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The first thing I should explain is "Layer
1". It's the totally brown Layer
above the Background Layer. The major
fallen tree in the lower right was pretty gray.
Almost to the point where it looked like I removed the color saturation
from it. In order to blend into the rest
of the scene it "needed" a touch of color. I used the Quick Selection Tool (W) to select
the tree. Right clicking and picking
Save Selection gave me an Alpha Channel Mask of the tree. If you're using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 or
10 and can't fine the Alpha Channels don't worry about it. You have Alpha Channels, you just can't see
them. Just go to Selection/Save
Selection and you've got an Alpha Channel.
To get it back, rather than doing a CTRL Click on the Alpha Channel
Thumbnail you'd just use Selection/Load Selection. Same thing, exactly.
Once the Layer Mask is applied the tree will look like
something out of a child's cartoon book.
The Blend Mode of the Layer needs to be changed to Color. It'll still look pretty funky, but bring the
Layer's Opacity down (use Shift/Down Arrow) until it looks good to you. If finer adjustment is needed, apply a
Brightness/Contrast Adjustment to bring the Brightness up or down to taste. To limit the change to the tree a Clipping
Mask was made by holding down the ALT Key while it hovers on the line between
the Layer and the Adjustment Layer.
Once the Layer Panel looked like the one shown today all
Layers were selected (top Layer is already selected. Shift Click on the bottom Layer to select
all). With the entire stack selected,
Right Click on any Layer and pick Convert to Smart Object. This collapses all the Layers into one Smart
Object. The image was then "finished"
in a "normal" manner.
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