exclude an layer from the adjustment layer

The issue is two-fold - 
1) Majority of users do not understand how Adjustment Layers work. An Adjustment Layer works by encapsulating or compositing ALL layers below the Adjustment Layer. THEN, any effect(s) applied to the Adjustment Layer is applied to THIS SINGLE COMPOSITE. 

So, effects applied to an Adjustment Layer ARE NOT applied to each layer below the Adjustment Layer. Keeping this in mind, a large majority of the comments here are irrelevant. 

Secondly, I feel the application of the Adjustment Layer MAY have been better if it was an Effect OR a Timeline Effect, much like Parenting. With either of these two options, it would have been much easier, I THINK, to specify contiguous layers to be affected by an Adjustment Layer. So, current constructs where a Layer is used to define an Adjustment Layer delimits its utility. 

Perhaps we may yet have an Adjustment Effect (with Pick Whips/Layer Parameters) OR an Adjustment Comp Effect (much like Parenting/TrackMatte).
 

How do these forums consistanly garner condesending responses?  I love these "if for some reasone you need to..."  how about something as simple as if I use a precomp with 30 layers that use add and multiply layers it ruins those effects so I can't just precomp because it won't work. Lets say I want to de saturate a stack of muzzle flashes and not affect the plate layer underneath.  

Try DaVinci Fusion and start living in paradise 🙂

There is more of a fundamental flaw with after effects architecture here that Adobe are not will to admit - Please follow this example. I'm working on a film title here - it's a heavy composite. One of the final stages is to add chromatic abberation to all layers Except the background layer. I cannot precompose because if I do my blend modes will work incorrectly and the alpha channels will create a dark shadow underneath in the main comp. If I add an adjustment layer I can get the desired effect but now the footage is covered in CA that I don't want. If I add chromatic abberation to each layer indivusally I'm met with a black edge banding around each object because it's only applying to that layers individually alpha channel. If I add CA within my title precomps then I my CA is affect by all of the blur and glow affects on the outermost precomp.There is forced compromise here - it is crucial for after effects to add some form of node based work around for situations like this.  - I understand this is probably a project that is best tackled in Nuke, but as a motion designer (not VFX artsist) pulling a favour for a friend - nuke isn't an option. Now I know this isn't a massive deal, but it is a limitation of After effects. Examples attached, and link to the final sequence here 

Thank you. I love how the people all answer "Bleh, bla bla, you aren't using precomps because you don't know AE." But clearly they've not come up with a request that would create a precomp loop. Linking things together gets very annoying, and more time consuming, when you need to link things together between comps, because if you had things parented, if you precomp, you just broke that. So precomp, then go through and fix all of those things. Oh, but you can't just replace a parent by linking position to position with an expression either, because that doesn't keep the offset. So now write a more complicated expression that subracts the difference. Oh, and you had to precomp 50 layers to make the adjustment? So you have to create the expression 50 times. So sorry that it's unnecessarily time consuming, but that's just the way AE works, and you're not using it right...right?

I so hate this answer. I always want to use set matte to replace track matte, but it doesn't. Track mattes work completely independently of position and scale. So if you want to replace it, then you have to be sure you are working with objects that all have the same scale, and now you're going around precomping everything to fix one problem, while creating a bunch more. So, put it on an adjustment layer. Oh shoot, you have a background layer that shouldn't have that? Back to precomp again. Oh, but that broke all your expressions? Well that's just how AE works, adding several days of fixing garbagage because they don't want to admit that adding an effect or button for not being effected by an adjustment layer would often save a ton of time. 

Sometimes you have 3 months for a project. Awesome, plan away. But sometimes you have a few hours. A button that gets you what you want, even though you didn't plan for it, is extremely useful. 

Working with After Effects again after a long period, the adj layer "problem" isn't solved yet. What a pity...! Can't understand why ADOBE don't  develop such things further for their user having better times using AE... It's 2021... Solving such little issues are imho much better for artists/users than "cool" & fancy AI things like in Photoshop...

It's 2021 and we still need a better system for precomps.

Just put the layer that you want to exclude over the adjustment layer

Some people defend their position,in this case Adobe, as if it was politics or their football club. The truth is, the adjustment layer needs to be re designed. If you have 50 layers and you want to apply a stack of effects on layers 40-47 let's say. and keep the rest unaffected,  the only workaround is pre-compose. Sometimes you can't precompose or you don't want to precompose. Basic feature. Much missed.

Hey guys.

I was stuck with the same problem, so I found a way to solve it with minimal changes.

I have a silly 2d animation representing days and nights passing by. To improve the sensation, I put an adjustment layer to tint all layers below every time the moon rises. But the adjustment layers also tints the sun and moon and with my current structure, full of overlaps, it will be a pain to reorder and mask all layers. So I simply duplicate the layer that I was working on and rename it to "MEGA LUMA MASK" and put them just above the adjustment layer. Inside this new duplicated layer, I tint all layers to total black, except for the moons and suns, which I tint to total white. What I got was a perfect luma mask that respects all overlaps without needing to touch the structure. Finally I just set the track matte of the adjustment layers to Luma Inverted!

No pre composes (kinda), no crazy masks. Of course an adjustment layer exception system would be better, but it's a clean, fast and versatile solution.