From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Making selections based on color - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Making selections based on color

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- [Instructor] Photoshop has several ways to select based on color. In the next few minutes, we'll take a look at why we might want to use one of the color selection tools over a selection tool such as Object Select. I'll start by choosing the Object Selection tool. Object finder is enabled, so when I position my cursor over the lupine flower and I click, it'll go ahead and select that. But if I use the Layers menu and add a hue and saturation adjustment layer and we make an adjustment, we can see that not only are the flowers changing, but also the stem, or the stock of the lupine, and that's not what I want. So let's go ahead and delete that, and what I want to select is only the kind of more blue purple colors in the flower, and then I want to shift their hue so that they match more of the lighter pinker colors. If I return to the object selection tool, we can see that nested with it is the Magic Wand tool. The Magic Wand tool is great at selecting flat areas of color. By default, the sample size is set to point sample, but if we want to sample an average of more than one pixel, then we can increase this. I'll use 5 by 5, and then I'll click on this green leaf. We can see that it selects all of the similar colors of green in the three leaves, but it doesn't jump over any edges. If I want it to do that, I can uncheck Contiguous, and then we can click, and we can see that it selects a lot more of the image area. Same with in the flower. If I click in this purple area, we can see that it selects most of the purples, but I'd still need to add to this. So I could select the second icon and then continue clicking in the purples. But we can see that it is selected too much. Now it's selecting this background area. So there'd be a little bit of back and forth, adding to and subtracting from to get the flower selected because the Magic Wand tool simply selects on color. So let's deselect that, and instead, I'm going to choose the Quick Selection tool. The Quick Selection tool is going to allow me to select based on color, but it also looks for edges. I'll click once, and we can select this entire leaf. Then it automatically swaps to the Add To tool. So now I can click in this leaf, but it's selecting too much, it's selecting the white. So I would have to hold down the Option key in order to remove that, and then we could continue around the flower, but it's going to take a lot of clicks. In fact, we can see that it just added the green, so I'd have to hold down the Option key in order to remove that. So it would take a bit of time to select all of the petals without selecting the background or the stem. So I'll deselect that, and then let's choose Select and Color Range. In Color Range, I can select a sample of colors, but I can also select from preset color ranges, like red, or yellow, or green. I can select highlights, midtones and shadows, skin tones, and colors that are out of gamut. So I'm going to choose the sampled colors and bring the fuzziness down for a moment. And then I'll click in the purple area here, and we can see in the mask the areas that are going to be selected. If I want to add to that, we can hold down the Shift key or click the eyedropper with a plus, and then click and drag, and we can watch as the mask in the preview area expands as I go down into these darker colors. Alright, if I want to tighten the color range that's being selected, I can move the fuzziness slider to the left, and if I want to include additional colors, I can move it to the right. So I just need to find the balance here where it's no longer selecting the background colors. Alright, once I click OK, it'll go ahead and convert that into a selection. And at the bottom of the Layers panel, I can add a hue/saturation adjustment layer. And this time, unlike when the object selection selected the entire flower, now I can just move the hue of those purple areas towards pink. Alright, let's zoom out using Command + 0. I don't want these areas down here to be altered, so I'll use my Lasso tool. I'll just select it by tapping the L key, and then select this entire area. And because Photoshop converted the selection into a mask, all I need to do is use Edit, and then Fill, and fill that area with black so that this area isn't affected. Alright, let me deselect. And I want to brighten the green leaves here in the foreground, but if I'm going to use the Select, Color Range again, I'll want to make sure that I'm not targeting the mask. I need to target the icon for the adjustment layer. Otherwise, when I choose Select and then Color Range, Photoshop would adjust the mask that was targeted. So here, we'll select these light green leaves, and again, we can adjust the fuzziness. And once I have the selection, I can use the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. I'll add the exposure adjustment layer, and I'll just increase the exposure of those leaves a bit. Excellent, if I want to preview the before and after, I can hold down the Option key on Mac or the Alt key on Windows, and click on the eye icon for the background. That toggles off the visibility of all of the other layers. I'll click the eye icon again with the Option or Alt key held down, and that will toggle them back on. So the next time you need to make a selection based on color, be sure to give Color Range a try.

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