Photoshop Tutorial – Color Range
This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 8 minutes
Color Range tool is a crucial aspect of Photoshop Masking, that many people have difficulties using. The tool plays a significant role in selecting groups of color areas, that need to be adjusted separately in a particular image. Color Range has the quickest, and simplest options available for selecting complex patterns as well. In addition, you are able to preview your selection, and pick the best results, before committing to the task.
This video is part of my 2+ hour Photoshop Masking Tutorial. That extended video covers many expanded topics that cover the range from Beginner, Intermediate, to Advanced.
To preview the selection of the image, the selection preview menu at the bottom will give you various options to choose from. The options include; white matte, black matte, QuickMask and grayscale. These options will show you the area you will have selected, I stongly recomend QuickMask. The moment you are satisfied with the selection, simply click OK and the selection marquee appears on the image you are working on.
Here are a few steps that will guide you in using the color range tool for you to end up with a top quality image. It is important to keep in mind two parameters; these are color, where one can select multiple colors to use, and fuzziness. Fuzziness aspect makes a selection of all the colors close to the one you have provided by a fuzz value.
- From the top pull down menu: Select – Color Range. The color range window opens up; the selection part is completely dark as nothing has been selected as yet.
- Ensure Fuziness is 40. That value is subjective and abstract. I just happen to like it.
- Ensure the Selection Preview is QuickMask, so that you can easily see what you are doing.
- Use the EyeDropper, with it’s Plus and Minus variants to select the areas you want, by clicking on the main image.
- You can adjust the fuzziness value to a number that you most prefer. This is only to fine tune your eyedropper selection. The maximum fuzziness value is 200. It is advisable to use high fuzziness values so as to have appearance of fine details in the image you are working on.
Move the mouse pointer to your image and click on the background. This ensures a selection has been made. The selection may not be as perfect as you want it to be, so to make it perfect, move the mouse to a different part of the image’s background, hold the shift button and click, to add to the selection. Repeat this step a couple of times so as to get a sharp and clearly outlined selection.
In conclusion, the best tool to use for quick, or complex Photoshop Masking is the color range tool, as it gives you a chance to preview the selection before finalizing on it as well as providing you with numerous options for color based tasks.
This Adobe Photoshop CS6 Tutorial answers the question: How to use Color Range in Photoshop? If you would like to learn more about Photo Enhancement from a Professional Retoucher, I offer a Photoshop for Beginners Class. Please contact me today, and I will be able to add you to the schedule too. If you would just like to watch online videos, The Art of Retouching Studio offers many Photoshop Tutorials for Beginners and Advanced users.
