Near- (upper panels) and mid-IR (lower panels) CMDs for stars in the VMC field 8_3. Stars classified as O-rich (upper left panel, blue dots) and C-rich (upper right panel, red dots) are shown as solid symbols. The five non-AGB sources are displayed as diamonds. In the upper panels we plotted curves of constant bolometric magnitudes (M_bol between  −6.0 and  −4.0, with steps of 0.5 mag) derived using the K_s-band bolometric correction from Kerschbaum et al. (2010). In the lower-left panel all AGB stars are shown as bigger points, while in the lower-right panel bigger (green) points show all stars not classified as AGB candidates using the near-IR criteria. The small grey crosses and open circles show all the sources in the LMC classified as AGB stars and EROs, respectively, by Gruendl & Chu (2009). The filled circles represent the two additional stars selected purely on the basis of the mid-IR photometry using the area delineated by the solid line.