Layer has turned black and white and I can't turn it back!

By now many may have worked it out. I was one of those ones that still could not figure it out (fat fingers). I tried something, that I did not read about. I dublicated the layer and the color was retreived on the new layer. 

---

@Justine5D22 wrote:

My finger slipped as I was doing a Cmd_ to zoom out and somehow my layer has turned black and white. \

---

Hi @Justine5D22 

When your finger slipped, you hit Shift + - (minus), so instead of zooming out, you cycled to the last blending mode (luminosity).

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/using/keys-using-blending-modes.html

~ Jane

Justine, I apologise in advance for what is going to be a useless reply, but in the twenty plus years I have been using Photoshop, I have had the mysterious lost colour syndrome affect my image, and never had the slightest clue what caused it.  The sort of desperate acts I have used to try and resolve it include hitting Escape, going in and out of Quick Mask, turning off two channels and hitting RGB to turn them all back on again.  AFAIR I have never had to save, close, restart and reopen, but I would not stake my life on that.

In your case I would look at the Options Bar because it sounds like you might have inadvertently used a little known shortcut.  It is far from a bad reflection on the user when this happens as it shows you to be lightning quick with the keyboard, and when weird stuff does happen in the Options Bar, that's a sign of an advanced user, because only experienced users know all the tricks and tips available via the Options Bar.

OK< I did warn you this was not going to be a particularly useful reply, but you do have my sympathy.  (I bet you had already fixed it by now.)