How To Use Color Range effect

[ReMake]

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it

 

 

Color Range effect can be a good tool to quickly select an object in the image. It frees you from the tedious procedure of using selection tools, such as the Lasso ( ) or Magic Wand ( ). Below are a few examples of the effect for quick selection of objects.

How to recolor the car.
The original image from http://trueimages.ru/img/a2/f3/12/6d5ae9a8ec1ba938f19f9249a.jpg.

Open the image, duplicate a layer, deselect the lower layer.



Run the Color Range effect (Effects -> Color -> Color Range ). Select Red from the drop down list Color.



Moving the Color Threshold control in one direction or another, get a clear silhouette of the car. Make more fine-tuning with Brightness Tolerance control. Click OK.

Select the Magic Wand ( ) in the Tools panel. Hold the Ctrl key and click the Magic Wand inside each of the painted parts of the car.



Uncheck the top layer, and select the bottom layer. The selection is automatically be transferred to the lower layer, which is now active (highlighted in blue).



Recolor the car by means of the Hue / Saturation effect (Adjustments -> Hue / Saturation), using a Hue control. If necessary, use the controls Saturation and Lightness. You can try to use other effects, such as: Saturation RGB, or Curves (Adjustments -> Curves), or Color Balance by BoltBait and other color effects.



As a result of simple manipulations we've got this image:



The top layer can be removed - it's no longer needed.

I hope this example has not been difficult.

Pleasantville Effect.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it

This art trick has received the name from the movie with the same name. The purpose of the effect is keeping some colored object on a black and white background.
For this example I took the Image, which used by xmario in the Эффект Контуры (Contours Effect) topic on paint-net.ru site.

We will keep a color image of a rose, moving the rest of the image in black and white. By analogy with the previous example we would have to create two copies of the original image, one for red rose petals, the second for the green trunk. But we will do one copy layer, creating a transparent mask roses instead of two color masks.

Open the image, duplicate a layer, deselect the lower layer.



Run the Color Range effect. Select Yellow or White from the drop down list Color. Set the Color Threshold control to the maximum value - 255. Move the Brightness Tolerance control to the left until the artifacts disappear inside the rose's silhouette.



Click the Magic wand inside rose. You will see that to the contour of rose was added the contour of bear. Enlarge the image in the area marked by a red circle by means of the Zoom ( ) tool.



Using a Pencil ( ) tool divide contours roses and teddy bear applying of any color line to the place where the contours is contacted (blue arrow).



Click the Magic wand inside rose again. Invert selection (Ctrl+I). Uncheck the top layer, and select the bottom layer. The selection is automatically be transferred to the lower layer, which is now active (highlighted in blue).



Apply to the layer Black and White effect (Adjustments -> Black and White) or use the key Ctrl+Shift+G. As a result we've got this image:



I hope this example was not more difficult than the previous one.

How to colorize a black-and-white photo.

This tutorial is available as a PDF. Click here to view or download it

This image from my lesson 'Как из черно-белой фотографии сделать цветную' (How to Make a Color Photo from the Black-and-white) on the paint-net.ru site. In this example, we will look at how to simplify the tedious process of selecting objects.
It's easy to see that our image consists of three objects: sky, forest and field with bales of straw. Just select one object - the forest to color all three objects.
So, let's begin.

Open the image, duplicate a layer, deselect the lower layer.



Run the Color Range effect. Select Black from the drop down list Color. The position of the Color Threshold control in this case does not matter, the main thing - it should not be zero. Moving the Brightness Tolerance control to the left, achieve a lack of contact between the lower contour line of pixels of the sky and the upper contour line of the forest. Pay attention to the area marked with red circles.



As in the previous example, use the Pencil ( ) tool to separate bale's end face (black circle) and the lower contour line of the forest.



Click the Magic wand inside the forest.



Uncheck the top layer, and select the bottom layer. Apply Curves (Adjustments -> Curves) or Color Balance effect to color the forest by green color.

  or   

Uncheck the bottom layer, and select the top layer. Invert selection (Ctrl+I). Select Rectangle ( ) in Tools panel. Hold the Alt key and select by this tool a rectangular area, moving from the lower right corner of the layer in the direction of the arrow until the selection does not override the lower part of the forest's silhouette. Release the Alt key - the selection will contain area of the sky only.



Switch to a lower layer, and colorize the sky by blue color.

Switch between layers again and click the Magic wand inside the forest once more. Invert selection (Ctrl+I). As in the previous step, hold the Alt key and using the Rectangle tool, moving from the top right corner of the layer in the direction of the arrow until the selection does not override the top part of the forest's silhouette. Release the Alt key - the selection will contain area of the field only.



Switch to a lower layer, and colorize the field with bales of straw by yellow color.



The result is a colorized image:



Realistically, isn't it? And, I believe, is not difficult.

Here, in brief, the basic techniques of working with the Color Range effect.
If you can not find a suitable color from the drop-down list, select the Сustom color and define the color using the color wheel.

Edited July 10, 2019 by ReMake
Text editing

[Maximilian]

Nice tutorial, ReMake! Really very detailed!

[Nai]

Great ! Thanks for sharing !

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Select the Magic Wand ( ) in the Tools panel. Tap the Ctrl key and click the Magic Wand inside each of the painted parts of the car.

Easy alternative: Click anywhere on the transparent background with the Shift key held down (globally selects all the background). Then invert the selection with Ctrl + I

[lynxster4]

WOW! Sky's the limit with this plugin!   

 

Thank you for sharing these examples, ReMake!    

[ReMake]

Easy alternative: Click anywhere on the transparent background with the Shift key held down (globally selects all the background). Then invert the selection with Ctrl + I

 

If there are no artifacts out of a car silhouette only. But artifacts is present almost always.

[AgentGoodspeed]

Thank you so much for this tutorial! I had been playing with the plug-in these past few days but couldn't quite figure it out.

The possibilities are endless

[Pixey]

Fabulous tutorial @Remake +1 ...... now I'm off to play with it .

[ReMake]

Fabulous tutorial @Remake ...

 

... The possibilities are endless 

 

@Pixey & @AgentGoodspeed Thanks for responses.

I hope someone will find other possibilities of effect, and then share them.

[sashwilko]

Excellent tutorial ReMake, this will help a lot

[ReMake]

Excellent tutorial ReMake, this will help a lot

 

Thanks sashwilko. I hope you liked this effect.

[Seerose]

ReMake!      

 

WOW! Very good and easy to follow and apply.  

 

Thank you soo much for this tutorials.    

 

Befor: 

 

After:

[ReMake]

... Very good and easy to follow and apply.  

 

Thank You , Seerose. Nice work.

[Pixey]

Here is my 2nd result of me playing with this Color Range Effect.  It's very clever indeed .

 

 

BEFORE

 

 

 

 

 

AFTER

 

 

[ReMake]

... It's very clever indeed  .

 

Thank You, Pixey. The result is impressive.  

[Ego Eram Reputo]

Added link to PDF version of Pleasantville Effect

[Shahdo]

Interesting tut...but what do you do if your effects does NOT have a color >color range  listing???

[null54]

7 minutes ago, Shahdo said:

Interesting tut...but what do you do if your effects does NOT have a color >color range  listing???

 

You have to download the plugin from the following thread.

 

 

[Shahdo]

Thanks for the info

[Shahdo]

One more question Null54...there are 2 different versions...not sure which one to select or does it not matter? One is Color Range_en.zip and the other one is Color Range_ru.zip. Don't want to pick the wrong one.

[BoltBait]

"en" is English, "ru" is Russian.  Pick the one for the language you prefer.

[Shahdo]

BoltBait...you really know how to make an old woman feel really really stupid.....lmao.

[ScrapbookWithPDN]

ReMake, these were such well made tutorials. To take the time to explain such seemingly little steps that are SO IMPORTANT and SO HELPFUL. You're a wonderful teacher.  These can save someone a lot of frustration and a lot of time.

[Apollo702]

I loved the tutorials- but I had to do them a couple of times to get the results. When completed they looked great! Thanks!

 

Having said that though, I think that there are a couple of missing steps and it likely would be best to switch the words "tap" to "hold." That would clarify part of it.

 

Secondly, I am curious about trying this on more complex images. Many of the above images had relatively basic shapes against well contrasted backgrounds. An example is I have an image of a common ordinary garden room. I like rooms like this in real life because I am kinda plant happy.

 

 

 

I started by duplicating, switching to the top layer and then starting CRE and selecting red(and just now experimenting with the other colors.) Since the wood in the roof almost has an orange to it I can't seem to isolate the red in the fern no matter how much I play with the sliders.

 

So, my questions are:

 

1. Is it just not possible if the foreground object is too close of a color to the background?

 

2. And what about for complex objects with many contours(such as the fern.) Are there any tricks to manipulating these types of objects?

 

Thank you in advance for any answers and ideas!

Edited July 10, 2019 by Apollo702
Corrections

[ReMake]

7 hours ago, Apollo702 said:

... and it likely would be best to switch the words "tap" to "hold." That would clarify part of it.

 

My English isn't good enough. Google translator tells me that hold is correct. I will fix it soon. Thanks for the clarification.

 

7 hours ago, Apollo702 said:

... Are there any tricks to manipulating these types of objects?

 

Currently, I have no ideas how to use Color Range effect to achieve your goal. Perhaps someone of the forum members will be able to join this thread and help you.