PS CS4: What's New — Color Range III

Here's yet another brand new function of Color Range — the ability to make selections based on colors in a Layer Mask. The only thing you need to remember is to have the Layer Mask active, first.

I've decided I want to create an Adjustment Layer for this image and, in this case, I want to use Levels. (See our Adjustments tutorial for more details on how to take advantage of the new Adjustments Panel.)

After playing around with the sliders a bit, I see that I don't really want the effect to come in globally. I want this particualr adjustment to hit only the reds.

For the following steps, the Adjustment Mask must be active. The double border around the thumbnail to the left of where it says Level 1 tells you it's active.

After pressing Select > Color Range, the Color Range dialog box appears and I've made a selection of the reds as you can see.

I've made my adjustments in the Levels dialog box and you can see the result in the Layer Mask thumbnail.

What has been selected is in white and the rest is black. Remember, on Layer Masks, white reveals the adjustment, and black hides it.

Another way to look at this is (because it took me way too long to get it into my head) — it's like looking into a hole in the ground. What appears black is basically drilling down to the bottom of the hole (the layers underneath), and what's white is on the surface (the effect your producing with the Adjustment layer).

The last step, if necessary, is to touch up the mask.

Select a Brush, circled in green, and select a foreground color — remembering that painting with black will drill down to the bottom of the hole (the layer underneath), and painting away any black with white will reveal the "surface" (the active layer, or in this case, the Levels adjustment effect).

Color Range Tutorials: