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I am trying to adjust the colour of a single layer in photoshop. I have tried using adjustment layers, layer masks and clipping masks, but everything I have tried just affects all the layers or groups below. I am going crazy. Does anyone out there know if this is possible?

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    Hi Lesley, welcome to GDSE and thanks for your question. Could you post some more info about what you have tried, and maybe a screenshot of your efforts? That'll make it easier to determine how we can help you. If you want to know more about the site, please see the help center or ping one of us in the Graphic Design Chat once your reputation is sufficient (20). Keep contributing and enjoy the site!
    – Vincent
    May 26, 2015 at 10:18

3 Answers 3

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If you add a adjustment layer to the layer you want to adjust you then hold the alt-key down while clicking on the adjustment layer. The layer will then move a bit to the right and now only affect the one layer below.

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I think you just need to combine some of your methods. The way I would approach this is:

  1. Put the pic you want to edit on one layer
  2. Clone the layer so you have two identical layers
  3. On the top image, use a layer mask to hide everything you want to keep the 'normal' colour.
  4. Now make whatever colour adjustments you want. Your changes will only apply to the front layer, leaving the stuff you wanted to leave unchanged showing through from the back layer.

Once you have it the way you want it, you can merge it back to a single layer if you wanted to.

I think where you might be getting stuck is that you are using adjustment layers to change the colour. These will apply to everything underneath the adjustment layer. Make sure you just adjust saturation, hue, etc or use a layer effect on the layer you want to change.

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For example you want to change the color of the bricks as shown below.

enter image description here

Select the area of bricks of which you need to change the color.

enter image description here

Press Ctrl+J to create a layer via copy enter image description here

Once the layer is made, as shown in the figure, add the adjustment layer

Make sure the adjustment layer is grouped with the layer below it. All the adjustments will be now applied to the area under that layer.

enter image description here

Final Image will be something like this:

enter image description here

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