Take advantage of adjustment layers (Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3/CS4)

Have you ever adjusted the Curves of an image or tweaked the Levels and found the results less than appealing? Or maybe you just wanted to experiment with a few different adjustments without actually applying them to your image. Well, you can do this quite easily using adjustment layers.

Just open the Layers panel and click the Create New Fill Or Adjustment Layer button at the base of the panel. Then, select an option from the resulting pop-up menu. Upon doing so Photoshop creates an adjustment layer in the Layers panel, where you can make changes without actually affecting your original image. CS4 users have the Adjustments panel which eliminates the need to work through the Layers panel, but this method still works as well.