What is it?

The Adjustments panel, and changes to the Curves keyboard shortcuts are likely the most dramatic changes between PSCS3 and PSCS4. On the surface, the Adjustments panel is a convenient method of managing and displaying adjustment layers. Once you dig a little deeper however, you find that the Adjustment panel represents a fundamental change in the way Photoshop works, and the way you work within Photoshop.

The Adjustments panel provides access to all the commands found in the Create New Fill or Adjustment layer menu. You probably know it as the “yin-yang” icon in the layers palette and use it constantly to create new adjustment layers. This method still works, although it is slower than accessing the adjustment layers directly through the icons found in the Adjustments panel.

What’s more important, however, is what happens after you create the adjustment layer. When an adjustment dialog was open in PSCS3 and earlier, you were “locked out” of the rest of the program and prevented from making simultaneous changes to the layer opacity, blending mode or layer mask. No more. With the Adjustments panel, you can concurrently tweak your curve, adjust the opacity and brush on the mask without having to open and close dialog boxes. This allows you to work more efficiently, adding a level of versatility to your tone and color corrections.

Why is it important?

Adjustment layers are essential to photographers wanting to take control over their images. Adjustment layers allow you to perform non-destructive corrections and refine the intensity or effect of the corrections by changing layer blending modes, painting on a layer mask, or decreasing the layer opacity. These changes are now more efficient than ever before. Although it takes some time to relearn your correction workflow with the new method, (I kept activating the Crop tool while making corrections), in the long run, the Adjustments panel results in fewer clicks to open and move between adjustment layers. The Adjustments panel saves you seconds on each adjustment, cumulatively saving you a significant chunk of time throughout your day.

Bonus Tip: Preview Last State: When working on a photo with several layers, I’ll frequently go back and make subtle changes to the adjustments created early in the process to fine-tune my contrast adjustment, or increase a color correction. The Adjustments panel has two unique features not present in PSCS3 which help you preview these secondary corrections and even go back to the original correction.

To the left of the Trash icon at the base of the Adjustments panel are two new icons. The left-most of the two icons allows you to preview the back to the last-used correction on the layer. The right icon discards the updated correction and returns to the last-used correction. Use these if you’re jumping back-and-forth in the layers palette making slight tweaks here and there. If a correction isn’t to your liking you can preview the change, then discard it if necessary.

A tutorial comparing an adjustment layer workflow between PSCS3 and PSCS4 along with tips on migrating to PSCS4 can be found here.