Tip Tuesday: Constrain Your Adjustments

The best way to apply an adjustment to a layer in Photoshop is to create an adjustment layer. Click the half-filled circle icon at the bottom of the Layers panel to select and create an adjustment layer (Curves, Levels, etc.). When you create an adjustment layer, all the layers underneath it will be affected by the adjustments that you make. Sometimes you don’t want to change all the layers, you only want to change a single layer. 

With an adjustment layer active, you’ll see a box with a square arrow icon at the bottom of the Properties panel (Window>Properties). Click that icon to “clip” the adjustment layer so it only affects the layer directly under it. Alternatively, you can create the adjustment layer, hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key, and hover your cursor between the layer and the adjustment layer in the Layers panel until it changes to a box with an arrow. Click and it will be constrained to only the layer under the adjustment. You’ll see a little arrow to the left of the adjustment layer’s thumbnail to indicate it’s a clipping layer. To toggle it back so it affects all layers, Option-click (PC: Alt-click) between the layers again to convert it to a regular adjustment layer.