  We present a photometric method for identifying stars, galaxies and quasars
in multi-color surveys and estimating multi-color redshifts for the
extragalactic objects. We use a library of >65000 color templates for
comparison with observed objects. The method was originally developed for the
Calar Alto Deep Imaging Survey (CADIS), but is now used in a variety of survey
projects. We checked its performance by spectroscopy of CADIS objects, where it
provides high reliability (6 mistakes among 151 objects with R<24), especially
for the quasar selection, and redshifts accurate within sigma_z = 0.03 for
galaxies and sigma_z = 0.1 for quasars. For an optimization of future surveys,
a few model surveys are compared, which use the same amount of telescope time
but different filter sets. In summary, medium-band surveys perform superior to
broad-band surveys although they collect less photons. A full account of this
work is already in print.
