Photoshop Tip: Using Color Range Masks

PHOTOSHOP TIP: Using Color Range Masks
by Rich Seiling

By using Photoshop’s Color Range you can make very precise changes to specific “local” areas. It works like this:

1. Check your layers palette to make sure you are working on the image layer.

2. From the SELECT menu choose COLOR RANGE. A dialog box will appear.

3. Set the Selection preview to either “Black Matte” or “White Matte.” This will make your selection easier to see. If your image looks strange all of the sudden, this is because Photoshop is using the image window to preview the area that is currently being selected.

4. Now click somewhere in the image. You will see the preview change, and it will show all the areas in the image that are the same or similar to the color you clicked on. After you’ve clicked on the color you want to select, you can change the “fuzziness” to include or exclude similar colors. Slide it around and see what happens.

5. When you have the area you want selected, click OK. In a few seconds you’ll see the marching ants. To turn the marching ants into a mask, make a new adjustment layer. (If you want to increase the saturation, choose Hue/Saturation. If you want to change the color balance, choose Color Balance; etc.) Then use that layer to change the image however you want.

Here's a Real-World Example of this Technique:

In this example, I made global corrections that made the photograph look nice overall, but made the tree trunks look too saturated and too blue.

To make them look more like my eye saw them required a two-part solution.

First I used the Color Range tool to select just the blue tree trunks. Then I made this selection into a mask with the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and removed some of the saturation--because part of the problem was that the tree trunks were too saturated.

Then I copied the color range mask, and made a Color Balance adjustment layer. I used this layer to add yellow to counteract the blue. The end result is closer to what I experienced that beautiful fall morning in Northern Michigan.