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In Photoshop CS3, you can use adjustment layers —in addition to adjustment commands — to make tonal and color adjustments that you can later refine, change, or delete. An adjustment layer applies the selected change to color or tonality just as the comparable command would, but using an adjustment layer offers a few major advantages:
- Adjustable adjustments: You can reopen an adjustment layer's dialog box at any time to change the settings.
- Reversible adjustments: You can delete an adjustment layer, removing the change from your image.
- Hidden adjustments: Click the eyeball column to the left of the adjustment layer in the Layers palette to temporarily hide that change.
- Tweakable adjustments: You can change the opacity and blending mode of adjustment layers to fine-tune the effect.
- Limitable adjustments: You can add layer masks and vector masks to your adjustment layers to restrict their effect to only some of the pixels below. And you can later edit the masks as necessary.
Because of the added flexibility, you'll generally want to use adjustment layers rather than adjustment commands in your images. Of course, you still need the Image --> Adjustments menu for those several commands that can't be added through an adjustment layer.
 | Just as adjustment layers provide the flexibility to change your mind, so too does Photoshop CS3 now offer Smart Filters — when working with Smart Objects, you can re-edit filters just as you change layer styles! |
You can add an adjustment layer through the menu at the bottom of the Layers palette and then move the cursor to the type of adjustment layer that you want to add or through the Layer --> New Adjustment Layer submenu. The choices are the same. When you select the particular adjustment that you want to add from the bottom of the Layers palette, that specific adjustment dialog box opens. (Selecting the adjustment through the Layers menu presents you with the New Layer dialog box first.)
The top three options in the menu that you open from the Layers palette are fill layers — layers completely filled with a color, gradient, or pattern. You can add a new empty layer and choose Edit --> Fill to do the same thing, or you can add such a layer through the Layer --> New Fill Layer menu.
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