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One of the big new features in Photoshop CS4 is the Adjustments panel, which
for the first time offers one place that you can go to manage all adjustment
layers in an image. I'd like to take you on a tour of the features
in the Adjustment panel. I have an image here that already has a couple of
adjustment layers in it. I'll tell you more about this peculiar flavors of adjustment
layers in later movies, but for now what I'd like you to see that when
I select one of these adjustment layers, like the Brightness/Contrast layer,
the Adjustments panel changes and shows me the controls for just that adjustment
layer. And if I click on a different adjustment layer in the Layers panel,
I see different controls in the Adjustments panel and I can use these controls
to edit the Vibrance adjustment layer. You've seen in previous movies that I can
change the Adjustments panel from this view to its icon view by going to the
bottom left of the Adjustments panel and clicking the big green arrow. From here
I could add another adjustment layer, as I've shown you how to do already,
by clicking one of the adjustment layer icons, here at the top of the Adjustments
panel. There's another way to add an adjustment layer
from this panel and that's what I would like to show you here and that's by
using one of the adjustment layer presets at the bottom of the Adjustments panel.
The first thing to do here is to select the kind of adjustment layer that you
want to add. So I'm interested in adding a Black & White adjustment layer that
will convert this image from color to Black & White. So I move down to the Back
& White Presets in the Adjustments panel and I'll click the arrow to the left
of Black & White Presets. Then I'll scroll down to see the various presets
available for a Black & White adjustment layer. I'd like to add an adjustment layer that simulates
the look of using a red filter on a camera. So I'm going to choose
High Contrast Red Filter and when I click that choice, several things happen.
First of all in the Layers panel, there's a new Black & White adjustment layer
and the image has been converted to Black & White and it's been converted to
Black & White according to this preset group of settings in the Adjustments
panel. Here at the top of the Adjustments panel there
is another menu that list the various presets and it shows that the High
Contrast Red Filter preset is the currently applied preset. I could just accept
these preset settings or I can use them as a starting point for further customization.
So for example, if I want more than infrared film look to this image, I might
come into the Adjustments controls, click on the Yellows slider and drag it to
the right to brighten the yellow light in the image. There's a lot more to
learn about the Black & White adjustment layer and I'll be coming back to this
adjustment is a later movie. But for now, let's continue this tour of the
Adjustments panel by taking a look at some of the controls at the bottom of the Adjustments
panel. Notice that there is an eye icon here, which
looks very much like the eye icon that you may be familiar with from the Layers
panel. This eye icon in the Adjustments panel does the very same thing
as the Layers eye icon. With that Black & White adjustment layer selected, if
I click this eye icon, the Black & White adjustment becomes temporarily invisible.
So the image once again looks like a color image.
This eye icon comes in really handy for a before and after comparison of how an
image looks with and without an adjustment layer. I'll click that eye icon
again to bring back the Black & White adjustment. The next icon is the Previous State icon.
Clicking and holding this icon displays the last state of the selected adjustments
layer. In this case, it's showing how the image looked before the last
change that I made to the Black & White adjustment layer. In other words, before
I dragged the Yellow slider to the right. I release my mouse to go back to the current
view of the image and if I want to reset the image to before I had dragged the
Yellows slider to the right, I would move over one more icon and click the
Reset icon at the bottom of the Adjustments panel, and if I click that icon
one more time, Photoshop takes me all the way back to the default settings for
Black & White adjustment layer. There are a couple of other icons here at
the bottom of the Adjustments panel including the Expanded View icon. If I click
that, the Adjustments panel gets wider and this comes in really handy for adjustments
that have a lot controls in them, like a Curves adjustment layer or
a Levels adjustments layer. This icon is the Clipping icon. You may remember
in an earlier movie I mentioned that by default an adjustment layer
affects all layers that have visible content that are beneath the adjustment
layer in the Layers panel. This Clipping icon can be used to change that
behavior by limiting the layers to which an adjustment layer applies, as I'll
be showing you in a later movie. There's also a Trashcan icon here and if I
click this icon with an adjustment layer selected and then click Yes, the adjustment
layer is completely eliminated from the Layers panel. And finally
don't forget about the panel menu that's at the top right of every panel group.
If I click the panel menu for the Adjustments panel, I see a number of controls
related to this adjustment, including a quick way to add another adjustment
layer of the different flavor and controls for closing the Adjustments panel
and closing the entire tab group. The Adjustment panel offers one stop shopping
for working with adjustment layers. This is a place to go to create adjustment
layers, to access the controls for all adjustments layers and to
edit adjustment layers. If you're a long time Photoshop user, like all interface
changes, this new panel may take a while to get used to. But once you do get
used to it, I think you'll agree that the new Adjustments panel is a real help when
you are working with adjustments layers.