Separating color info onto a new layer

[defwack]

Hi there,

I have a logo-graphic that is orange and black. I created the image in PS using text and images, but the printing company wants to have the color separated out from the black. Is there a way to do this? I haven't had anybody ask for this before, as the printer usually just separates the colors themselves.

Thanks.

~Jody

[Medley]

I guess the easiest way to do this would be to select the color with the magic wand, cut it from the background, and paste it on the new layer.

-Medley.

[defwack]

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, that's what I thought too, but when I tried it, it left a bunch of jagged edges. To get the black border around the orange text, I used the "stroke" layer style, and it kind of blended the black and orange together where the colors meet. With the magic wand, it's really hard to get only the colored pixels and leave out the black ones.

I'm just wondering if there's a way to just lift off all the color info or something.

[Medley]

Alright then. This is not so much a solution as a train of thought. Unfortunately, I don't have time to tinker with it tonight, but it may give you some ideas.

If you convert an image to Lab Color, you get three channels- two color channels, and a luminosity channel. The luminosity channel is the black/white separation you wanted, so it stands to reason that the other two channels combined contain all the color info you need.

The task is coverting the channels to layers, and then converting the layers back RGB mode, without having the computer misinterpret the information within. Sounds easy in theory, but I think that in practice this is one of those tasks that causes bulletholes in monitors........

Anyway, good luck. Sorry I don't have more time to poke around with this.

-Medley.

[defwack]

I did tinker around with that for a bit too, but didn't really get a chance to figure out how to get the bw/color channels back into layers. I'll give it another go tomorrow when I have some time to look into it a little more.

Thanks!