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Adjustment layers to affect other adjustment layers?


Radio Star

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I've got perhaps a bit of an odd one. I've got a picture where I've got two figures in the foreground, one of which is a copy of the other flipped horizontally. I've then got 2 gradient adjustment layers changing the colour of the background and the clothes, using a layer mask to ensure that no skin or hair changes colour. Now what I'm trying to do is to add a hue layer which will change the colour of the gradients. My ultimate aim is to save off a large number of layers, each with subtly different colours which will, eventually, cycle through the whole lot.

If I put a hue layer above one of the gradients and set up a clipping mask so that it only affects one of the gradients, that works fine. So I could, in theory have two separate hue layers and adjust each, but it seems like that's a bit of a long-winded way of doing it and there should be an easier way.

If, however, I merge the gradient layers then the gradients disappear altogether. The layers are still there, but they don't have any effect whatsoever, and the information on the layer changes from the gradient symbol and the mask to the grey and which checks of the alpha channel. On the other hand, if I group them together they remain unchanged, but if I then create a hue layer above them with a clipping mask so that that hue layer should only affect that group, then they, again, cease to have any effect whatsoever. And that's true regardless of whether or not he hue layer is actually doing anything - i.e. whether the "Hue" fader is at 180 or at 0.

Is there something I'm doing wrong?
 
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Rich54

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Have you tried a Hue/Saturation layer without it being clipped? The way you've described your picture, the gradients that you want to dynamically adjust are acting on everything except the skin and hair. What if you put a Hue/Saturation layer above the entire picture---do not clip it to anything---and then once again mask out the skin and hair.
 

IamSam

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Hello and welcome to PSG.

You have a lot of written info here not supported with visual reference. So it's a bit difficult to follow.

If you have used 2 gradient adjustment layers, why not use the gradient editor to alter the 'hue' or color of the gradients?

Why are you merging the layer?
 
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Radio Star

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Have you tried a Hue/Saturation layer without it being clipped? The way you've described your picture, the gradients that you want to dynamically adjust are acting on everything except the skin and hair. What if you put a Hue/Saturation layer above the entire picture---do not clip it to anything---and then once again mask out the skin and hair.

The problem with that is that as it's two separate gradients, it's two separate masks, so I couldn't copy a mask and would instead have to try to paint out everything that I don't want adjusted. Not only would that be imprecise, but it would also probably be more time-consuming and inelegant than using two hue layers.
 

Radio Star

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If you have used 2 gradient adjustment layers, why not use the gradient editor to alter the 'hue' or color of the gradients?

Because then rather than being able to adjust the hue with one slider, I'd have to adjust the 5 or 6 colours in the gradient individually (on each of the two layers). That's by far the most time-consuming way to do it that I can think of, especially as getting in to the editor for an individual colour of a gradient in and of itself is 3 or 4 button presses.

Why are you merging the layer?

To try to adjust the hue of both gradients with just one fader.
 
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Radio Star

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Okay, so this seems to be dead. I'm not sure if illustration will help, but I'll give it a go.

So, let's say that I started with this image (all images are thumbnails which can be embiggened by clicking):



What I want to do is to make it symmetrical and then make everything except her skin and hair have funky colours, like so:



You can see that, although this is just a rough thing I'm doing for the sake of example, if I were to make this properly there's a lot of little fiddly bits, especially around the plants and her hair. It's for this reason that the best way to do it, in my estimation, is to create the gradient and the mask before copying and flipping the image. That way it ensures symmetry.

So my layers look like this:



You can see that I've got the Hue layer at the top but, at the minute it's doing nothing.

Now, what I want that Hue layer to do is to change the colours of the background and ultimately create maybe 40-50 individual pictures, each with slightly different colours. If I adjust the hue as it's set up there then what I get, of course, is this:



Her skin and hair are changing colour, which is what I don't want.

Now, if I were to set up a clipping mask, then the Hue layer would adjust only one side of the picture and not the other. So I could just set up 2 Hue layers and leave it at that. But as I'm looking to produce 40-50 pictures (and to do this for more than one source image) it seems to me that that's going to take twice as long as it should.

If I select both Gradient layers and click "merge layers", what I get is this:



Which looks like this:



Couldn't be less what I want. Creating a Smart Object does exactly the same thing.

Any online guide will tell you that to affect just a certain number of layers with an adjustment layer you need to group them. So that's what I do, I group the two layers, thusly:



All is well, the picture still looks like this:



But, as the Hue layer has not got a clipping mask yet, adjusting the hue fader will still adjust all the colours. So then I add the clipping mask, like so:



And suddenly, without touching anything else, the picture looks like this:



And that's it. I cannot get that Hue layer to adjust just the two Gradient layers. Any attempt to do so simply eliminates the Gradient layers entirely.

Perhaps a better way of approaching this, if it's as much a mystery to the residents of this site as it is to me, would be to ask - if you wanted to achieve the same thing how would you do it, starting from scratch? Remember, you want to create lots of pictures with subtly different shading from each source image, and you want to do multiple images, so the less time it takes you to make each image the better. The absolute ideal would be to only have to paint one layer mask, and to only have to move one slider/click one button/type in one set of numbers in order to change the hue of the background.
 

MrToM

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Using your image below for reference:

layer_panel_MT_01.jpg

Is it absolutely necessary to keep everything 'split' into two halves?

I'd be inclined to combine the two halves, 'background copy' and 'background copy 2', to make a single 'mirrored' layer, one 'gradient map' with a mask created from the two 'gradient map' masks you already have and then a 'hue / Sat' adj layer using the same mask.

Then you'd have just one image, one gradient and one hue / sat layer.

Is that not a possibility?

Regards.
MrToM.
 

Radio Star

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Radio Star

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Using your image below for reference:

View attachment 58431

Is it absolutely necessary to keep everything 'split' into two halves?

I'd be inclined to combine the two halves, 'background copy' and 'background copy 2', to make a single 'mirrored' layer, one 'gradient map' with a mask created from the two 'gradient map' masks you already have and then a 'hue / Sat' adj layer using the same mask.

Then you'd have just one image, one gradient and one hue / sat layer.

Is that not a possibility?

Well, combining the two background copies doesn't change anything. Combining the two Gradients, however, has the effect of getting rid of the Gradients all together. See the 5th and 6th pictures in my earlier post.
 

Radio Star

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Hi Radio star

I made a video to show what smart obects can do for you
sorry that it is in another language

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zkmbq9bf3p0g3qg/gradients and hue saturation.mp4?dl=0

also use of "actions" can help to create 40 files at once

kind regards , colleague

Ah, thank you so much for that. It still looks a little fiddly with having to create a new picture each time, but it seems much easier than any alternate method so far. I'll have a look round the internet to see what I can learn about "actions", but may come back if I have more questions.
 

MrToM

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Colleague has the more elegant solution but you may find this helpful anyway...


Any questions just ask.

Regards.
MrToM.
 

Radio Star

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Colleague has the more elegant solution but you may find this helpful anyway...


Any questions just ask.

Regards.
MrToM.

Just had a chance to try this, and it works like a charm. Exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

Also thanks to Colleage. Actions look interesting, but from what I can deduce they'd be useful if I wanted to edit 40 different pictures to all have a Hue Layer which increases the hue to +50, and then to save each file off as a copy of the original, but not so useful to make 40 adjustments of adding +10 to the hue each time, then saving the picture with a sequentially incremental file name.
 

Radio Star

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why not?
lets try this action (it's possible that it needs to be ajusted for english verson of photoshop)

open a jpg and run the action , it creates 40 layers of different hues

and then goto files - scripts - "export layers to files"

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sdez7uiizngxwcs/PSG.atn?dl=0

I've not had access to my computer for a while, so hadn't had a chance to try this until now. I've just had a bit of a play around with it, and it seems to work very well. I need to do a little experimentation to get it to do exactly what I want, but thank you for showing me a better way to achieve what I want to achieve.

I may come back if I have any questions but, either way, thank you again.
 

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