Adjusting Isolated Areas
 | If you'd rather not have Layer Masks automatically attached to Adjustment Layers, you can choose Palette Options from the side menu of the Layers palette and turn off the Use Default Masks on Adjustments (Photoshop CS2 only). Then, in individual instances where you do want a Layer Mask, you can click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (it looks like a circle inside a square) to add a Layer Mask to the active layer. |
Adjustment Layers wouldn't be so wonderful if they always affected your entire image. To get them to really strut their stuff, you must combine them with Layer Masks which allows you to limit which areas of your image will be affected by each Adjustment Layer. Let's look at all the different ways we can work with Layer Masks and Adjustment Layers.