Powerful Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers are one of my favorite Photoshop Elements features, so I’ll show you how to use them in this video.

Adjustment Layers allow you to easily edit your photo and apply special effects. But the real power of adjustment layers is that you can apply an edit to only part of your photo—the part that needs it. We’ll do that using the Brush tool.

Video 06-04: Powerful Adjustment Layers (8:44)

Adjustment layers allow you to easily edit your photo and apply special effects. But the real power of adjustment layers is that you can apply an edit to only part of your photo. Open the photo you want to use. I'm using a photo called swiming-man.jpg, which you'll find in your practice folder for Part 6, lesson four. Press Ctrl J in Windows or Command J on a Mac to duplicate the layer. Try an auto adjustment first. I'll choose Enhance Auto Levels, or I could use a shortcut Ctrl Shift L in Windows or Command Shift l on a Mac.

That's better but his face is still a little dark and the lighting gives him some deep shadows on his face, especially his eyes. We can fix that with an adjustment layer. To access an adjustment layer in the Layers panel, click on the Adjustment Layer icon, the divided circle, and choose one of the adjustment layer options. I'll choose Levels again,

The adjustment panel will pop up somewhere on your desktop and Photoshop Elements will create a new levels adjustment layer that contains a levels thumbnail and a white layer mask. I'll drag the Adjustments panel by the tab to the bottom of the Panel Bin to create a new compartment. If you watched the previous lesson, the levels panel will look very familiar and actually it works exactly the same. This image has pixels all the way to the left and right sides of the histogram, so the only slider I need to adjust is the center slider. I'll move it to the left to lighten the photo until his eyes aren't dark anymore.

I won't worry about the rest of the photo because I'm only going to apply the enhanced light to certain parts of the photo. Once you're done adjusting the adjustment layer, double click on the tab to collapse it so it's not in the way. Now let's talk about the white thumbnail attached to the Levels adjustment layer. It's called a layer mask. A mask is a device that allows you to hide part of the layer.

Think of a layer mask like a real mask on a person. The mask creates a special effect on your face. Some masks cover the entire face, and other masks cover only part of the face. An adjustment layer mask is similar. When the mask is white, it reveals the effect of the Levels adjustment over the entire photo. If I fill the mask with black, it will hide all the effect of the Levels adjustment. To fill a mask with black, make sure the mask thumbnail is the active thumbnail. It will have an outline around it. Notice how the outline changes when I click on the Levels thumbnail. I'll click on the mask thumbnail again to make it active. To change the color to black, in the menu bar, choose Edit, Fill Layer. When the dialog box comes up, choose black from the Use menu and click OK.

Immediately the Levels effect disappears. That's because the black mask is hiding the effect like a mask covering a person's face. On a mask white reveals and black conceals. If I choose Edit, Fill Layer again, this time I'll click on Reveal White and click OK. The Levels effect is visible again over the entire photo.

There's a shortcut for inverting the colors on a mask. With the mask thumbnail active press Ctrl I in Windows or Command I on a Mac, that's I for invert, and the mask switches to the opposite color which is black, which hides the Levels effec. Press Ctrl or Command I again and it goes back to white which shows the levels effect. Remember this phrase: White reveals, black conceals. Having the Levels lighting effect show everywhere or nowhere doesn't do as much good though. So let's use the power of the mask to show only part of the effect on our photo.

Get the Brush tool and open Tool Options. Make sure you have the Brush tool icon active and the Brush Mode icon selected. Open the Brush menu and choose a soft brush from the default set of brushes. I'll choose a fairly large brush: 300 pixels. And if you need a different size of brush, you can use the slider to make it larger or smaller. Set the opacity to around 30%... doesn't have to be exact. The mode should be normal.

Close Tool Options. In the Layers panel, make sure the Levels adjustment layer is active and that the mask thumbnail is the active thumbnail. If the mask color is white, change it to black. You can use Edit, Fill Layer and choose black from the menu and click OK. Or you can use the shortcut Ctrl I in Windows or Command I on a Mac to invert. Make sure the foreground color chip is white. If it isn't, click on the double curved arrow icon to switch color chips.

On your photo, click and drag the Brush tool over the area that needs to be lightened. The eyes are especially dark, so I'll brush over the right eye to make it lighter. Every time I brush over this eye, it gets lighter because I'm slowly adding white to the mask, which reveals the Levels Adjustment effect. So once I get that a little bit lighter, then I'll go over to the other eye and do this same thing. Now the reason I like to use a lower opacity brush is that I don't want an abrupt change from one part of his face to another. Building the light up slowly gives me more control. I'll do that just a little bit more. And now I can lighten some other areas. I'll press the Left Bracket key to make my brush smaller. And let's go ahead and do right here by his nose.

And if you do too much, you can always press Ctrl Z in Windows or Command Z on a Mac to undo, and I'll undo a couple of times. Again, I'll press the Left Bracket key and let's do his lips right here.

Then I'll press the Right Bracket key to make my brush larger. And I'm going to do this area right here. So now what I want to do is actually lower the opacity. Let's go back to Tool Options and bring our opacity down to around 10%.

And now I want to make my brush a little bit bigger. So I'll press the Right Bracket key to do that. And I want to go over his entire face... and his neck a little bit. And that's looking pretty good right there.

When you paint like this, you're not actually painting on the man's face. You're painting on the mas. Painting to add white to reveal the effect of the Levels Adjustment layer. To view the actual mask, press Alt in Windows or Option on a Mac and click on the mask thumbnail. This shows the results of my painting. Wherever you see black, the Levels effect is completely concealed. Wherever you see pure white, the effect is completely revealed or visible. Wherever you see gray the effect is only partially visible.

Alt click in Windows or Option click on a Mac on the mask thumbnail again to go back to the view of the image. You can tweak the effect even further by reducing the opacity of the adjustment layer. At the top of the Layers panel, click on the word Opacity and drag to the left to reduce the opacity. Drag all the way to the right to go back to 100%. And that's what I'll do.

And here's another great feature: You can always double click on the Levels thumbnail to bring up the Levels dialog box to make a change to the settings at any time. So I can move the right slider to the left a little bit and add some more light and that looks even better. The actual photo though doesn't change. If I click on the Visibility icon on the adjustment layer the effect is hidden. I'll click on it again. And there you have the effect.

So that's how to use the power of a mask along with an adjustment layer in Photoshop Elements.

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