Photoshop CC: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Adding Fill and Adjustment Layers

Just like still images, video clips often look better after you adjust their color and contrast or apply a creative color effect to them (think black-and-white or sepia). You can easily do all of these things with adjustment layers. There will also be times when you want your video to begin or end with a fade in or out to a solid color (say, black), which is the perfect use for a fill layer.

You add fill and adjustment layers to video projects exactly the same way you add ’em to other Photoshop documents. In the Layers panel, activate the layer that you want the adjustment or fill layer to appear above, and then click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the panel. From the resulting menu, choose the kind of layer you want to add, and then tweak the settings that appear in the Properties panel. For example, to start your video with solid black, you can add a black fill layer to the bottom of your video group in the Layers panel (or drag it to the beginning of the video track in the Timeline panel). To add solid black at the end of your video instead, drag the fill layer to the top of the video group (in the Layers panel) or end of the track (in the Timeline panel).

When you add an adjustment layer, Photoshop automatically clips it to the active video layer, so you don’t have to worry about it affecting other video layers. (Fill layers, on the other hand, don’t get clipped to the active video layer and are visible across your whole document.) ...