Two Useful New Adjustment Layers for Photoshop Users

Photoshop just added two adjustment layers that used to force a detour through Camera Raw: “Clarity and Dehaze” and “Grain.” If you edit photos and rely on selective control, the shift is that these effects now live where masks, stacking, and quick revisions are already part of your daily flow.

Coming to you from Anthony Morganti, this methodical video walks through where these new controls show up and why you might not see them at first. Morganti starts with a practical problem: your right-side panels might not match his, so the new adjustment layers can feel “missing” when they’re actually just tucked away. He points to the workspace choice as the usual culprit, then shows alternative entry points so you can get to the same adjustment layers without reorganizing your whole interface. He also flags a naming change that can confuse returning users, where “Color and vibrance” looks new even though it’s an expanded version of the older vibrance adjustment.

Once you can actually find the new layers, Morganti shows what makes this update more than a convenience tweak. The big difference is that an adjustment layer arrives with a mask, which means clarity or dehaze no longer has to be an all-or-nothing move. He demonstrates pushing clarity in one direction for punch and in the other direction for a softer, hazier look, then does the same with dehaze so you can see how quickly the mood swings. The point isn’t to crank sliders until the image breaks, it’s to treat these as targeted tools you can localize to one part of the frame. If you’ve been avoiding clarity because it can turn fine texture into crunchy noise, the masking angle is where your habits can change.

Morganti then leans into selection, because selection is what makes masking fast instead of tedious. He shows an automatic sky selection, applies the new clarity and dehaze layer, and the mask is already built around the sky, so the rest of the image stays untouched. He also demonstrates the manual route: start with a full black mask, grab a brush, paint in white only where the effect should land, and refine by switching to black to erase spill. The part worth watching is how he shifts between “let Photoshop do the selection” and “take over with a brush” without making it feel like two separate workflows, since that’s the real-life rhythm when automatic tools get you 80% of the way there.

The grain adjustment layer gets its own moment, and it’s more practical than the usual “add film vibes” talk. Morganti shows that two of the grain controls stay inactive until you raise the amount, which can make the panel look broken if you don’t know the gating behavior. He demonstrates a smart way to judge grain character: push amount higher than you’d ever keep, adjust size and roughness while the effect is obvious, then back the amount down to something that sits inside the image instead of floating on top of it. He also contrasts this new adjustment-layer approach with the older Camera Raw route, where you’re more likely to feel like you’re editing in a separate room and then returning to Photoshop with changes that don’t live as cleanly in a layer stack. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Morganti.