Recently, I found a few royalty-free and beautiful photographs of mushrooms on pixabay.com. They would be great as background images for my latest Apple Motion^R template project.

The first photograph was Fly Agaric Mushrooms by LoggaWiggler. I loved the color scheme and macro technique, as it was perfect for the fairy tale-based theme of my template project.

The second mushroom photograph by ezfyteam was a great marco but didn't have that same color scheme. Although I need some of the photos in the project to have different color schemes, I really have an aversion to yellow. So I started working with the Color Balance tools in Photoshop^R to get the colors closer to the first image.

1. Our first step was to lighten the base of the mushroom to be almost white. We can use the Quick Selection tool to select the base and then add about 50 pixels of feathering (Select - Modify - Feature).
   
   
2. Next, we will reduce the saturation of the selected area with the Hue/Saturation tool (Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation). This will get us closer to our off white color.
   
   
3. Finally, we will use the Dodge tool to lighten the center of the base of the mushroom. Then we can deselect the area.
   
   

Now it is time to change the color of the top of the mushroom and surrounding area.

1. Let's use the Quick Selection tool to select the mushroom and sky and set the featuring to 50 again.
   
   
2. Now, let's use the Color Balance tool to adjust the colors to have more pinks and lavenders (Image - Adjustments - Color Balance). Notice that we checked the Preserve Luminosity option so that the process will not darken the overall photo. One nice surprise was the lavender added into the sky and around the neck of the mushroom.
   
   

Our next task is to work on the greens at the base of the mushroom. Again we need to remove the yellow hues and replace them with blue and green hues.

1. Select the right bottom area and add feathering.
   
   
2. We will use the Color Balance tool again to adjust the colors.
   
   
3. Now all we need to do is repeat the process on the left side.
   
   

Fly Agaric Mushrooms by LoggaWiggler on Pixabay.com
https://pixabay.com/en/fly-agaric-mushroom-mushrooms-468788/

Mushrooms White Fungus by ezfyteam on Pixabay,com
https://pixabay.com/en/mushrooms-white-fungus-fungi-macro-271530/