A screening approach for identifying adsorbents and conditions for selective removal of colored impurities from solutions of pharmaceutical intermediates is described. In this method, a variety of process adsorbents are evaluated using a combination of HPLC or LC−MS and 96-well microplate UV–vis spectroscopy. Several representative examples are shown that illustrate the use of the technique for the selective removal of colored impurities from pharmaceutical development candidates or related intermediates.