Photoshop

Make a color adjustment

All Photoshop color adjustment tools work essentially the same way; they map an existing range of pixel values to a new range of values. The difference between the tools is the amount of control they provide. For an overview of the color adjustment tools, see Color adjustment commands.

There are two ways to adjust the colors in an image. The first is to choose a command from the Image > Adjustments submenu. This method permanently alters the pixels in the active layer.

The second and more flexible method is to use an adjustment layer. Adjustment layers let you experiment with color and tonal adjustments without permanently modifying the pixels in the image. The color and tonal changes reside within the adjustment layer, which acts as a veil through which the underlying image layers appear.

  1. If you want to make adjustments to a portion of your image, select that portion. If you make no selection, the adjustment is applied to the entire image.
  2. Do one of the following:

    • Choose Image > Adjustments, and choose a command from the submenu.

    • Create an adjustment layer. (See Create adjustment and fill layers.)

    • Double-click the thumbnail of an existing adjustment layer in the Layers palette.

  3. To see your adjustments in the image before accepting them, select Preview in the Color Adjustment dialog box.
    To cancel changes without closing a color adjustment dialog box, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) to change the Cancel button to Reset; then click Reset. This resets the dialog box to the values it had prior to your changes.