How To Separate Colors into Layers

[SemperAndroid]

Hi,

I have several icons that I would like to recolor. My thought was to figure out how to normalize and image colors (based around your 9 basic colors, black, white, red, green, orange, blue, yellow, purple, brown). Then I want to separate those colors into their own layer. I would prefer to doe this in an action as well.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[SCTRWD]

I don't now what you mean by "normalize", but you can turn your image to Index mode with the Color Table composed of your basic colors.
Then just Select each basic color with Color Range and cut the selection on their own layers. It can be easily recorded to action.

[USMC7312]

By normalize, I mean make all shades of green actually be green.

So I looked at a few ways to accomplish this, but I want to automate the process into an action. In short, I want to create an action that takes all shades of a color and then copies that into its very own layer. Does anyone have an action they want to share or a tool they could suggest. In the end I want a layer for each color:

Transparent
Red
Green
Blue
Yellow
Orange
Purple
Black
White

[Ivan Skoro]

I think it's impossible to make an action for this.
Also, try to normalize the colors first, then worry about actions.

[SCTRWD]

Why is it your basic colors change from post to post?

By normalize, I mean make all shades of green actually be green.

In PS there is no such thing as "shades of green".

But I think you can get the effect that you call "normalize". You will need such thing like FilterMeister plugin. There you can code this simple algorithm: for every image pixel color calculate it's distance to each of your "basic" color, find the smallest one and replace the source color with this nearest "basic" color.

Sorry, but I won't do it myself, got no spare time, this is election day...

Good luck!

[USMC7312]

They appear to change b/c I am just giving an example. The latter example being more true to what I would like to do. Unfortunately, FilterMeister wont do, as I am running on a Mac. I get pretty close to what I want using Vector Magic and a custom Color Table, but its still off to some degree. I got pretty close to doing this as well with channels, but still not perfect. I was thinking of trying this with Filter Forge 3.0. I will let you know how it goes. Any other ideas are appreciated.

[SCTRWD]

Actually the specific color values of your basic colors do matter a lot. If they are supposed to be arbitary and subject to change - then read my previous post.

But if you are talking about 8 RGB color cube vertices:

1. Red (255, 0, 0)
2. Green (0, 255, 0)
3. Blue (0, 0, 255)
4. Yellow (255, 255, 0)
5. Magenta (255, 0, 255)
6. Cyan (0, 255, 255)
7. White (255, 255, 255)
8. Black (0,0,0)

then this is just another story.
In this case there is a simple way to normalize your image: just go to each chanell and apply Image->Adjustments->Threshold with Threshold level 128.

To make separate layers for each basic color just record simple action:
For each basic color:
a) Set foreground color to this color
b) Go to Select->Color Range, uncheck Color Clusters, set Fuzziness to 0, hit Ok. c) Make new layer via Cut.
d) Select Background layer.

Proceed to next color.