Clipping mask for layer group

[puppychew]

Hi - I have CS5

I have a photo of a house. I have added shutters - 1 layer for each shutter as smart objects and they are all in one group layer.

I now need to desaturate the color. I would normally do an adjustment layer clipping mask for each shutter layer.

There are a lot of shutter layers. I was wondering if I can make an adjustment layer to desaturate the shutter color via a clipping mask for the entire group instead of each individual one.

Question 2
Is there a way to do a color overlay for the entire group?

thanks

 

[Hoogle]

ungroup the layers select all of them with the shutters on and then convert to smart object. then any adjustment layers above them you can create a clipping mask to the smart object layer.

 

[Stric9]

You can hide every layer you don't want grouped together and hit cntrl+shift+E to merge these to one layer. This will solve problem one and two.

 

[puppychew]

Thanks - didn't know I could make a smart object of a smart object!