From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

757 Naming an adjustment layer as you create it

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

757 Naming an adjustment layer as you create it

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. Now, today's technique is a pretty basic one, but it has changed over time and I just learned about the work around recently. Let's say you want to create a new fill layer, such as solid color, or a new adjustment layer, such as brightness/contrast, and you want to name the layer as you create it. That's a pretty easy thing to do on a Mac, but it's a little bit tricky on a PC. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, so here we have a random photograph. Happens to be of a great white shark from the Dreamstime image library about which you can learn more and get some great deals at dreamstime.com/deke.php. Now, to my eyes, the photograph looks a little bit dark and low contrast, and so I'm going to give it some more pizazz with the help of a very basic brightness/contrast adjustment layer. Notice down here at the bottom of the layers panel, we have this black and white circle. If I click on it, I bring up a list of not only adjustment layers, but also these three fill layers right here. I'm going to go ahead and choose brightness/contrast and that's going to bring up the brightness and contrast values here inside the properties panel, but it's also going to automatically name the layer Brightness/Contrast 1. But what if I want to name the layer as I create it? In that case, I just press Control + Z, or Command + Z on a Mac, to undo the creation of that layer. I'll go ahead and hide the properties panel as well. What I generally recommend people do because it works the same across both platforms, is to go up to the layer menu, choose new adjustment layer, and then in this case, choose the brightness/contrast command. Now in my case, it has a keyboard shortcut, Control + Shift + /, that would be Command + Shift + / on a Mac, after the slash, between the words brightness and contrast. And I created that keyboard shortcut by going to the edit menu and choosing the keyboard shortcuts command. That's another way to work. But in any event, if I were to go to the layer menu, choose new adjustment layer, and choose that first command, then I will get a new layer dialog box which allows me to name this layer as I create it. I'll go ahead and add that custom name and click OK. You can now see I once again have the brightness/contrast values here inside the properties panel along with a named layer. However, there is another way to work. I'll go ahead and get rid of that layer, hide the properties panel, and then drop down to this black and white icon. If you're working on a Mac, you can press the Option key and click in order to bring up this menu, then choose brightness/contrast, or any other command you like, and that will force the display of the new layer dialog box. Once again, all you have to do is press the Option key. On the PC, it's a little different. Notice if I press the Alt key, which I'm doing right now and I click, nothing happens. That is a known bug, by the way. I don't know whether it's Adobe's fault or it's Microsoft's fault, or what, but you can't get the menu to come up when you have the Alt key down unless you press and hold the Alt key and then you right click and hold. So it's an Alt + right click and hold in order to bring up this menu. And then if I were to choose brightness/contrast, you can see that once again displays the new layer dialog box, at which point, I'll just go ahead and paste in that name and click OK. Now if I want to adjust these values, then I would just go ahead and press Shift + Enter, that's Shift + Return on a Mac, in order to highlight the first value, which in our case is brightness, and then I'll take this guy up to 30 by pressing Shift + Up Arrow three times in a row and then I'll just scrub the contrast value as you see me doing here. I'm actually dragging on the word contrast. If you want to increase the value in increments of 10, then you press the Shift key while scrubbing. Ultimately I want to take this guy to 50 as we're seeing here. I'll just go ahead and hide that properties panel. Once again, if you're working on a Mac, press the Option key and click on that black/white icon and then just go ahead and choose any one of these commands. If you're working on a PC, press the Alt key and then right click and hold and choose a command in order to force the display of the new layer dialog box. All right, now, are you looking forward to next week? I don't blame you, so am I. We're going to take this boring underwater photograph right here and we're going to turn it into something much more interesting, in which all of these figures appear to be just floating in space. Deke's Techniques, each and every week. Keep watching.

Contents