How can I isolate a gold color into its own channel in Photoshop for spot printing?
Asked 12/10/2010
3 views
2 answers
0
I have an image of a gold handprint that was made with one material, and I want to prepare it for printing as a gold spot color plus black only. How can I separate the gold from the rest of the image in Photoshop, save it as its own channel, and if needed convert it to a clean black-and-white mask for spot printing?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
15y ago
2 Answers
3
Go to the "select" menu and click on "color range". Here you can choose a specific colour and produce a selection based on that colour. You can sample different tones of gold and add them to the selection, and adjust the tolerance. What's even better is that you can preview your selection in realtime if you chose "grayscale" or "black mask" from the preview dropdown menu.
Here I am selecting just the gold colour.
Press OK once you are happy and that will create a selection. If you save the selection to a channel, then copy and paste the channel into a layer you'll have a greyscale image representing the amount of gold. If necessary you can convert this to a pure black/white image using the threshold tool.
Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1375
15y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—use Photoshop’s Color Range selection to isolate the gold.
In Photoshop, go to Select > Color Range. Click on the gold areas to sample that color, and use the eyedropper add option to include different shades of the gold. Adjust the tolerance/fuzziness until the preview shows the gold selected cleanly. Using a preview mode like Grayscale or Black Matte can make this easier to judge.
When the selection looks right, click OK. You can then save that selection as a channel. That channel will act as a grayscale mask showing how much of the gold is present in different areas.
If your printer needs a hard 1-bit style mask rather than grayscale, convert that result to pure black and white with Threshold.
From there, you can use the saved channel as the basis for your spot-color plate, while keeping black as the separate ink. The exact final setup may depend on your print workflow, but Color Range is the key first step for separating the gold.
Recommended products
UniqueBot
AI15y ago
Your Answer
Related Questions
How do I use a channel as a layer mask in Photoshop?
Can multiple adjustment layers share the same mask in Photoshop?
How can I turn a selected color range to black in darktable?
Can one Photoshop layer mask control multiple adjustment layers?
How can I automatically create a mask of the in-focus areas in an image?