Ps tips #1

Today I'm starting a cycle of journals about ps tools. You can make a request on topic here Will someone be interested in ps tips?

Today I want to talk about great but underappreciated adjustment/fill layers:

1. Solid colour and other fill layers.


Simply filling all image with picked(foreground) colour.
It doesn't increase psd size as much as empty layer filled with "paint bucket tool" (this works for all adjusment/fill layers) . When there are 150+ layers in your work you'll feel the difference.
Perfect to use for drawing lighting instead of drawing on empty layer. For the first time it may be uncomfortable but as soon as you get used to it - advantages are obvious. Working on layer mask you can easily check the areas where you've applied the effect simply holding "alt" and clicking on the mask, good option, especiallly when you use blending modes.


"Gradient" and "Pattern" work similar, I won't go into detail on them.

2. Vibrance
Affects saturation of the image.

I recommend to use "vibrance" tool when you need to edit saturation of the whole image instead of using saturation slider in "hue/saturation".
This tool has two sliders "vibrance" and "saturation"
"Saturation" affects all colours of the image equally, "vibrance" mostly affects muted colours, that helps to avoid oversaturation of already saturated colours and a bit protects neutral colours from unwanted tints to appear. Use both to achieve best result!
Compare:


3. Color lookup
CS6+, kind of toning, based on lab
This tool has some presets like "drop blues" or "night from day" so you can do it in one click. It's possible to use external program like "3dlut creator" to make your own presets, that makes abilities of this adjustment layer almost unlimited.


Next journal will be about curves entirely!

Which adjustment/fill layers you use most of all?