There used to be a feature in Photoshop where you could change the type of adjustment layer by right-clicking and choosing change Adjustment type. This feature has been missing from Photoshop since before CS6. But thanks to a new feature, I figured out a way to get it back.

If you watch the video, you’ll see a basic explanation of how it works as well as how to change the color of an object and all the steps to paint the highlights Im showing you in this tip.

Change type of Adjustment layer in Photoshop

Here is a composite I made with talented musician, Taylor Davis as the model. I turned her violin bow into a magic wand kind of a bow and added a glow to it. In order for it to look better, we will add a highlight to her jacket, but also color that highlight.

Be aware, I’m just choosing something to show how it works and you could use this for a variety of different things, let your imagination soar.

Create a curves adjustment layer and brighten up the image. (All steps in video at top).

Choose the Mask and Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert and fill with black. This hides the adjustment.

We will paint back to adjustment just where we want it to make the new highlight.

Choose a brush, and set it to white as the foreground color and paint on the areas to add the highlight reflection.

You can see how the jacket, violin and surrounding areas look  more realistic now.

This is what the mask looks like after painting.

Here’s the thing. I want to add a colored layer and paint on the same areas and don’t want to reproduce the mask again. (Yes, I can alt/Option drag the mask to replicate it, use a clipping group, or apply the mask to a group. But we are doing it this way, so I can show you the tip that you can apply to all kinds of scenarios. Also this methods is really fast once you get used to it.).

Press Ctrl/Cmd+J to duplicate the adjustment layer

The problem is, it’s a curves adjustment and we want it to be a hue/saturation adjustment instead.

We can’t change this in the Layers panel anymore. Here’s the tip.

Choose the Adjustment Brush for a moment (we won’t paint with it).

Look at the Contextual Task Bar (it has to be here, this won’t work on the main toolbar art the top) and see curves.

Click on Curves and change it to Hue/Saturation.

Notice, it updates the Adjustment Layer type! Personally, I think this is really cool.

Change the hue adjustment to change the color to blue.

I hope you found this little tip useful. Will you use it every day? Probably not, but now you have it under your belt for when you do need it.

Thanks

Colin

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