Adjustment Layers

There are times when you want to make large scale, or "global", changes to your painting.  Things like overall contrast or color tint.  Adjustment layers provide a fantastic solution for this type of challenge - and make traditional painters extremely jealous.  

If you're not familiar with the 'masking' I talk about in the video, here are three videos to clarify the subject:  Masking 101 pt. 1, Masking 101 pt. 2, Masking 101 pt. 3

Comments

[Simon]

If you Alt+Click between an adj. layer and a normal layer, the adj. mask will only effect this layer - i use that often when i just effect a particular layer without changing the layers below.

[Joshi]

As mentioned in the video, but not really explored, adjustment layers are also really helpful if you want to adjust the values of multiple layers without flattening them. Say you wanted to adjust the levels of an entire piece, with normal levels, you would have to flatten your image down (or create a new layer with the image flattened) and then apply. With adjustment layers, you can affect the whole document without flattening or just the layers beneath the adjustment layer if you want some layers to not be affected.

"But Joshi, what about layers underneath the adjustment layer that I don't want affected?" I hear you ask. Well, this is where Groups come in. I can't recall if Groups have been explored fully on this site yet, but they're not just a nice organizational tool, they can also be used to isolate layers and effects.

As some who've used Groups may have noticed, Groups can use blending modes just like normal layers can, with one difference being a new layer mode call "Pass Through", which groups are set to by default. What "Pass Through" means is that whatever layer styles or adjustment layers are present in the group will affect all layers below, whether they're in the group or not. But, if you change the groups layer mode to "Normal", then it confines these things to only affect layers in the group and not outside the group.

So, for example, let's say you have a picture with 4 layers and you want a Levels adjustment layer to affect everything apart from the bottom most layer because it's your background or something (I know you can use the mask for this as Matt demonstrated, but sometimes that's not as practical). What you would do is put the top 3 layers into a group, set the group's blending mode to Normal instead of Pass Through, and then apply the adjustment layer inside the group above the three layers. And voilá, your background layer is left untouched by the Adjustment layer.

[Fred Lang]

Nice, Joshi! I do love masking--it's great to be reminded of the added functionality of them. A+!

[Simon]

@ Joshi

Thanks for sharing!

[Barry]

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thanks Matt and thanks Joshi for going into further detail.

[chu]

Can You Please make video about drawing superrealistic human/faces with pores winkkless super detailed skin textures!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I will Buy the videos !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Richard Cherry (Siriusartworks)]

Good lord...For as long as I have been using PS I never new these existed :p

Another excellent tutorial. Thank you.