(soft beat melody)
- Adjustment layers are a way
for you to apply adjustments non-destructively
to your photographs.
This here shows a list of all
of the adjustment layers that you have to work with.
In this chapter, I'll be reviewing several
of the adjustments you're most likely going to use
for photographic editing.
Here, you can see that the adjustments
that are in blue are the ones
that I'm going to be showing you throughout this chapter.
As you can tell I won't be going through
every single adjustment,
instead, I'll be showing you only those
that I feel are most helpful
when editing photographs.
Let's jump over to Photoshop,
to see how adjustment layers work.
I have Photoshop opened,
and first I'm going to kind of review
what I have set up here in the workspace.
At the very top I have the adjustments panel open,
below that I have the properties panel
and then just below that is the layers panel.
These are the only three panels
that I'll need to work with
when applying adjustments to my photos.
Adding an adjustment layer is as simple as
clicking one of these options in the adjustments panel,
simply click and then if you look down
in that properties panel,
you'll notice that it's changed a bit.
The properties panel is going to show you the properties
of whichever layer you have selected.
When you're working with adjustment layers
it's going to show that specific adjustment.
Right now it's showing curves
because I just added that to the layers panel.
If I were to add a second adjustment layer,
if you notice down in the layers panel
the photo filter adjustment is now highlighted
and the properties have changed.
If I go into that layers panel
and click on the curves adjustment
it's going to show me the properties for that layer.
I'm going to go ahead and just highlight these two layers
and delete them so we can kind of start over,
and I can show you some other ways that you can
actually apply an adjustment layer.
In the layers panel,
if you click on that half black and white circle
you'll see a popup of several adjustment layers.
So, basically anything that's starting
from that brightness and contrast all the way down,
those are going to be the same adjustment layers
that you see in that adjustments panel.
You can also add adjustment layers through the menu.
If you go up to layer, new adjustment layer,
then you have all of those options here as well.
I'm going to go ahead and add a black and white adjustment
and when I do that from the menu option
you get a popup that you don't see with those other options.
You can make changes to this if you want,
such as adding a clipping mask,
you can even add a color to that layer,
it doesn't actually affect your image,
it's just a way for you to kind of organize your layers
if you have a lot of them going on.
You can even change the blend mode and the opacity from here
but these options are also available in the layers panel
so you don't have to worry about this
if you're adding through the menu
just go ahead and click a okay.
Over the properties panel,
there are some options here at the bottom,
the eyeball is going to toggle the visibility
of that adjustment.
You can also go into the layers panel
and click that eyeball on the left,
which does the exact same thing.
There are a few here that are grayed out
and that's because they are not quite applicable yet
but I'm going to show you how they work
and I just kind of have to set it up a bit.
So, I've added this black and white adjustment,
I'm just going to make a few changes
to some of the sliders here,
so it's a little bit different than the default settings.
So, I'll increase that red slider,
I'll make the greens a touch darker
and I'll try to make that sky a little bit darker as well.
Now, I can toggle the visibility of that layer
and the other two options next to it have become active.
This option with the eyeball
and the little curvy arrow,
allows you to toggle the previous state
as I press and hold that and then release,
you'll see that it's toggling
what was the previous state of that adjustment.
And in this case it's just the basic
black and white adjustment.
So, if you want to get a feel for,
the kind of the changes that you've made along the way
then that's a good option to use.
Otherwise you're stuck
with just toggling the full before and after
and if you want your image to be black and white
for example, that's not really going to tell you
and show you what's changed in the photo.
Now, if I were to make more adjustments to this,
I'll just increase the yellows there.
And I go back to that toggle state,
it's still bringing me back to
that original black and white adjustment.
So, if you're kind of playing with an adjustment layer
and you want to see what different settings do,
so maybe you've applied some settings
and then you want to make changes
but kind of go back to that previous state of adjustments.
What you'll want to do, is go to the layers panel
and then click on a different layer,
then go back to that adjustment,
now you can make those edits.
And if I go back to that toggling of that previous state,
it's going to show me what it looked like
just before I clicked off of that adjustment.
You can also reset all of the adjustments
that just takes them all the way back to their default.
And here, I just had to click it twice
just to kind of go backwards a few steps.
And you can also delete the adjustment layer
from the properties panel as well,
just by using that little trash icon.
So, I'll go ahead and click that
and now the adjustment layer is gone for my layers panel.