Edit part of a photo with the Adjustment Brush Tool

Paint adjustments directly onto an image with the intuitive Adjustment Brush Tool.

Published December 17, 2025

00:01

Introduction

I'm going to show you how to apply creative adjustments to a photo by simply painting on the areas you want to change.

Hi, I'm Colin Smith from PhotoshopCAFE.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to edit individual parts of a photo in a really intuitive way.

This easy-to-use tool allows anyone, even a complete beginner to Photoshop, to choose from a variety of adjustments and simply paint them onto your image.

You can even change the settings after you've applied these creative brushstrokes.

00:27

Painting color changes with the adjustment brush

To start, let's change the pink color in her hair to blue.

We're going to go to the Toolbar and we're going to grab the Adjustment Brush.

So let's go up to the Contextual Task Bar.

If you don't see it go under Window, Contextual Task Bar, and we're going to choose Hue/Saturation, so we can change the color.

Now we can also change the Size of the brush and the Hardness of the brush.

To get a smoother blend, let's take the Hardness all the way down and we can adjust the Size.

If you want to be able to see the size of the brush while you're adjusting it, you can use the right bracket key or the left bracket key to make it bigger or smaller.

Let's turn on Overlay so we can see where we're painting.

And now we're going to paint over the pink part of the hair.

So let's just drag across there.

Notice as we do that a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer is created.

Now we can change the color by going to the Properties panel and adjusting the Hue.

And we're looking for kind of a bluish tint.

I think that looks quite nice, it's round about -124.

As I release, the overlay will come back on.

If we want, we can hide that overlay,

01:52

Refining painted adjustments with brush controls

and now we can continue painting.

Let's also change the right side.

Notice that adjustment just applies directly as we paint.

It looks like we've gone over a little bit.

So what we do is go to the Taskbar and change to the - Tool, and now we can clean that up.

It will remove the adjustment from that area.

02:21

Applying multiple adjustments with object selection

Now we want to apply a second adjustment and brighten up her jacket a little bit.

The way to do that is to go up where it says Add new adjustment.

In the Taskbar, we're going to choose that, and now we're going to select the Brightness/Contrast as the adjustment we want to create.

Notice when we select it a second adjustment layer is created.

Let's change back to the + Tool.

Now we want to select her jacket, but we're going to use the Auto Selection Tools.

We're going to choose Apply to object.

As we roll over, you'll see the whole object appears highlighted.

We only want to select the jacket.

So click and drag a rough marquee around the jacket to tell Photoshop this is what we want to select.

If you look in the mask, notice there's a beautiful selection now of just the jacket.

If we go to Brightness and Contrast, we can increase the Brightness and reduce the Contrast.

And now we're able to lighten the jacket as well.

As you can see, the Adjustment Brush makes it really quick and easy

03:26

Reviewing results and editing adjustments

to make powerful adjustments to your image.

And you can use the built in object selection to help you apply it exactly where you want to.

You can also change any of the settings afterwards and refine your brush strokes using the + and - Brushes.

Note: Stock assets provided are for practice purposes only. See terms.

What you'll learn

Paint adjustments on part of an image

Use familiar brush strokes to paint adjustments wherever you want them. Just choose an adjustment type, like brightness/contrast or hue/saturation, and paint the adjustment directly on your image. Then fine-tune the adjustment settings to get just the result you want, exactly where you want it.

Quickly apply adjustments to a specfic object

Adjust a specific object nondestructively with a few clicks. Isolate an object to adjust using the Adjustment Brush Tool’s Apply to object option. Then choose an adjustment type and customize its settings. You can even add additional adjustments to the same area.

Instruction by: Colin Smith
Adobe Stock Contributor: Kobrinphoto

Try these tutorials with Photoshop

Edit photos to create new images and graphics.

View all plans

Cookie Settings

General information

Cookies are small text files stored by your web browser when you use websites. There are also other technologies that can be used for similar purposes like HTML5 Local Storage and local shared objects, web beacons, and embedded scripts. These technologies help us do things like remembering you and your preferences when you return to our sites, measure how you use the website, conduct market research, and gather information about the ads you see and interact with.

If enabled:

We can improve your experience by tailoring the site and the content to things we think might be of interest
We can better keep track of your preferences — like what language you prefer to use
We will better understand your likely interests so we can provide you more relevant Adobe ads and content on non-Adobe websites and in non-Adobe apps
It will help us improve the performance of our website and those of our partners who use the Adobe Experience Cloud

If disabled:

We won’t be able to remember you from session to session so the experience may not be tailored to your interests
You’ll still have access to the content of the site but certain features that depend on cookies may not function
You’ll still see ads, they just may not be as relevant to you