What is the primary purpose of adjustment layers in Photoshop?

Adjustment layers in Photoshop are specifically designed to modify colors and tones in a non-destructive manner. This means that when you apply an adjustment layer to your image, the changes made can be edited or removed at any point without permanently altering the original image pixels. This capability is crucial for maintaining the integrity of the original artwork, allowing you to experiment with various adjustments such as brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, and others.

By using adjustment layers, you can easily fine-tune the overall look of your image through a flexible editing process. Each adjustment layer can be turned off, masked, or modified as needed, offering significant control over how adjustments interact with the layers below them. This non-destructive workflow is one of Photoshop's key strengths, empowering users to maintain high-quality results throughout the editing process while allowing for creativity and exploration without fear of losing original data.

Other options focus on different aspects of Photoshop's capabilities and do not pertain directly to the main function of adjustment layers, which is fundamentally about color and tone modification.