Seperating colors with a 3 color image!!!

Can anyone help me with seperating 3 colors from a buisness card image. The 3 colors are red blue and black, I need to make each color a seperate image but in black. For example.... THE US flag has blue and red...... I would need to have only the red stripes showing but they would be in black..... then i would have only the blue section showing but it would be in black too...... and so on....... Any help would be greatly appreciated.... THX:confused: :confused:

You can select the colors individually then copy/paste them to new images using the select color range option. Go to select/color range. From there you can select a color from the drop down menu. You'll see what's selected in the box below. If its what you want click OK. I don't know how good the selection will come out but its just a suggestion. - Jase

thnx for the reply........ yeah i tried that.... your right though the selection is not perfect.... this is for a buisness card and if the selections arnt perfect then print place will have to make metal plates for it.... $$$$$$$$$$:rolleyes: Thanks again though.....

well if there is no gradient or anti-aliasing on the edges of the colors, then you can just use the "magic wand tool", which is the 2nd one down on the right column. (looks like a magnifying glass with an "X" in it).

Just select that, and click on the desired color. Then cut and paste to your pleasure.

If nothing else, you will probably have to trace around the colors with the pen, and then make a selection from the pen's path.

try changing the image to CMYK

now go to your "channels" pallet and click the right pointing arrow on the pallet and chose "split channels" this will make all the channel seperate into their own window....Cyan,Magenta,Yellow and black.
(we'll put them back together in a minute)

since you want red, blue and blackjust select the "yellow" image and do a "ctr + A" and fill it with white.

now for the magenta image.... its gonna be your red.
Go to "levels" or "curves" and up the contrast...
then erase what you DON"T want on the red plate

now the Cyan image.... same thing ...up the contrast and erase what you DON"T want on the blue plate.

Black image...repeat

now on the channels pallet click the right pointing arrow and select "merge channels" and click ok when it promts you to select channels.

Print it as CMYK and you'll get what you want.

Spicoli....

I think what the printing company is asking for, and what your best course of action is, would be to create a document using spot colors, ditch the CMKY or RGB channels and then save it using the DCS 2.0 format.

There's way too much to explain about this procedure to go into here. but open up Photoshop Help in your browser and search the Index for "spot colors." If for "some ridiculous reason" you don'thave the Help files loaded, try checking here for the info

If you haven't done much work for print the process may seem a little counter-intuitive to what you may be used to for doing, say, web graphics, but if you're using Photoshop to do your business cards spot colors would be the way to go.