, we have a number of different adjustment presets. Clicking More will reveal additional adjustments, and hovering your cursor on top of one of these adjustments will preview it in the image area. All right, I'm going to click back to view all. At the bottom, you can also add a single adjustment layer using any one of these icons. A great way to learn about adjustment layers is to click on any of the adjustments and then look at the layers in the Layers panel. So here we have a layer group that contains two different adjustment layers, the color balance and black and white. And when we click on the icon for the adjustment layer, we can see the settings in the Properties panel. Click on Black & White, and we can see the settings there. If I don't want an adjustment layer group or preset that I've added, I can just drag it down to the Trash icon. All right, I'm going to start by adding a single adjustment layer, the Hue & Saturation adjustment layer. We can see that it contains not only the adjustment, but also a layer mask. Some individual adjustment layers also have presets. For example, here we've got a preset to make this a cyanotype or a sepia tone. And you can adjust any of those presets, and then use the flyout menu if you wanted to save your own. Once we save this and give it a name, then it will appear in the preset list for the individual preset in the Properties panel. There are several advantages to using adjustment layers. First of all, they're non-destructive edits, and they're really flexible. So we can refine any of the settings at any time, or we could remove the entire adjustment layer. We can change the opacity of the adjustment layer if it's too strong and we want to see some of the layers below it. We could also change the blend mode for the adjustment layer to blend it with the underlying layers. And we can add multiple adjustment layers. So I'll add a brightness and contrast on top of this, and then just increase the brightness. We can also use the layer mask. So I can tap the B key to select the Brush tool. Use Option + Ctrl on Mac to get a larger brush. Make sure that I am painting with black if I want to hide the adjustment in this area. And now we can see that I've created a brightness and contrast adjustment layer that acts like a vignette in the image. When you're finished working on your image, as long as you save the file in a format that saves layers such as PSD or TIFF, you can open the file at any time and make additional edits to your adjustment layer. You can even limit the effects of an adjustment layer to individual layers or layer groups using clipping masks, as we'll discuss in more depth later in this course.

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