{"course":{"slug":"image-editing","title":"Editing an Image","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/image-editing","level":"beginner","track":"create"},"lesson":{"slug":"groups-clipping-and-pass-through","title":"Why an adjustment stopped working when you put it in a folder","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/image-editing/groups-clipping-and-pass-through","position":15,"of":78,"minutes":8,"answer":"A group defaults to Pass Through, where adjustments inside still reach the layers below.","keyIdea":"A group defaults to Pass Through, where adjustments inside still reach the layers below, and giving the group any other blend mode or an opacity below 100 isolates it into its own buffer so those adjustments become local."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## The symptom that sends people to forums\n\nYou have a working file. A Curves layer near the top darkens the whole image. You tidy up by dragging a few layers into a group, and the darkening changes strength, or stops reaching the layers underneath entirely. Nothing was edited. The behaviour changed because a group is not only a folder.\n\n## Pass Through against Normal\n\nA group has a blend mode like any layer, and its default is a mode no ordinary layer has: **Pass Through**.\n\n**Pass Through** means the group is purely organisational. Everything inside renders as though the group were not there, so an adjustment layer inside the group still reaches down through the group's floor to affect the layers below it.\n\n**Normal**, or any other blend mode, makes the group **isolated**. The contents are composited together into their own private buffer first, and only that finished result is blended onto the layers below. An adjustment layer inside now only affects the other layers in the group. It cannot see out.\n\nThat is the whole mechanism, and it explains the symptom exactly. Setting a group to Normal to give it a 60 per cent opacity, a perfectly reasonable thing to want, silently converts every adjustment inside it from global to local.\n\nIt cuts both ways, and the second direction is the useful one. If you want a colour grade to apply to just one part of a composite, put those layers and the grade in a group and set the group to **Normal**. The grade is now fenced in, with no clipping and no masking needed.\n\n## Group masks apply to everything inside\n\nA mask on a group is applied to the group's composite result. Paint black on it and everything in the group is hidden there, regardless of each layer's own mask.\n\nThis is the cleanest way to build a complex local edit: three or four adjustment layers that together do something specific, in a group, with one mask on the group defining where it happens. Revising the region means painting one mask rather than four.\n\nBe aware that layer masks inside the group and the group's own mask multiply. A pixel at 50 per cent on a layer mask inside a group whose mask is also 50 per cent at that point shows at 25 per cent. Chains of soft masks can fade away faster than you expect, and this is usually the reason.\n\n## Clipping inside groups\n\nA clipping mask makes a layer show only where the layer directly beneath it has pixels. Inside a group, clipping works against the layer below within that group, and a clipped stack cannot reach outside it.\n\nThe useful combination: a cut-out product layer, with a Hue/Saturation layer clipped to it and a Curves layer clipped on top of that, all in one group. The two adjustments hit the product and only the product, the group holds them together, and the group's mask can then remove the whole arrangement from part of the frame.\n\nThe bottom layer of a clipping chain is the **base**, and its transparency defines the shape. If you later rasterise or fill that base layer edge to edge, everything clipped to it suddenly applies everywhere. That is the second forum question this lesson exists to answer.\n\n## Nesting, and where to stop\n\nGroups nest. Three levels is usually the practical maximum before navigating costs more than the tidiness saves. A workable convention for a composite:\n\n```\n[group] OUTPUT          (sharpen, resize copy — off while working)\n[group] GRADE           (global colour, vignette)\n[group] SUBJECT         (cut-out + clipped adjustments + shadow)\n[group] BACKGROUND      (plate + its own tone)\n        base image\n```\n\nEach group set to Pass Through unless it needs to be fenced. Each with a name that says what it does rather than what it is.\n\n## The free tools\n\n**Photopea** implements Pass Through and Normal groups with Photoshop's semantics, and reads and writes them in PSD correctly. This is one of the places where it earns its reputation.\n\n**Krita** has group layers with a *Pass Through* toggle that behaves the same way, plus a *Inherit Alpha* button which is Krita's version of clipping.\n\n**GIMP** has layer groups, and its default is closer to isolated: a group composites internally and the mode applies to the result. GIMP added a pass-through mode in 2.10, and it is not the default, so a PSD built in Photoshop with adjustments reaching out of groups will not render identically in GIMP. If you exchange layered files with GIMP users, keep adjustments outside groups or flatten before handover.\n\n**Affinity Photo** has groups with pass-through behaviour and, unusually, allows adjustment layers to be nested as children of a single layer without a group at all.\n\n## What this does not solve\n\nGrouping is organisation, not isolation of *cost*. A group set to Normal has to composite its contents into a separate buffer before blending, which uses more memory than pass-through and can be slower on a large file. On an eight-gigabyte laptop with a 40-megapixel document, converting several big groups to Normal is a noticeable slowdown, and that is a real reason to reach for clipping instead where clipping will do.\n\nAnd one structural limitation: a group can be masked and blended, but it cannot be referenced twice. If the same arrangement of layers needs to appear in two places, you are copying it, and the copies will drift. Smart objects (the next lesson) are the answer to that, and they bring their own costs."},"check":{"question":"An editor puts four layers, including a Curves layer that was darkening the whole picture, into a group. To fade the group slightly they set its opacity to 80 per cent. The rest of the image immediately becomes lighter. What has happened?","options":[{"text":"The opacity change halved the Curves layer's own strength, so the darkening is now applied at 80 per cent everywhere.","correct":false,"tempting":"Applies the opacity uniformly to the whole document, which is not what a group opacity does: layers outside the group are unaffected by it in any mode."},{"text":"Dropping below full opacity forces the group into isolated rendering, so the Curves layer now only affects the three layers inside it rather than the image below.","correct":true},{"text":"The Curves layer lost its mask when it was moved into the group, so it is no longer applying where it used to.","correct":false,"tempting":"Invents data loss: moving a layer into a group carries its mask with it, and a lost mask would make an adjustment apply more widely rather than less."},{"text":"Group opacity is applied before the contents are composited, so each internal layer's effect is multiplied by 0.8 and the cumulative result is much weaker.","correct":false,"tempting":"Gets the order backwards: the contents composite first and the opacity applies to the finished group result, which is precisely why the group must isolate."}]},"prev":{"slug":"the-layer-stack-and-order","title":"The same three edits in a different order give a different picture","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/image-editing/the-layer-stack-and-order"},"next":{"slug":"smart-objects-and-linked-files","title":"One file, forty mockups, one change","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/image-editing/smart-objects-and-linked-files"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'Why an adjustment stopped working when you put it in a folder', in Editing an Image. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/image-editing/groups-clipping-and-pass-through (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"Why an adjustment stopped working when you put it in a folder","courseTitle":"Editing an Image","module":{"index":2,"slug":"the-non-destructive-workshop","title":"The non-destructive workshop"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"A group defaults to Pass Through, where adjustments inside still reach the layers below, and giving the group any other blend mode or an opacity below 100 isolates it into its own buffer so those adjustments become local.","hero":{"kind":"plate","image":null,"alt":null,"caption":null},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"the-symptom-that-sends-people-to-forums","runs":[{"text":"The symptom that sends people to forums"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"You have a working file. A Curves layer near the top darkens the whole image. You tidy up by dragging a few layers into a group, and the darkening changes strength, or stops reaching the layers underneath entirely. Nothing was edited. The behaviour changed because a group is not only a folder."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"pass-through-against-normal","runs":[{"text":"Pass Through against Normal"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A group has a blend mode like any layer, and its default is a mode no ordinary layer has: "},{"text":"Pass Through","b":true},{"text":"."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Pass Through","b":true},{"text":" means the group is purely organisational. Everything inside renders as though the group were not there, so an adjustment layer inside the group still reaches down through the group’s floor to affect the layers below it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Normal","b":true},{"text":", or any other blend mode, makes the group "},{"text":"isolated","b":true},{"text":". The contents are composited together into their own private buffer first, and only that finished result is blended onto the layers below. An adjustment layer inside now only affects the other layers in the group. It cannot see out."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"That is the whole mechanism, and it explains the symptom exactly. Setting a group to Normal to give it a 60 per cent opacity, a perfectly reasonable thing to want, silently converts every adjustment inside it from global to local."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"It cuts both ways, and the second direction is the useful one. If you want a colour grade to apply to just one part of a composite, put those layers and the grade in a group and set the group to "},{"text":"Normal","b":true},{"text":". The grade is now fenced in, with no clipping and no masking needed."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"group-masks-apply-to-everything-inside","runs":[{"text":"Group masks apply to everything inside"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A mask on a group is applied to the group’s composite result. Paint black on it and everything in the group is hidden there, regardless of each layer’s own mask."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"This is the cleanest way to build a complex local edit: three or four adjustment layers that together do something specific, in a group, with one mask on the group defining where it happens. Revising the region means painting one mask rather than four."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Be aware that layer masks inside the group and the group’s own mask multiply. A pixel at 50 per cent on a layer mask inside a group whose mask is also 50 per cent at that point shows at 25 per cent. Chains of soft masks can fade away faster than you expect, and this is usually the reason."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"clipping-inside-groups","runs":[{"text":"Clipping inside groups"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A clipping mask makes a layer show only where the layer directly beneath it has pixels. Inside a group, clipping works against the layer below within that group, and a clipped stack cannot reach outside it."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The useful combination: a cut-out product layer, with a Hue/Saturation layer clipped to it and a Curves layer clipped on top of that, all in one group. The two adjustments hit the product and only the product, the group holds them together, and the group’s mask can then remove the whole arrangement from part of the frame."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The bottom layer of a clipping chain is the "},{"text":"base","b":true},{"text":", and its transparency defines the shape. If you later rasterise or fill that base layer edge to edge, everything clipped to it suddenly applies everywhere. That is the second forum question this lesson exists to answer."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"nesting-and-where-to-stop","runs":[{"text":"Nesting, and where to stop"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Groups nest. Three levels is usually the practical maximum before navigating costs more than the tidiness saves. A workable convention for a composite:"}]},{"t":"code","lang":"","label":"Text","text":"[group] OUTPUT          (sharpen, resize copy — off while working)\n[group] GRADE           (global colour, vignette)\n[group] SUBJECT         (cut-out + clipped adjustments + shadow)\n[group] BACKGROUND      (plate + its own tone)\n        base image"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Each group set to Pass Through unless it needs to be fenced. Each with a name that says what it does rather than what it is."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-free-tools","runs":[{"text":"The free tools"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Photopea","b":true},{"text":" implements Pass Through and Normal groups with Photoshop’s semantics, and reads and writes them in PSD correctly. This is one of the places where it earns its reputation."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Krita","b":true},{"text":" has group layers with a "},{"text":"Pass Through","i":true},{"text":" toggle that behaves the same way, plus a "},{"text":"Inherit Alpha","i":true},{"text":" button which is Krita’s version of clipping."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"GIMP","b":true},{"text":" has layer groups, and its default is closer to isolated: a group composites internally and the mode applies to the result. GIMP added a pass-through mode in 2.10, and it is not the default, so a PSD built in Photoshop with adjustments reaching out of groups will not render identically in GIMP. If you exchange layered files with GIMP users, keep adjustments outside groups or flatten before handover."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Affinity Photo","b":true},{"text":" has groups with pass-through behaviour and, unusually, allows adjustment layers to be nested as children of a single layer without a group at all."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"what-this-does-not-solve","runs":[{"text":"What this does not solve"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Grouping is organisation, not isolation of "},{"text":"cost","i":true},{"text":". A group set to Normal has to composite its contents into a separate buffer before blending, which uses more memory than pass-through and can be slower on a large file. On an eight-gigabyte laptop with a 40-megapixel document, converting several big groups to Normal is a noticeable slowdown, and that is a real reason to reach for clipping instead where clipping will do."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"And one structural limitation: a group can be masked and blended, but it cannot be referenced twice. If the same arrangement of layers needs to appear in two places, you are copying it, and the copies will drift. Smart objects (the next lesson) are the answer to that, and they bring their own costs."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"An editor puts four layers, including a Curves layer that was darkening the whole picture, into a group. To fade the group slightly they set its opacity to 80 per cent. The rest of the image immediately becomes lighter. What has happened?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"The opacity change halved the Curves layer’s own strength, so the darkening is now applied at 80 per cent everywhere."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Applies the opacity uniformly to the whole document, which is not what a group opacity does: layers outside the group are unaffected by it in any mode."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Dropping below full opacity forces the group into isolated rendering, so the Curves layer now only affects the three layers inside it rather than the image below."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"The Curves layer lost its mask when it was moved into the group, so it is no longer applying where it used to."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Invents data loss: moving a layer into a group carries its mask with it, and a lost mask would make an adjustment apply more widely rather than less."}]},{"text":[{"text":"Group opacity is applied before the contents are composited, so each internal layer’s effect is multiplied by 0.8 and the cumulative result is much weaker."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Gets the order backwards: the contents composite first and the opacity applies to the finished group result, which is precisely why the group must isolate."}]}],"order":[3,2,0,1],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"the-layer-stack-and-order","title":"The same three edits in a different order give a different picture","minutes":9},"next":{"slug":"smart-objects-and-linked-files","title":"One file, forty mockups, one change","minutes":9}}}