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I'm always an advocate for a layer-based non-destructive workflow in Photoshop but
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that's especially important when working on older images, where we don't have a
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whole lot of information to work with in many cases.
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And more than likely, there will be significant work done in order to improve
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the appearance of the photo. You can see with this photo, for example,
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I have some blemishes that I would like to clean up and it could use a little bit
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better contrast and it also needs to be cropped to eliminate this frame around
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the edge. And for all of those adjustments, I want
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to try to work non-destructively and that generally means using layers within Photoshop.
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Those can be image layers that contain pixels, much like the background image
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layer that is the basis of this entire image.
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And it can also mean adjustment layers, which essentially are instructions for
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how Photoshop should adjust the appearance of the image.
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And in both cases, we're able to work non-destructively.
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In other words, not touching the background image layer.
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Working with layers also means that we're going to maintain flexibility in terms of
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being able to go back and refine our adjustment.
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Let's take a look at a couple of quick examples.
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I'll go ahead and add a new empty image layer, I'm going to rename this layer cleanup.
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And then I'll choose the spot healing brush tool and I can work directly on the
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image but all of the cleanup work that I'm applying, all of the blemishes that
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I'm removing here, are being removed on a separate layer.
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So, I can go back at any time and correct that work.
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For example, maybe, cleaning up the blemish along the edge here and perhaps
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working on some of these other spots. Now, in this case I'm just doing some
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quick work, so that you can see an obvious change in the image.
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I'm not taking the time to do a very good job here.
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But by turning off the Cleanup layer, you can see the original and then you can the
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result of this cleanup when I turn the visibility for that cleanup layer on.
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And that's accomplished just by clicking on the eye icon to the left of the
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thumbnail for the Cleanup layer. If I turn off the Background Image layer,
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you'll get a much better sense of exactly what I've been doing here.
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I've been taking pixels from other areas of the image and covering up the blemishes.
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So, you can see that I have a variety of what we'll call, clean pixels, which are
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covering up the blemishes on the underlying Background Image layer.
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But if I later decide that some of this work was less than ideal, I can go back
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to my Cleanup layer, I can delete it altogether, I can erase some of the
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pixels off that cleanup layer, or do a variety of other things in order to
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improve the photo. Let's take a look at Adjustment layers as well.
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I'll go ahead and add a curves adjustment in this case, and then I'll scroll down
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on the Properties panel, so I can see my curve, and I'll just apply a basic curve
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adjustment here. Again not trying to get the image to look
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perfect but rather, just giving you a sense of the options that are available.
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And because I'm using an Adjustment layer, you'll notice that the curves
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adjustment is separate from the background image layer.
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So at any time, I can return to that curves adjustment in order to apply a change.
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So I can go back to my Cleanup layer and perhaps remove some of the corrections
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there or go back to my Curves Adjustment layer and apply some refinements to my
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curves adjustments. The point is that by working with layers,
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I'm separating all of my work from the original, so that I'm not harming that
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Background Image layer and I also retain maximum flexibility.