Using the Adjustment Brush in Photoshop

Adjustment Layers have been present in Photoshop since forever (version 4), allowing users to create editable, non-destructive ways of applying color, saturation, and contrast changes to images. But while each Adjustment Layer comes with a layer mask, which allows for selective application of the adjustment, many users are not familiar with the multi-step process this entails. The new Adjustment Brush, introduced in the July 2024 update to Photoshop, makes the process much more discoverable. Here’s how to use it.

Select the Brush

First, find the Adjustment Brush. It will appear in your toolbar by itself (not grouped with any other tools). If you have Rich Tooltips enabled you’ll have the opportunity to view a helpful video to acquaint you with the tool.

Choose Your Adjustment

Before you start painting, choose the Adjustment you want to work with. Here, I’ve selected the Exposure adjustment, and started painting with it. The effect is much too strong, and while you could lower the Exposure value in the Properties panel, there is a better approach.

Lower the Brush Opacity

You can change the opacity of your brush (as with all Photoshop brushes) using the number keys: 5 for 50%, 1 for 10%, and back to 0 for 100%. Here, using an opacity of 30% allows me to paint in the Exposure effect more subtly, building it up where I want extra strength.

Add an Adjustment

Click the Add New Adjustment button on the floating Contextual Task Bar, and choose your new Adjustment. It’s important to do this before starting to paint with the Adjustment Brush, or you’ll simply add to your existing Adjustment. Here, I’ve chosen the

Hue/Saturation adjustment in order to recolor the model’s hair.

Make It Visible

To make it easier to see what’s going on, I first dragged the Hue slider all the way to the left to produce an extreme effect. Then I was able to paint with the Adjustment Brush (having first set the opacity of the brush back to 100%), the bright blue hair making the painting process that much more visible.

Adjust the Adjustment

The key feature of Adjustment Layers is that they’re fully editable. So now, having painted the hair area, it’s possible to drag the Hue slider in the Properties panel to a more realistic color – in this case, a strong auburn.

Fix the Mistakes

There’s a strong dark blue patch to the right of the model’s hair. That’s due to inaccurate painting: the Hue/Saturation adjustment has affected the background as well as the hair. Because the Adjustment Brush paints on the Layer Mask it’s easy to correct: swap the foreground and background colors (shortcut: X) so you’re painting with black rather than white, and now when you paint you’ll hide the effect.

Pay Attention to Detail

As well as removing the blue cast behind the hair, I also painted in black to hide the color change where it had leaked over the model’s forehead. A small mistake, but a giveaway if you let it pass.

Change Anything

Any adjustments you create with the Adjustment Brush appear in the Layers Panel as separate layers. You can turn them on or off, change their opacity, or change their mode (from, for example, Normal to Hard Light). You can also change the settings of each of the adjustments individually. Here, I’ve changed the Hue of the hair to pink for a more dramatic look. And of course you can continue to paint the effect in and out. I’ve added the pink color to the model’s lips as well.