So what exactly is a layer?
To understand exactly what a Layer is imagine you have a photograph on the table in front of you, now cover it with a thin piece of perfectly clear plastic. Ta Daa! You have just created a Layer. Two Layers to be more precise, your photo is a Background Layer and the sheet of plastic is an editable Layer. You can draw on the plastic with a marker pen, paint on it or whatever you want but the photo below remains totally unmarked and unchanged. Put another sheet on top of the first and draw or paint on it too, you can see the changes you are making but neither the Layer below nor the photograph are changed.
It is exactly the same in Photoshop. You can create as many layers as you want, do what you want with them and see the changes as you make them but the photo at the bottom of the Layer Stack remains untouched. You can turn a Layer on or off by clicking on the eye icon beside it so you can quickly and easily compare the changes you have made with an earlier version of your image.
An Adjustment Layer is just an even more flexible Layer. When you create an Adjustment Layer by clicking on the black and white circle in the Layers Palette, in addition to the New Layer icon you will see a small white rectangle and this is the key to the usefulness of the Adjustment Layer. Lets say you have used Layers to change your image to black and white but would like to keep some colour. Click on the white rectangle and select a paint brush making sure your foreground colour is black. Anything you paint over will now appear in colour, in effect you are selectively"rubbing out" the black and white layer and allowing the colour below to show through.
Got it now? Don't panic if it all seems a bit much, it really is one of those things that is harder to explain than to do. I'm working on a quick tutorial which will appear later this week which will make it all much easier to understand.
Go to www.imagesbygeorge.co.uk to see more of my work.
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