Discover how to enhance color in Adobe Photoshop through a step-by-step tutorial, covering techniques such as color range selections, using channels to refine selections, and how to apply these methods in an exercise to enhance the green of vines in an image.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Photoshop training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Photoshop, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.
Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:
Color range selections, Using Channels to refine color range selections
Exercise Preview
Exercise Overview
In this exercise, we will enhance the green of the vines by selecting their Color Range.
Selecting the Vines
In the Layers panel, click on the Background layer to select it.
Use the Lasso
to quickly select the area around the vines.Go to Select > Color Range.
Click on the greens of the vines at the top right of the image.
Choose the Add to Sample Eyedropper
and click on more greens.Adjust the Fuzziness to try and get a lot of the vines without too much else.
To see a larger preview, at the bottom next to Selection Preview, choose Quick Mask. Use the eyedroppers and Fuzziness control to adjust your selection if needed.
When satisfied, click OK.
Go to Select > Save Selection to save the selection as a new channel.
Name the new channel vines and click OK.
Deselect (Cmd–D (Mac) or Ctrl–D (Windows)).
Go to the Channels panel and view the vines channel by itself. Notice all the imperfections and things that were selected that shouldn’t have been.
Use the Brush
to quickly clean up the left over stuff you don’t want. (Make sure the channel is selected.)
Adjusting the Vine Color Using Your Channel Selection & Curves
Hold Cmd (Mac) or Ctrl (Windows) and click on the vines channel thumbnail to load it as a selection.
Switch to the composite RGB channel.
Go to the Layers panel, then click the New adjustment layer button
and choose Curves.Name the new curves layer green vines.
In the Properties panel, choose the Green channel and add green by dragging a midpoint up slightly (this lightens the Green channel).
Switch to the Red channel and remove red by dragging a midpoint down slightly (this darkens the Red channel). The vines should now be nice and green!
When done, save and close the file.
