Change colour and tone with adjustment layers
Curves, levels, hue and saturation, exposure and the other adjustments, added as layers you can change or remove at any time without touching your pixels.
Intermediate7 min readUpdated 25 September 2026Editor · Adjustment layers
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Adjustment layers let you brighten, recolour or grade a design without changing a single pixel underneath. You can reopen the settings, lower the strength, hide the layer or delete it later, which matters when a client asks for the photo to be a little less warm three rounds from now.
How an adjustment layer works
An adjustment layer has no pixels of its own. It takes everything below it in the Layers panel, changes it, and shows the result. Layers above it are not affected. Move it up and it changes more of the design; move it down and it changes less.
- Your original pixels are never changed. Delete the adjustment and the image is back as it was.
- Adjustments stack. Each one works on the result of everything below it, including other adjustments, so order matters.
- Opacity and blend mode work on adjustments too. Lower Opacity to soften an adjustment instead of reworking its settings.
- On a design with boards, an adjustment that belongs to a board only changes that board.
Add an adjustment
There are several ways in. They all add the same kind of layer, directly above the layer you have selected. If that layer is inside a group, the adjustment goes above the whole group, so it still changes everything beneath it.
- Image > Adjustments lists every adjustment, plus Colour lookup (.cube LUT)….
- The Adjustments panel (Window > Adjustments) shows them as a grid of buttons.
- The New adjustment layer button (the sliders icon) at the bottom of the Layers panel opens a short menu, which also holds Colour match from a saved look… and Filter gallery….
- Filter > Filter gallery… has an Adjustments section with a one-line hint for each.
- Press Ctrl+K and type the name, for example curves. On a Mac use Cmd instead of Ctrl.
Once added, the settings appear in the Properties panel. Every adjustment has a reset button (the circular arrow) at the top of its section.
Tone: brightness, levels, curves and exposure
Brightness and contrast
Two sliders, Brightness and Contrast, each from -100 to 100. Use it for a quick lift. For anything careful, use Levels or Curves, which give you control over shadows and highlights separately.
Levels
Levels fixes flat or washed-out photos. Darkest point sets which tone becomes pure black, Brightest point sets which becomes pure white, and Midtones moves the middle greys lighter or darker without touching the ends. Tabs for RGB, R, G and B let you set each colour channel on its own.
The Black, Grey and White pickers are the fastest route to a clean photo. Choose one, then click something in the image that should be pure black, neutral grey or pure white. The grey picker is the one that removes colour casts: click a grey wall or a white shirt in shade and the tint goes.
Curves
Curves is the most precise tone tool. The graph runs from shadows on the left to highlights on the right. Click the line to add a point, drag a point to bend the curve, and double-click a point to remove it. Push a point up to brighten that tone range, pull it down to darken it. A gentle S shape (shadows down, highlights up) adds contrast.
Switch to the R, G or B tab to fix colour casts: lowering the blue curve in the highlights warms them, for example. On the RGB tab there are four starting points: More contrast, Brighten, Darken and Faded film.
Exposure
Exposure (stops × 100) runs from -500 to 500, so 100 is one photographic stop brighter. Offset lifts or crushes the darkest tones, and Gamma moves the midtones. It is the right tool for a shot that is simply too dark or too bright overall.
Colour adjustments
| Adjustment | Settings | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Hue and saturation | Hue, Saturation, Lightness, for All colours or one range | Shifting or boosting colour, or changing only one hue |
| Vibrance | Vibrance, Saturation | Richer colour that holds back on already strong colours |
| Temperature | Warmth, Tint | Warming or cooling a photo, fixing a green or magenta tint |
| Colour balance | Cyan to red, Magenta to green, Yellow to blue, for Shadows, Midtones or Highlights, plus Keep brightness | Grading, such as warm shadows and cool highlights |
| Photo filter | Filter colour, Density, Keep brightness | The look of a coloured lens filter |
| Channel mixer | Red, Green and Blue for each output channel, from -200% to 200%, plus Black and white mix | Custom black and white, or swapping colours |
| Gradient map | Up to five colour stops, presets, Reverse | Duotones and strong colour grades |
| Colour lookup (LUT) | Strength | Applying a grade from a .cube file |
| Colour match (look) | Strength | Matching the colour of a reference saved in Studio |
Change just one colour
Hue and saturation has buttons for All colours, Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues and Magentas. Pick one and the sliders change only that range. Each range takes full effect within 15 degrees of its centre hue and fades out by 45 degrees, so edits blend rather than leaving hard edges. Not sure which range a colour falls in? Click Pick a colour on the image and then click the colour. Greys have no hue, so the picker asks you to choose something with colour in it.
Photo filter and gradient map presets
Photo filter starts at a Density of 25% and has five presets: Warm, Cool, Sepia, Green and Deep red. Gradient map maps the brightness of every pixel onto a row of colours: the darkest tones take the first stop and the lightest take the last. Its presets are Black to white, Duotone violet, Sunset, Teal and orange and Newsprint. Use Add stop for up to five colours and Reverse to flip the order.
LUTs and saved looks
Image > Adjustments > Colour lookup (.cube LUT)… asks for a 3D .cube file, the format most grading tools export. If the file is not a 3D LUT the Editor says so and nothing is added. Colour match from a saved look… uses looks you saved in Studio by opening a reference in a job and choosing Take the look. If you have none yet, the dialog tells you how to make one.
Special effects adjustments
| Adjustment | Settings | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Black and white | Amount (0 to 100, starts at 100) | Removes colour. Lower Amount for a muted, part-colour look. |
| Invert | None | A negative of everything below. |
| Posterize | Levels (2 to 32, starts at 4) | Reduces each channel to a few flat steps for a poster look. |
| Threshold | Level (1 to 255, starts at 128) | Pure black and white. Pixels brighter than Level turn white. |
| Blur | Amount (1 to 80, starts at 8) | Softens everything below, for a background or a dreamy base. |
Limit an adjustment to part of the design
By default an adjustment changes the whole of everything below it. There are three ways to narrow it down.
- Paint a mask. Select the adjustment layer and paint. The Editor gives it a mask automatically and your strokes paint on the mask: the Eraser hides the adjustment where you paint, the Brush brings it back. See Masks.
- Start from a selection. Make a selection, select the adjustment layer, then choose Layer > Layer mask > Add layer mask. The mask matches the selection.
- Put it in a group. Select the adjustment and the layers it should change and group them (Ctrl+G), then set the group's blend to anything other than Pass through (Normal works), or lower the group's opacity. A group set up that way is flattened on its own first, so the adjustment inside only reaches the layers inside it.
Compare before and after
Hold \ (backslash) to hide every adjustment and filter while the key is down. A label at the top of the canvas reads Before: adjustments and filters hidden. You can also run View > Before and after (hold \) from the menu, which shows the before view for a moment. To check one adjustment alone, click its eye in the Layers panel.
Good to know
- Merge down, Merge visible and Flatten image bake adjustments into pixels. After that they cannot be edited. Save a version first if you might want them back.
- Changing a layer below an adjustment makes the adjustment recalculate. On large designs with many stacked adjustments this can make editing feel slower. Hide the adjustments you are not working on.
- The Fill setting in the Layers panel does not apply to adjustment layers. Use Opacity.
- On a phone, adjustments are under the Effects tab, then Adjustments. See Designing on a phone.