Unfortunately, Gimp does not have adjustment layers. For me, this is one of the biggest advantages of Photoshop over Gimp. (There are a few other huge advantages of Photoshop). When I first seriously used Photoshop, it blew my mind how simple and powerful adjustment layers truly are. Well, maybe not simple to code adjustment layers, but the concept for using them is simple.
The work-around I use is to duplicate the layer I want to adjust as a backup. This gets messy and hard to manage if I have many layers and my xcf file becomes enormous with all the duplicates.
Krita has non-destructive adjustment layers. I think it is called 'layer filters' or 'filter layers'.
'What I mean by non-destructive editing is that if you decide you don't want a certain correction but it is behind a ton of other corrections in the history it doesn't remove the others as well.' That is one advantage. Another is if you have a layer lower down in the stack, then you can see the changes of the composite image from the changes you make in real time, among others. Of course you don't lose your original information.
'There was another type of layer that had to be copied over because it couldn't be in an adjustment layer it was for highlights and shadows adjustments. Can you do that in gimp too?' I do not understand this question.
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Something I wanted to test in Gimp is using the 'Buffers' dialog to save layers as backups instead of duplicating my layers. I need to look into that and if anyone here does that, then I would be very much appreciate any advice. I've never really tested the buffer feature.
The work-around I use is to duplicate the layer I want to adjust as a backup. This gets messy and hard to manage if I have many layers and my xcf file becomes enormous with all the duplicates.
Krita has non-destructive adjustment layers. I think it is called 'layer filters' or 'filter layers'.
'What I mean by non-destructive editing is that if you decide you don't want a certain correction but it is behind a ton of other corrections in the history it doesn't remove the others as well.' That is one advantage. Another is if you have a layer lower down in the stack, then you can see the changes of the composite image from the changes you make in real time, among others. Of course you don't lose your original information.
'There was another type of layer that had to be copied over because it couldn't be in an adjustment layer it was for highlights and shadows adjustments. Can you do that in gimp too?' I do not understand this question.
*****
Something I wanted to test in Gimp is using the 'Buffers' dialog to save layers as backups instead of duplicating my layers. I need to look into that and if anyone here does that, then I would be very much appreciate any advice. I've never really tested the buffer feature.