: How to select a specific color in Photoshop CS2? I'm trying to reduce colors from million to 7 exact colors. It's a fabric design, so I want to separate greens from the other colors. However,

@Murray976

The good news.... yes, it can be done in practically any version of Photoshop.

The bad news.... It can be a difficult task depending upon the artwork. In addition, to requiring some experience with creating selections and masks.

Trying to remember CS2: Select > Color Range... may possibly get a good starting selection, as mentioned in the comments above.

Quick Mask would allow you to "paint" areas you want to be part of a selection.

You could use the Channels Panel combined with tools such as the Magic Wand to get a selection.

And of course, there's the Magic Wand tool or Pen tool or Lasso tool to draw a selection.

There are a great many methods to create a selection. Essentially just use whatever is easiest for you to get a good starting selection. No method is just going to be "perfect" with a click. What you describe "other different colored pixels get selected" is due to anti-aliasing. This is going to happen with practically any selection method if the artwork has anti-aliasing. There's no way to easily or automatically get around anti-aliasing in most cases.

After a selection is created, it's a matter of refinement. Once you have a selection, turn it into a layer mask. Once you have a layer mask, you can then go in and manually use a brush to paint away any anti-aliasing pixels you do not want as part of the selection.

Basically the procedure would be the same as removing a background from an image but in this case you'd be removing everything except the color you want to retain.

Seeing a screen shot of specific artwork may yield more detailed instructions. However, in most case the above steps are pretty much the same.

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