Correct use of Adjustment Layers?

Update: Colin Smith just posted very insightful tutorial on this question... why someone might want or need more than one AL in a project:

https://youtu.be/MnbAKqtdamk

There are a number of good uses of ALs. For such things as putting effects across several clips with one control setting, of course. But there are times that stacking so many layers of say color work on a clip is best done breaking things up with ALs also.

Jamming them on top of clips for everything, yea, that's stupid. But not using them when they improve the workflow ... less than optimal.

And yea, you're using your brain for this pretty well there ... 😉

Neil

Thanks to both of you... so I'm not crazy. I definitely don't need to "create a new adjustment layer" every time I may want to use one.

And, although I can think of valid uses for them, I do agree that they're not as useful as some tutorialists claim. "Don't apply effects to the clip... put them on an AL instead. So you don't actually change the clip." Uh, what? Nothing I do to a clip in the timeline is destructive anyway. ??? It can all be turned on or off at any time. That logic has never made sense to me, but lots of YouTube teachers say it. Using ALs to add effects to only one clip just clutters the timeline, in my opinion. Also, it would potentially complicate things by affecting all the tracks underneath... if you only want to affect the one track, just put the effects straight on that clip, duh. 🙂

Near as I can tell, ALs are really only useful in situations where you want to, in one motion, affect multiple clips the same way. Either several clips stacked on each other, or several clips strung consecutively. There is a lot of overlap in function with nesting, which I love and use all the time. But they're not exactly the same. This is the best I've figured out so far, but again... I'm the beginner here. So what do I know?

It's probably useful to know the genesis of adjustment layer is from photoshop, which acts on only one picture ( aka frame ? ). You can adjust many things using the adjustment layer like a 'trial'... see what it does and adjust it, delete it, whatever.

To apply that 'layer' to clips is a bit tricky in programming terms, but the principle is the same.

There is ( I've noticed over the years here ) an over reliance on adjustment layers because it makes things faster and it's not baking in an effect or adjustment ( although that can also be turned off or deleted for a clip)

Plus you can span many clips ( similar to paste attributes but only that particular adjustment).

In my opinion it is over design ( attempt to make things easy and fast and so on ).

Many people have problems with some things not liking adjustment layers that also have other things adjusted ( on clip level, like color correction or other stuff ).

Just cause it's there as an option doesn't mean it's the best practice. In my opinion it is stupid to use them for video.

( people aren't stupid for using them, I would be stupid to use them myself ).

🙂