PS CS4: What's New — Color Range I

The Color Range dialog box has been greatly improved. This is now a much better way of making selections based on color(s). It's also much better at selecting colors where there's a slight variation between what you want and what you don't want. In this tutorial, we take you through making multiple color selections, using Fuzziness, and the all powerful Localized Color Clusters function.

Overview & Making the First Color Selection

Pressing Select > Color Range brings up this handy little dialog box. For the right kind of image, it makes selecting elements pretty easy. The problem is that previous versions have been a bit unpredictable and unweildy.

In the CS4 version, there have been some nice additions.

First, there's the Localized Color Clusters check box (do check this unless you prefer to old version of Color Range).

Another addition is the Range slider, which we'll get into later.

Of the 3 eyedroppers, circled in red, the one on the left is the default selection. In this image, I clicked inside the green circle and what has been selected can be seen in white in the preview box.

It hasn't actually selected enough as I wanted to get the red in the water, also. See below for capturing that.

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Fuzziness & Making a Second Color Selection

A couple of things happened here. First, I moved the Fuzziness slider up to 148, extending the breadth of reds I'm able to capture — including the reds in the water, which I wanted also.

The second thing I did was select the middle eyedropper (the one with the plus [+] sign) and clicked on the pool table green section in the middle-left of the image. This is the way to select more than one color in your image. If you just clicked on another color with the default eyedropper, your original color would be lost to the selection and the new one selected.

As you can see, circled in green, I captured those greens as well.

And here's where the new and improved Color Range really shines. In previous versions (before the Localized Color Clusters option existed), when you selected a second color, intermediate colors between the two were also selected! No likey. This is the major reason for making sure the checkbox is on — those intermediate colors will not be selected!

If you find that you've selected more than you wanted to, click the Eyedropper with the negative sign (-), then move into your image and click the color which you would like de-selected. Careful, though — this tool can be a bit, what, enthusiastic about what it takes away.

It might also be noted here that if you click-drag with an Eyedropper, it will sample all colors you drag over and select them on the fly.

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Changing the Preview

Sometimes, that preview box doesn't show what's being selected well enough. Fortunately, you can view your selection in four different ways: Grayscale, Black Matte, White Matte, and Quick Mask.

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Changing the Default Quick Mask Color

Double click the Edit in Quick Mask Mode icon in the Tool bar, circled in red. This brings up the Quick Mask Options dialog box.

Click once in the color swatch and a color picker will come up. Here's where you select your new default color.

After clicking your OKs to get back out, remember to click the Edit in Quick Mask Mode icon one more time to toggle it off — otherwise, if you try to get back to Color Range, it actually won't be available.

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Color Range Tutorials: