Selecting by color range - Photoshop Tutorial

- From time to time you may find that you want to create a selection based on color values in the image. In a very simple example, maybe you have a picture of a red rose, you could create a selection based on the color red, isolating that rose from the green foliage in the background, for example. Let's take a look at how we can use the Color Range command to create a selection based on a specific range of color values. I have an image here that exhibits a variety of different colors, some sand toys on the beach and I'd like to select just the green ones. Maybe I need to apply a specific adjustment to correct the color of the greens in the photo, for example. Whatever the reason, I want to create a selection based on color values. And so I'll go to the menu, I want to first make sure that whichever image layer I want to create the selected based on is the active layer on the Layers panel. At the moment this image only has a single background image layer, there are no other image layers, no adjustment layers, so I don't need to worry about that. But when in doubt, simply click on the thumbnail for the layer that you want to create the selection based on. We can then go to the Select menu and choose Color Range, so that we can create a selection based on a range of colors. I'll go ahead and move that dialog out of the way a little bit and I'm starting off with my Selection Preview set to None, so that I can see the full color image over in the background. Notice that I have a black and white preview here, a thumbnail essentially of that preview. We'll talk more about that in just a moment. I'm creating a selection based on Sampled Colors, that's the default, and then down below the set of buttons here you'll see that we have an eyedropper, then a plus eyedropper, and a minus eyedropper. The first eyedropper without the plus or minus is our initial color selection tool. So with that active, it is active by default, I can come out into the image and click on a green object, since I want to create a selection of the green areas. You'll see that my preview within the Color Range dialog has updated. And essentially we're seeing white representing selection and black representing non-selection. And so we're starting to get a sense that the green areas of the image are included in that selection. But now I need to build up that range of colors. I have clicked on a single pixel and defined a single shade of green that I'm using as the basis of my Color Range selection, but I can expand that range. And so I'll switch to the plus eyedropper, so that I can add to the range of colors. And then I can click on additional areas of that green sand toy. You might notice that my preview is updating as far as the selection, but it's very difficult to evaluate such a small size. So once I've gotten an initial selection, then I will switch my Selection Preview from None to Grayscale in most cases. I'll show you some of those other options in just a moment. But now you'll see shades of gray within the white areas that I wanted selected. One of the tricks with the Color Range command is that in addition to just clicking I can click and drag to sample a relatively large number of color values all at one time. So I can go through the various green toys here and click and drag in order to essentially expand that range of colors. Various shades of green essentially. I'm going to switch my preview back to None, so we can see the full image. And then if you pay attention inside of the image preview here when I go and click on a red object I'm not simply adding red to my mix of colors, notice that I'm getting many other areas of the image selected. I'll switch our preview back to Grayscale here. We're getting a large number of those toys and even some of the sand selected. And that's because I've expanded the range to include a much larger range. Not just green and red, but everything in between, because we're defining a single range of color values. So I could use the minus eyedropper and then I'll switch back to my None preview, so I know exactly where I need to work. Here is that red bucket, I'll click and drag around within the red bucket, reducing that range of colors. Then I can go back to my plus eyedropper and expand the range again for those greens. So I wanna be very careful as I'm working, making sure that I'm sampling appropriate areas, but along the way I'm going to run into some challenges from time to time. In this case, that issue is primarily related to Fuzziness. The Fuzziness is set to a rather high value at the moment. Fuzziness is sort of like a tolerance setting for the Magic Wand Tool, but it also is different in that it will affect similar colors more than non-similar colors. And so if we take a look here, reducing the value for Fuzziness then I'll get a narrower range. And notice that similar colors are added to that selection range before different colors. So first I'm expanding the greens and then I might start adding additional colors. But notice, for example, the sand is much closer to green than that red bucket was, so even though I've increased Fuzziness significantly I'm still not getting very much of that red bucket included in my selection. As a very general rule, I want to use a Fuzziness setting that is as low as possible, while still giving me a good selection. In other words, I'll use a very low value and keep using that plus eyedropper to expand my range of colors, only increasing Fuzziness at the end just enough to smooth out the results. So I'll start with a lower value here. And it looks like we're actually in pretty good shape. I'm gonna go to the Black Matte option, so that we can see what's going on. Maybe the White Matte option might help a little bit more in this case, little more visible. But I can use that Matte, so I'm only seeing areas of the image that are selected. I might want to expand that range a little more. So again, using the plus eyedropper and then clicking within the green objects in this case to expand the result. Maybe reducing Fuzziness a little bit, trying to get rid of those yellows. I'll have to use the minus eyedropper in this case. I think right about like that. Notice that what's happening is that because yellow and green are so close to each other I'm removing the selection from the green areas whenever I remove yellow. So I might need to compromise a little bit in this particular case, something along those lines would be a pretty good result. Now you'll notice that I'm still missing some areas of the tools here, my little sand toys. And that in large part is going to be those specular highlights. If I switch back to None you'll see that we have bright, shiny areas, maybe some dark shadow areas that are not necessarily going to be included within that selection. Generally speaking I prefer to use the Grayscale preview option as I'm finalizing my overall selection. I find that the Black and White Matte options aren't really helpful by virtue of not really letting me see what is surrounding the area that I'm selecting. I don't know where the edge of that object is, in other words. And the Quick Mask option can be helpful, except that its color is red by default, and of course, if I have red objects that can make it a little bit difficult to figure out where the selection is versus is not. So usually I find that that Grayscale option works well. I do often like to switch between the None, so that I can see the actual image, and Grayscale for that Selection Preview, so that I can then evaluate the result a little bit more closely. Now keep in mind that I might find in some cases that this works as a good initial selection tool and then I still need to clean things up. So for example, let's assume that this is as good as I can get. Maybe if I increase Fuzziness just a little bit more we'll get a better selection for my green objects, but once I've fine tuned and I think I'm getting a good result then I can click the OK button in order to load that selection. But keep in mind that we can always clean up that selection. So zooming in a little bit here, for example, you'll see that I have a little bit of the yellow in this other tool included in my selection. I could grab my Lasso Tool and hold the Alt or Option key on the keyboard to access the subtract from selection option. And then just make kind of a lazy loop around that tool in order to subtract that area from the selection. So the Color Range selection command can be incredibly helpful for creating selections based on color, but keep in mind that just as with other selection tools, when we've used the Color Range command we can still mix and match other tools and techniques to really improve our selection.