Why adjustment layers are crap
Ok, they aren’t really. In fact they are very good, they have lots of advantages over working directly on the image, and on pixel layers. I know many professional photographers and graphic designers that swear by them, I also know others (including myself) that use them only rarely and sparingly. Why?
A glance into the “rules” of photography:
Well first of all I want to point out that “adjustment layers” aren’t the real subject of this article, they are just an example, a metaphore if you will. What I’m really talking about is the “rules” that some so called “experts” like to try to impose on other people. What I want to say is very easy and very simple: There are NO rules. Anyone that tries to tell you otherwise is either insecure in their own methods, a blind fanatic of some photo Guru or other or simply trying to sell you something.
The truth is I’m trying to sell you something too, I’m trying to spin an interesting yarn to get you coming back to my site and eventually buy a subscription! However the best way to do that is by trying to genuinely convey to my readers the very best advice I can possibly give. And to do that I’m going to try to sell you on one other concept: *smears blue makeup across his face* FREEDOM!
There’s an awful lot of advice out there, some of it great, some not so great, some of it differing greatly. The only way you can uncover your own optimal workflow is to seek out as much information as you can from as many different sources as you can and then make up your own mind.
But to get back to the original topic lets talk again about adjustment layers. Firstly they are non-destructive, you can create an adjustment curves, or selective colour layer for instance and it applies the effect as a new layer over the top which ‘adjusts’ whatever is underneath. This means you can always come back and fiddle with settings, deepen the curve, bring out the cyans more in the yellows, whatever. They are also quite small, they are really just saved as an equation, rather than a whole layer of pixel information so unless you are masking them they almost add nothing to the file size.
So why not use them? The simple answer is working style. When I first started photoshop I had no idea about layers at all. I always just worked straight on the photo. I made lots of mistakes and made liberal use of the history brush, sometimes having to reset the whole image and start again. Then I learned about about layers and later on adjustment layers. ”Hallelujah” I thought, and started to use them avidly. I immediately liked them, they started to quicken my workflow and enabled me to go back and adjust old settings as I went on with the edit.
But after a while I found that I changed the adjustments less and less and that my layers palette became a jumble of too many layers and adjustment layers to keep track of. Then I’d want to do something like a liquify or lens correction to straighten a horizon or something and bam – everything was off – masks were no longer aligned and I had to do all sorts of fix up work. As my style of work became more and more adventurous having a horde of layers just held me back..and I’d ceased using most of the advantages they offered anyway.
So these days I’m back to working almost directly on the image, normally I’ll create one new layer, make the effect I want, mask if need be and when I’m happy collapse. It’s like my shooting style. I don’t obsess over camera settings and have the camera on a tripod…no, the camera is normally set to aperture priority with maybe some exposure compensation thrown in after looking at the LCD and fire away it is! Then I’ll roll on the ground, climb trees, dodge waves in the surf – all trying to get that flow going, find that great shot, that elusive angle, that perfect moment. I don’t have the camera sitting on a tripod even though I may technically get sharper images because it’s just not my style, I’d miss what makes my shots MY shots and my photoshop work is just an extension of that playful, experimental, creative style.
If you are a photoshop technician spending all your days in a lab somewhere working on other peoples shots, photoshopping backgrounds behind babies and zits out of wedding shots then yeah – I imagine to a technician like that the adjustment layer workflow might well hold enough advantages to be worthwhile. But if you are a creative, artistic photographer who finds things like flow, pace, rhythm, spontaneity etc to be more beneficial, then maybe, just maybe, adjustment layers (or tripods or light meters or whatever) just aren’t for you…becasue I know none of those things are for me and that doesn’t make them right or wrong, there is no right or wrong. Particularly in art!
Maybe you use adjustment layers or tripods or RAW (personally I do use this one) or light meters or whatever, but then again maybe you don’t. It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that your workflow suits your personality and your style and that you achieve the output you desire. I think it’s also beneficial to realise that everything is a journey and there is always more to learn and other viewpoints to contemplate, however just because a so called expert says something doesn’t make it universally true…even the laws of physics as we currently know them are not universally true so why would we expect the “laws” of photoshop or art to be any different?
It is all really dependent on the type of work you are doing. Shooting non commercial work, you can totally get away with ditching the adjustment layers. I have found that working with art directors being able to go back and tweak things to their liking is a big time saver.
I think a lot can be learned by not using them too. You should never be afraid to experiment outside of your safe zone.
I don’t find (adjustement) layers incompatible with the way you work. They’re made to ease the use of the software by providing precise blending technics, sort-of undo/redo and localized processing. In simple photography processing, I don’t find it very useful to have more than 3 layers : one for local corrections, one for enhancement (teeth, eyes, etc.) and one for dodge&burn. Adding a few adjustement layers for contrast, colors, etc. Maximum a total of 6 layers including the background, with each of them having a unique purpose.
I don’t find this too “techy”, more complex or bothering, even for photographers who don’t want to spend time on this (and they might gain some). But maybe I don’t see the whole picture.
If I have to do an overall change (perspective, lens correction, etc.) it means that :
1 – I should have made it at the beginning, and I have to start it all over again ;
2 – I’m happy with the processing as is and plan to do it in the end, so I can flatten the image and continue processing with this one.
Hence it doesn’t conflict with how many layers I can have, cause I’d have the same problem if I had worked on only one layer.
But what I understand from your article is that there is a more artistic worflow/spontaneus feeling of working on only one “destructive” layer.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply Le. Although the point of the article wasn’t really adjustment layers. It was much more general, simply about the fact that there are always different ways to achieve the same effect and although one might have some obvious advantages over another for one person, for another there may be different advantages to be gained doing it their own way. In the end there is no right or wrong, and the proof is in the resulting image. If your workflow works for you and you are happy with what you achieve then by all means keep it up. I am not here to say one way is right and another is wrong, (although I’ve been guilty of that in the past) in fact I am doing just the opposite and encouraging people to learn and try a variety of ways and pick whatever works for you for whatever reason. Art doesn’t have to be logical or follow set rules…