I am now going through the HPE PE3 book and would like a suggestion(s) on how to best handle this in PSE3. I have a digital photo of a sunset over the ocean. I love the RGB seperation power tool and would like to use it to adjust
color/contrast separately for the sky and ocean portions. Do I have to split the file with the photo into 2 separate files: sea and sky, and operated on each separately and then recombine? Is there an easier way? Using the RGB
separation tool requires a flattened file to operate on so I do not see how to
keep open two separate layers with different portions.

Also, for the separation I have tried the polygonal lasso along the sea/sky
boundary and selected the sea; then copied it into a new blank layer so it only has the sea. However, when I come back to the background after the paste, the selection area is now gone. I would like for it to remain on (active in the background) I can do an inverse selection and get an exact match of the other section (sky) to put into still another blank layer. If I have to do the selection over again, I find I do not get the exact same points and the border between sea and sky do not match as well as I would like.

Thanks in advance to help/advice,
Charles (not new to photography but new to PSE3)

I believe I answered this for you somewhere else. Have you seen the example in the book that does almost exactly what you are describing as far as working the sea separately from the sky? In order to make changes in tone, I would set specific layers to luminosity.

To work with the separated elements and color correct or change color, you may need to work in separate images -- depending on what you are trying to do. You may note that some of the Power Tools do exactly that (see the CMYK tool).

I have a new tool coming out with a stand-alone Curves set that will allow you to target specific channels with individual layers. I'll be announcing that in the next newsletter.

Hope that helps!