Isolating the Highlights using Select By Color

Using a select by color, choose the hottest white with your eyedropper. In this case, fuzziness of 60 selects a good portion of the brightest.

Create an Action

After the selection is made, create a new layer and the create an action set with the following:

• -Expand selection by 1 px
• -Copy Merged (CTRL-SHIFT COPY)
• -Paste
• -Run a Hue/Saturation operation, using lightness of -44
• -Run a Blur filter operation
• -Run a second Blur filter operation
• -CTRL-SHIFT layer icon (selects transparency channel)
• -Contract selection by 1 pixel
• -Inverse Selection
• -Delete (deletes negative space, sharpening edges at selection edges)

Results of Action

After running the action there should be a soft filling with a grey color. Now clone this layer, then run color balance filter to blend with the color of the surrounding material. If there is a light halo around your results, you may wish lower the opacity of this layer and then go through this process a second time and use a higher fuzzinesss on the color selection process.

Enjoy