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Layer Type · Adjustment

Adjustment Layer

A non-destructive grade applied to everything beneath it — targetable at any PBR channel, not only colour.

An adjustment layer — hue graded across the whole material, live.

What it does

An adjustment layer re-grades whatever shows through it, without altering the layers below — hide it and the original is back. It’s the right tool when a stack is nearly right and just needs a tonal pass over the top.

What makes it more than a colour tool: you can route it to a specific channel. Knock the roughness of everything below down by 20%, or shift only the metallic — the grade doesn’t have to touch base colour at all.

The five operations

Five ways to grade the stack.

Hue / Saturation

Shift hue, push or pull saturation and value across everything below.

Brightness / Contrast

Lift or crush the whole material with two sliders.

Levels

Input/output range plus gamma — the precise tonal remap.

Color Balance

Warm the shadows, cool the highlights — cinematic colour shifts.

Gradient Map

Remap luminance through a colour ramp — thermal, duotone and stylised looks.

In practice

Warm a whole material — or just its gloss.

Targeted grade
  • Hue/Sat nudge hue warm — the whole stack shifts together.
  • → Base Color the default target…
  • → Roughness …or route it here instead to grade only the gloss.
Good to know
  • Non-destructive — toggle it off and the original is untouched.
  • Stackable — layer several grades and reorder them.
  • Maskable — give it a mask to grade just one area.

The layer types

Get TLM on Gumroad — $19.99