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Using Adjustment Layers in Photoshop
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Posted on January 16th, 2009
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Adobe Photoshop
Hi there! In this tutorial i'll be telling you how you can use Adjustment Layers to your advantage in Adobe Photoshop! For this tutorial i'm using Adobe Photoshop CS4, but many of the hints here will work on older versions of Photoshop as well!

I'll be using a stock image as an example. I'll be using an image of a Church taken by stock-of-ace's on deviantArt. I have scaled the image down for the sake of this tutorial, but if you want to use it, it's there.

First of all, lets take a look at the Photo Filter Adjustment layer. To get this, go to Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Photo Filter. A box will pop up (In Photoshop CS4 this box will display on the right of the screen) asking what effect you wish to apply to the image. You can use a preset colour or you can pick one of your own, the choice is up to you! Here i'm going to use a warmer colour, and i'll give it a density of 50%. You don't have to use the same settings as me, remember to experiment! That's the key to becoming good with Photoshop!

Notice how the image looks warmer now? It almost looks like it's in the evening now, rather than in the middle of the day!

You can apply Gradients to your adjustment layers to make the effect apply to a certain part of the image. Here I used a gradient on the sky. Notice how the sky in the below image is the same to the original picture, but the rest of the image looks like that in the image with the Photo Filter?

Another useful Adjustment Layer is the Selective Colour Adjustment Layer. To get this go to Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Selective Colour. Another box will pop up asking you what to do. Below is the stock image that i'm using for this (Scaled down). The stock image is Road View by stock-of-ace on deviantArt.

Here, we'll try to change the colour of the plants on the side of the road, without changing the colour of everything else. Go to Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Selective Colour.In this example I tried to get it to look like Autumn by using the following settings:

Here's my result:
Ta-daa! Kind of looks like Autumn now, right?

Like with gradients, you can use a Brush to make parts of the adjustment layer to apply to certain parts of the image. Here I used a big fuzzy brush on the left side of the image. Now one part of the image looks like Summer, and the other part looks like Autumn!

Lets have a look at the Colour Balance Adjustment Layer. The stock image i'm using for this is Healy Pass by SunOwl on deviantArt. Here's the original version (scaled down for the sake of the tutorial):

To get the Colour Balance Adjustment Layer go to Layer >> New Adjustment Layer >> Colour Balance. Ultimately the key to this (like everything else) is experimentation. Just play around for a bit until you get something that you like, and remember that you can change the Shadows, Highlights and the Midtones using this. Don't feel that you have to edit each one though, I rarely find myself editing the Shadows when i'm using the Colour Balance Layer.
Here's the result:
Now, it looks okay, but not fantastic or anything. Something I find myself doing with Colour Balance layers is putting a Black and White layer underneath it. To get a Black and White layer go to Layer >> Adjustment Layers >> Black and White. Then place it in between your image and the Colour Balance Layer. This is the effect that I got by doing this:
Not too shabby, eh?

If you don't like the effect that you get from using a certain adjustment layer, you can change the blending options of the adjustment layer(s) to see if that improves the look of things. Here's what I got by changing the Colour Balance layer above to Soft Light:

Thank you for reading this tutorial, I hope that some of you guys found it useful.
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