Dustspotting and Adjustment Layers

[tcnjdeluca]

I am restoring a photograph in Photoshop 6.0. The original had lost much of its tonality. I used channel mixer to convert it to grayscall and a couple of layers adjustment levels to restrore the tonality. (and make the picture much darker) I then created a new layer and and clicked "use all layers" when using the clone tool. The idea was to do all the cloning on this layer to preserve the orginal image in case i screwed up. However, the clone tool also duplicated the adjustment levels making the clone marks much darker then what I was actually trying to clone. Is there a way to view the picture with the changes I made with the adjustment layers and still use the clone tool on a seperate layer. I imagine I could flatten the adjustment layers and start from there, but I would rather not do that. Any ideas or suggestions?

[jeaniesa]

tcnjdeluca,

When I need to have merged layers but don't want to flatten my image, I create a new layer above everything, then Shift-Ctl-Alt-E. That will merge all layers and "paste" them into the new layer.

In your case, you can do that, then either clone on that layer - or create a new layer above it and clone in the new layer, still using all layers. The merged layer on top should prevent the adjustment layers below it from being applied. After you've done the cloning on the new layer, you can delete the merged layer beneath it if you don't need it for anything else, since I does take up space in the file size.

Jeanie