Adobe Photoshop Elements Layer Menu - Details On Adjustment Layers, Fill Layers, and Layer Content

A fill layer comes with three different options: solid color, gradient, and pattern. A fill layer is a great way to change the color scheme of your photo. If you’re using an image for your webpage and its color scheme is blue, you can add a fill layer to your photograph to make it a blue hue so it fits better within the color scheme of your page. You can change the layer from normal to a different layer option to give it a better texture, and also change the opacity so that the layers below it will show through.

An adjustment layer allows you to change things on your digital photo without making changes on the original image. There are many options to choose from, and most have been explained in the other Photoshop Elements tutorials within this series. You have choices for levels, brightness/contrast, hue/saturation, gradient map, photo filter, invert, threshold, and posterize. I will explain the choices not previously covered:

• Gradient map- A gradient map will allow you to place a gradient layer over the image. You can choose between grayscale maps and using colors, or creating your own gradient. Play around with the different layer options (vivid light is a fun choice) and see what types of images you can create.

• Photo filter- If you’re using a camera that won’t let you add filters to the lens, this is a great way to add effects to your image as a filter would. You can choose common filters such as a warming filter or red tint, or go for a different look such as underwater.

• Invert- Invert layer will take the colors from another part of the image and switch them to a differently colored portion of the image. This will sometimes give great results, and other times it’s best to undo and move on.

• Threshold- This will get rid of any gray within the image. Any tone that is darker than the threshold will be turned to pure black. Any tone lighter than the threshold number will be changed to pure white.

• Posterize- In technical terms, posterizing an image reduces the amount of colors in the image to make it look more like a poster. This is another adjustment layer that is great to play around with to see the sorts of results you can get.

Change Layer Content: While the change layer content menu has a lot of options, it’s very simple. If you create an adjustment layer (for example, we’ll use levels) and then decide you’d rather have a brightness/contrast layer, you can go to change layer content and switch the levels layer to a brightness/contrast layer.

Layer Content Options: The layer content options menu choice allows you to change the layer you’re working with to have different specifications. You can change the filter, color, and density.