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Select a color range

The Color Range command selects a specified color or color range within an existing selection or an entire image. If you want to replace a selection, be sure to deselect everything before applying this command. The Color Range command is not available for 32‑bits-per-channel images.

To refine an existing selection, use the Color Range command repeatedly to select a subset of colors. For example, to select the green areas in a cyan selection, select Cyans in the Color Range dialog box, and click OK. Then reopen the Color Range dialog box, and select Greens. (The results are subtle because this technique selects parts of colors within a color mix.)

  1. Choose Select > Color Range.
    You can also use Color Range to refine a layer mask. See Change mask opacity or refine edges.
  2. Choose the Sampled Colors tool from the Select menu.

    You can also choose a color or tonal range from the Select menu, but you won’t be able to adjust the selection. The Out‑Of‑Gamut option works only on RGB and Lab images. (An out‑of‑gamut color is an RGB or Lab color that cannot be printed using process color printing.)

    If you are selecting multiple color ranges in the image, select Localized Color Clusters to build a more accurate selection.

  3. Select one of the display options:
    Selection
    Previews the selection that will result from the colors you sample in the image. White areas are selected pixels, black areas are unselected, and gray areas are partially selected.

    Image
    Previews the entire image. For example, you might want to sample from a part of the image that isn’t on‑screen.
    To toggle between the Image and Selection previews in the Color Range dialog box, press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS).

  4. Position the Eyedropper pointer over the image or preview area, and click to sample the colors you want included.
    Sampling color

  5. Adjust the range of colors selected using the Fuzziness slider or by entering a value. The Fuzziness setting controls how wide a range of colors is in the selection, and increases or decreases the amount of partially selected pixels (gray areas in the selection preview). Set a low Fuzziness value to restrict the color range, a higher value to increase the range.
    Increasing fuzziness expands selection

    If you selected Localized Color Clusters, use the Range slider to control how far or near a color must be from the sample points to be included in the selection. For example, your image contains a patch of yellow flowers in both the foreground and the background, but you want to select just the foreground flowers. Sample the colors in the foreground flowers and reduce the Range so that the similarly colored flowers in the background are not selected.

  6. Adjust the selection:

    • To add colors, select the plus eyedropper, and click in the preview area or image.

    • To remove colors, select the minus eyedropper, and click in the preview area or image.

    To activate the plus eyedropper temporarily, hold down Shift. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) to activate the minus eyedropper.
  7. To preview the selection in the image window, choose an option for Selection Preview.
  8. To revert to the original selection, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS), and click Reset.
  9. To save and load color range settings, use the Save and Load buttons in the Color Range dialog box to save and reuse the current settings.
Note: If you see the message “No pixels are more than 50% selected,” the selection border will not be visible. You may have picked a color choice from the Select menu, such as Reds, when the image didn’t contain any red hues with high enough saturation.

For a video on making selections, see www.adobe.com/go/vid0002.