another for the Photoshop wizards - picking colors to erase?

[housepig]

okay, I need to see if this can be done from two opposing angles:

I need to know

A. how to erase a specific color, and
B. how to erase everything BUT a specific color

in Photoshop, preferably version 6.

I know about the Replace Color option, so that covers A if there's no easier method.

any tips?

[housepig]

damn, did I use the wrong mouthwash today or what?

I know there are Pshop nuts here (Northcat, looking in your direction), and I can't believe that I asked an unsolveable question... or if I did, that no one would give me shit about it.

so...

****BUMP*****

[D_Knife]

you could try the magic eraser tool - click and hold on the eraser icon to show the list
there is also the background eraser but I haven't used that before

[northcat_8]

Sorry about that housepig....must have been sleeping on the job...

How complicated it is depends on how the image is. If the color is a clearly defined seperate from everything else then the magic wand will be easiest.

If you are trying to lighten a photo and you have purple spots all over it, that is something different all together.

It would be easier to tell you if you posted the pic or part of the pic that you are wanting to take the color out of.

Something else to consider is what are you going to put in that color's place? You aren't going to just delete it and leave transparent pixels all over the place...are you?

Also sometimes it is easier to change that color than it is to delete it.

[IAIHMB]

I'm using CS so things might be a little different. I never liked the color replacing tool, what I always did was:

Select -> Color Range

From there you can pretty much do whatever you want with the selection. To erase everything but that color can be done similaraly:

Select -> Color Range -> Select -> Inverse

That will select everything but that color.

[housepig]

It would be easier to tell you if you posted the pic or part of the pic that you are wanting to take the color out of.

Something else to consider is what are you going to put in that color's place? You aren't going to just delete it and leave transparent pixels all over the place...are you?

well, the example I hit yesterday was a line drawing with a wood-grain background - I could use Magic Wand to select the line drawing, but I'd be doing shift-click on a ton of tiny, tiny little bits to get it all.

or I could do color replace - but again, since it's a wood-grain background, I'd be selecting a few dozen colors and replacing them one by one.

so I was hoping that I could select the color to ignore (black) and erase everything else.

once I erase the other colors, I can add in another layer with a solid background color or whatever.

[rallynavvie]

If the line art is the same color value across the piece then use the magic wand tool to select one piece of it. Go into whichever menu it is that has "select similar" in it (I don't have Photoshop on this machine) and it'll select everything of that color in the file. You may need to clean up parts it selected that you don't want selected by using the selection tools and holding down the ALT key to remove selections. You can use "select inverse" which I think is in the same menu to get the rest of the file. I suggest cutting the line art portion and putting it on its own layer if you plan on using it again. Keeping things on layers is one of the nice things about Photoshop.