In this tutorial, I will discuss techniques that allow Photoshop Elements 2 (PE2) users to duplicate what's called "Blend If" in full versions of Photoshop. No less of an expert on the intricacies of PE2 than Richard Lynch, the author of "The Hidden Powers of Photoshop Elements 2", has said that Blend If is not available to PE2 users. Nevertheless, in PE2 it is possible to get the same results as using Blend If in Photoshop, and I'll show you how.

Blend If in Photoshop

First, I'll describe what Blend If does so you'll understand what effects you'll be able to accomplish by the end of this tutorial. In Photoshop, Blend If allows you to make parts of a layer transparent. Here is what the Blend If dialog box looks like:

The controls that are outlined above are the ones that I'll show you how to duplicate in PE2. When "Blend If:" is set to Gray in the dialog box, as shown, the "This Layer" sliders determine what range of tones in the layer will be visible and what tones will be transparent. The tones that will be visible are the tones between the two sliders, and any tones outside the range designated by the sliders will be turned into the checkerboard pattern representing transparency.

With the settings shown above, the range of tones from 50-200 will be visible, and the tones below 50 and above 200 will be transparent.  The results of applying the Blend If settings above are shown in a "before" and "after" image:

With Blend If, you can also fade the visible tones in order to make transitions smoother between the visible tones and the transparent tones. That's accomplished by splitting the This Layer sliders:

The range encompassed by each set of sliders is the range over which the visible tones will fade to transparency. The fade range for each slider is highlighted above. With the settings shown, Blend If will fade the visible tones(levels 50-200) to transpareny over the range 25-50. The same thing will occur for the fade range between 200-225. Notice the difference in the results the fade makes:

The bottom image shows a smooth transition between the visible tones and the transparent tones.

Blend If in PE2

The results produced by Blend If above can be duplicated in PE2 using a Gradient Map adjustment layer and a Levels adjustment layer as tools to extract the same selection from your image. The first step is to create a Gradient Map with the same ranges as the Blend If settings.

Constructing a Gradient Map

1) Create a duplicate of your background layer, and turn off the visibility of the original Background layer.

2) Create a Gradient Map adjustment layer for the Background copy layer (Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Gradient Map). Check Group with Previous, and click OK, and the Gradient Map dialog box will appear. Click in the middle of the gradient bar to open the Gradient Editor.

3) Click on the "black,white" gradient thumbnail.(If that's not one of your choices, click on any two color gradient--it doesn't matter)

4) Now set the "Color stops" on the bottom of the gradient bar. Double click on the left color stop, which will open up the Color Picker. If it's not already, set the color to black, RGB(0,0,0).

5) You need to set 4 additional color stops. Their locations need to be at levels 25, 50, 200, and 225--corresponding to the ranges designated by the Blend If sliders in our example. However, for a color stop you have to enter a % brightness for "Location:". Therefore, you have to convert levels to their percent brightness: 25/256 is 10%, 50/256 is 20%, 200/256 is 78%, and 225/256 is 88%. Those are the locations for the four color stops you need to add in the next few steps.

6) Click just below the gradient bar to add a color stop and enter 10% next to "Location:". Double click on the color swatch next to "Color:" to open up the color picker, and set the color to black. (If you make a mistake and you need to remove a color stop for some reason, click on it and drag it downward, and it will disappear.)

7) Click below the gradient bar and to the right of the 2nd stop to add another color stop. Enter 20% next to "Location:", and double click on the color stop and this time set its color to white, RGB(255,255,255).

8) Click below the gradient bar and to the right of the 3rd stop to add another color stop. Enter 78% next to "Location:", and double click on the color stop and set the color to white.

9) Click below the gradient bar and to the right of the 4th stop to add another color stop. Enter 88% next to "Location:", and double click on the color stop and set its color to black.

10) Finally, set the color of the right color stop to black.

Note: the quickest way I have found to set the color of the Color stops is to first set the white and black default colors for the color swatches on the Elements Tool bar before creating the Gradient Map.  Then you can click on the color swatch for the Color stop and choose either "Foreground" or "Background" as appropriate.

11) Close the Gradient Editor by clicking OK, and click OK again to close the dialog box. You should see a grayscale image.

12) Merge the Gradient Map adjustment layer into the Background copy. Rename the layer Grayscale.

Ok, you might be wondering at this point, "what the heck did all that accomplish"?? The answer is: every part of the image you want to be visible was mapped to white, and everything you want to be transparent was mapped to black, and the transition tones were slowly faded from white to black so there are no definable borders. You can use the result to select the black areas, and then delete those areas from your image.

The challenge is to select the black areas just like Blend If does.  You may be tempted to reach for the Magic Wand tool to select the black areas. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. If you use the Magic Wand with tolerance 0 to select the black areas, there won't be a smooth transition between the visible areas and the transparent areas--all the areas where the tone is black will be removed, and all the other areas will remain.  To demonstrate the problem,  I used the Magic Wand to select the color black on a grayscale strip, and then I hit the delete key on my keyboard.  You can see the sharp border created between the visible and the transparent areas:

In an attempt to remedy that problem, you may think the solution is to set the magic wand tolerance to 25 levels, but that will just end up deleting more of the grayscale--there still won't be a gentle transition between the visible and the transparent areas:

Even feathering the selection doesn't work properly:

Feathering produces an indiscriminate blur and doesn't delete all the black--if you look carefully, the corners on the left aren't completely transparent, which means not all the black got deleted. To match what Blend If does, you need to be able to delete all the black, fade from transparent to visible in the gray areas, and leave all the tones that are white unaffected, like this:

The next few steps show you how to achieve the same smooth transition between the areas you want to remain visible and the areas you want to make transparent that Blend If produces in Photoshop.

Getting Tricky With Levels

13) Activate the Grayscale layer. Click on Select/All and Edit/Copy to copy the Grayscale layer.

14) Create a Levels adjustment layer, don’t group it with anything, and don’t make any changes, just click OK.

15) alt+click on the mask thumbnail in the Levels adjustment layer to turn off the visibility of all the other layers and enter mask edit mode. You should see a blank white layer as your image.

16) Click on Edit/Paste to paste the Grayscale layer into the layer mask.

17) ctrl+click on the mask thumbnail in the Levels layer. That will load the transparency of the mask as a selection. The way that works is the whites are fully selected, the grays are partially selected making them semi-transparent, and the tones that are black are left unselected.  Since the goal is to delete the black areas, click on Select/Inverse to select the blacks, partially select the grays making them semi-transparent, and leave tones that are white unselected. 

Note: ctrl+clicking on the mask thumbnail in the Levels layer does the same thing as ctrl+alt+~ in Photoshop, which is a command that isn't available in PE2. So, if you ever see ctrl+alt+~ in a tutorial you can use steps 14-17 to duplicate it.

18) Create a duplicate of the Background layer, and rename the layer "Selection". Note: the marching ants should still be visible.

19) With the Selection layer active, hit the delete key on your keyboard. That's it! To clearly see the results, turn off the marching ants by clicking on Select/Deselect, and turn off the visibility on all the layers except the Selection layer(alt+click on the eye icon for the Selection layer). What you'll see is that hitting the delete key turned the targeted range of tones transparent and blended the transition between the transparent areas and the visible areas. The result is the same effect that Blend If produces: