Jared Heinrichs

  • Technology Blog
  • Winnipeg Computer Repair
  • Winnipeg Photographer
  • Cooking With Jared
You are here: Home / Programs / Adobe Photoshop / Why you should use adjustment layers instead of duplicating an image

Apr 7, 2012 By Jared Heinrichs Leave a Comment

Why you should use adjustment layers instead of duplicating an image

Before you duplicate a layer you should always ask yourself: Can I do the same thing with adjustment layers. I’d say almost 90% of the time when using blend modes you’d be better off using adjustment layers instead of duplicating the layer and then applying the effect.

Here’s an example of what not to do. This is a video tutorial on You Tube showing you how to whiten eyes and teeth.

Obviously I don’t have the same images so I took a picture of my son and apply the same effects plus one more to make the eyes pop even more.

Here’s the picture without any editing. The whites in the eyes look a bit drab. The actual file size of the image on disk was 2.32MB. Opened in Photoshop it becomes 28.8MB

image

If I were to make a duplicate layer look at the file size increase!

image

Now if I remove the duplicate layer and apply a curves adjustment layer to the image look at the change! It’s identical!

image

If you apply the screen blend mode you will see the exact same effect as you would have if you applied the screen effect to the duplicated layer. Let’s do it now.

image

As you can see the blend mode also doesn’t add any size to the image.

Much like the video shown above if you make a black mask on the layer. (Hides everything) and then pain in the effect by using a white brush you can apply the screen blend mode to only the parts you actually want to use.

AFTER

image

BEFORE

image

All the changes only added .9MB in total.

One more thing you can do to really make the eyes pop is by adding a little contrast. Again you can do it with blend modes. Softlight generally gives good contrast results that you can dial back.

Apply a Warming filter Adjustment layer (85) to the image and then apply the blend mode “softlight”. Below is a Before and After of the Softlight applied above the screen blend mode layer.

AFTER (END RESULT)

image

BEFORE

image

Again notice the file size is only up to 30.6MB

Filed Under: Adobe Photoshop

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Categories

  • Board Game Rules
  • Camera
  • Computer Hardware
    • Blackberry
    • drivers
    • iPad
    • Magic Jack
    • USB
  • Damn Small Linux
  • Exam Notes
  • Facebook
  • FREE Flashcards
  • Games
    • PC
      • League of Legends
    • Wii
    • xbox 360
  • Music
  • Networking
    • Cisco Certification
    • Mitel
    • Palo Alto Firewall
  • News
    • Google
    • Microsoft
  • Operating System
    • Active Directory (2003)
    • Android
    • Command Prompt
    • Damn Small Linux
    • Group Policy
    • Hyper-V
    • IIS
    • ISA 2006
    • Mac OS X
    • Microsoft Exchange Server
    • Powershell
    • Security
    • SME Server
    • Terminal Server 2003
    • Ubuntu Linux
      • Adito Web SSL VPN
      • OpenVpn-als
      • Webmin
    • Virtual Machine Manager
    • Windows 2003 SBS
    • Windows 2003 Server
    • Windows 2008
    • Windows 2008 R2
    • Windows 2012R2
    • Windows 7
    • Windows 8
    • Windows Command Line
    • Windows Deployment Services
    • Windows Server Backup
    • Windows Vista
    • Windows XP
  • Phones
  • Photography
  • Photos
    • Animals
    • Misc
    • Nature
    • Portraits
  • Portfolio
  • Programming
    • CSS
    • HTML
    • jQuery
    • MySQL
    • PHP
    • Script
  • Programs
    • Acrobat
    • Acrobat Reader
    • Adobe Dreamweaver
    • Adobe Illustrator
    • Adobe Photoshop
    • Anti-virus Software
    • Antivirus
    • Backup Exec
    • Bittorent
    • Blackberry BESADMIN
    • Internet Explorer 9
    • Lightroom
    • Microsoft Office
    • Netbeans
    • Onenote
    • Outlook
    • Shelby
    • Sysprep
    • Trend
    • Video Editing
    • Visual Studio
    • Windows Live Writer
    • WireShark
    • XP Mode
    • Zarafa
  • Recipe
  • Review
  • Software Links
  • Troubleshooting
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos
  • Web Applications
    • Brage
    • Google
    • Spiceworks
    • Wordpress
  • Web Browsers
    • Internet Explorer
  • Web Server
    • XAMPP
  • Winnipeg
    • ISP

Try searching this site!

Copyright © 2021 Winnipeg Web Design