6.0 Selections
page fourI want to select only the white portions of the checkerboard in item #8. I dragged a rectangular selection around the outside of the entire checkerboard section, first, to exclude the other items on the page from being selected.
If you look at the magnified view of the checkerboard pattern you will see that it includes many intermediate shades of gray.
Different selection methods will select different proportions of the gray. For example, the magic wand selects the following squares when clicked on a pure white spot within the selection. The Subtract from Selection button was chosen in its options bar (remember, I have already drawn a selection around the outside of the entire checkerboard), and Tolerance was set to zero. Anti-alias was left checked.
As you can see, this is not a good selection. Next, I tried setting the tolerance to 16, with anti-aliasing still on. I filled the resulting selection with red so you could see what was selected. Remember, the marching ants only show pixels that are more than 50 % selected. With anti-aliasing selected, some of the intermediate grays were partially selected as you can see from the fill.
Next, I tired it without anti-aliasing. Here is the filled result of a magic wand selection with tolerance set to 50, and anti-aliasing turned off. With a lower tolerance setting, even less black was selected. Remember, I am doing a Subtract from Selection selection, and clicking on the black.
This is not a very good selection, and I’m having to do a selection, and then use Undo as I can’t see what I’m getting until I fill the selection.
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Color Range is a command found in the Select menu which does just what
its name indicates. By clicking on the colors that you want to include
in your selection, and previewing what you are choosing, you can see how
you’re doing.
Choose Select > Color Range to open the
dialog box shown below. Since the entire checkerboard was already within
a rectangular selection, it is what showed up in the preview window, not
the whole page.
To choose the colors that you want included in your selection, you click
on the first eyedropper in the dialog box. Its shown on the left in the
group below (not selected).
Click in the image with that eyedropper. Everything that is the same as
the color clicked on will then be selected. To add more colors to your
selection, choose the middle, plus, eyedropper, and click on additional
colors. To remove colors from the selection, choose the eyedropper on
the right.
If the Selection radio button, at the center
of the dialog box is selected, you can also click with the plus and minus
eyedroppers on the little preview window to add and subtract from the
masked selection shown.
The Fuzziness value determines how much
variation in the selected colors will be included in the selection. If
set to anything more than zero, it allows for partial selection of similar
colors. This creates a softer selection edge similar to feathering.
The Color Range command gives much greater control over what is selected, even if it takes a few more steps to complete.
Continue on page five
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Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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