Shadow/Highlight Selections in Elements 2

In full versions of Photoshop, there is a command that allows you to select the highlights of an image. The highlight selection is somewhat unique because it fades down through the midtones and shadows, which allows you to make adjustments to the highlights that blend into the rest of the image.  In full versions of Photoshop, you can make those unique highlight selections with the ctrl+alt+~ shortcut, and interestingly enough the shortcut doesn't have a corresponding menu command. Therefore, the shortcut is sometimes called "the claw" because of the claw like position your hand must form to press the shortcut keys. Unfortunately, the ctrl+alt+~ shortcut is disabled in PSE2.  Nevertheless, in PSE2 there is a method to get the same selection, and I'll show you how. Once you create the highlight selection, you can obtain a shadow selection by taking the inverse of the highlight selection.

1) Open your image and create a duplicate of your background layer and turn off the visibility of your original background layer. That is always the first step for any retouching that I do.

2)Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Don't group it with anything, and don't make any changes. You are only going to use the adjustment layer to help make the highlight selection.

2) Click on the Background copy layer, and then Select>All and Edit>Copy. That copies your image to the clipboard.

3) alt+click on the white mask thumbnail in the Hue/Sat adjustment layer:

That causes you to enter mask edit mode. The visibility of all your layers will turn off, your image will disappear from view, and the mask will appear, which should be blank white.

4)Next click on Edit>Paste. That pastes your image into the mask:

5)In the Hue/Sat adjustment layer, alt+click on the mask thumbnail again to exit mask edit mode.

6)Now to obtain the highlight selection, in the Hue/Sat adjustment layer just ctrl+click on the mask thumbnail.

You should then see a selection of the highlights. You are now done with the Hue/Sat adjustment layer, so you can turn off it's visibility. If you click on the Background copy layer, the highlight selection will remain active and you can adjust the highlights with whatever adjustment you want to make. If you want to adjust the shadows instead, click on Select>Inverse.

It is not readily apparent, but the highlight selection you made is not a normal selection. It fades into the midtones and shadows, and it does not actually have the distinct borders shown by the marching ants. If you want to demonstrate that, duplicate your image onto another layer and turn off the visibility of all the layers except the duplicate. Your selection should still be active at this point. If you hit the delete key, you will delete everything that is selected in your image. After hitting the delete key, you should see a ghostly likeness of your original image.

If you want your adjustments to affect only the highlights and you don't want your adjustment to fade down into midtones and shadows, or you want to make adjustments targeting just the midtones leaving the highlights and shadows unaffected, see my tutorial "Gradient Map Adjustment Layers".