Step 5: Merge All Three Layers Onto A New Layer Above The Inverted Layer

I need to merge all four layers on to a new layer, but I want to keep the existing layers intact. Photoshop offers us a command called Merge Visible, which we would normally access by going up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choosing Merge Visible from the list of options. The problem is, by default, the Merge Visible command essentially flattens the image, combining the separate layers into a single layer, and that's not what I want to do. I want to merge the layers on to a new layer while keeping all of my separate layers in place. To do that, all I need to do is press my Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, then, while still holding the key down, I'll go up to the Layer menu and choose Merge Visible:

Adding the Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key while selecting the Merge Visible command is what tells Photoshop to keep the separate layers in place, and we can see in the Layers palette that all three layers have been merged on to a new layer, which Photoshop has named "Layer 2". By default, Photoshop places new layers directly above whichever layer was selected. Since I had the copy of the Background layer selected, the new merged layer appears directly above it:

Step 6: Change The Blend Mode Of The Merged Layer To Overlay

I'm going to use the merged layer to add a soft, mystical glow to the forest. Creating the glow is easy and requires nothing more than the Gaussian Blur filter and a layer blend mode. First, I'll select the blend mode, which will make it easier to see how much blurring I need to apply in the next step. With the merged layer selected, I'll go up to the Blend Mode option once again at the top of the Layers palette and I'll change the blend mode from "Normal" to Overlay:

More detailed information about the Overlay blend mode can be found in our Five Essential Blend Modes For Photo Editing tutorial in the Photo Editing section of the website, but essentially, the Overlay blend mode boosts contrast in the image by making light areas even lighter and dark areas even darker, and we can see by looking at the image that the forest now has much more contrast to it:

Step 7: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter

With the blend mode set to Overlay, we're ready to apply some blurring to the layer. I'll go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur:

This brings up the Gaussian Blur dialog box. To adjust the amount of blurring, simply click on the slider at the bottom of the dialog box and drag it towards the right for more blurring or towards the left for less blurring. You'll want to keep an eye on your image as you drag the slider and adjust the effect until you're happy with the results. I'm using a fairly low resolution image for this tutorial, so for me, a Radius value of around 8 pixels seems to work well. You may want to use a higher setting for higher resolution images:

I'll click OK to exit out of the Gaussian Blur dialog box, and we're done! If you find that the blurring effect is too intense, an easy way to reduce it is to simply go up to the Opacity setting at the top of the Layers palette (directly across from the Blend Mode option) and lower the opacity to fine-tune the effect. In my case, since I'm going for more of a mystical look, I'm happy with the results so I'll leave my opacity setting at it's default 100%.

Here once again is my original image:

And here is my final "inverted colors" photo effect:

And there we have it!

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