1. An image editor for an image processing system, said editor comprising: means for storing pixel color data for an image to be edited; means for displaying the stored image on a monitor screen; means for designating a screen path which identifies an object and which provides position and color date for use in determining pixels corresponding to the object in the displayed image by differentiating the object from its nearby context; means for detecting pixel position data corresponding to the screen path; means for determining in real time one or more criteria for a search controller as a function of screen path position data and screen path color data; means for searching image pixels to find those pixels diverging from the screen path and satisfying the criteria set by the search controller thereby determining a contiguous image area corresponding to the image area occupied by the selected object and thereby identifying the selected object relative to its context; and means for applying a preselected color edit operation to the identified object within the image.