Automatic lasso is dead

[greenmorpher]

I click with it and it starts. Then I drag and click again and nothing happens.

OS X.6.8, PL v. 17.53

Best regards
Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
General Manager
Bushtrack Enterprises Ltd
http://www.bushtrackpng.com

[bkh]

I click with it and it starts. Then I drag and click again and nothing happens.

Just move the cursor (without pressing the mouse key) and click when the suggested outline is at the right position. When I drag the cursor, PL doesn't display anything here, either (which is a bit strange, maybe it should suggest an outline even if the mouse button is down?)

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

I used to go around stuff, click, click, click, with the delightful provision that you could delete back by clicks, but now nothing happens when I click after the first click -- there's just a line following the cursor around screen and refusing to anchor.

Cheers, geoff

[bkh]

I used to go around stuff, click, click, click, with the delightful provision that you could delete back by clicks, but now nothing happens when I click after the first click -- there's just a line following the cursor around screen and refusing to anchor.

Works here (PL 17.53, Mac OS 10.8.4), with one exception. With tolerance set to 0, I get a similar behaviour. The suggeted path is a straight line – which makes sense – but I can't set anchor points, either, unless I press SHIFT or CMD. Once I set tolerance to a value above 0, all seems to work fine. Imo, with tolerance set to 0, the autmatic lasso should behave like with CMD pressed and add a straight line segment.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

I used to go around stuff, click, click, click, with the delightful provision that you could delete back by clicks, but now nothing happens when I click after the first click -- there's just a line following the cursor around screen and refusing to anchor.

Works here (PL 17.53, Mac OS 10.8.4), with one exception. With tolerance set to 0, I get a similar behaviour. The suggeted path is a straight line – which makes sense – but I can't set anchor points, either, unless I press SHIFT or CMD. Once I set tolerance to a value above 0, all seems to work fine. Imo, with tolerance set to 0, the autmatic lasso should behave like with CMD pressed and add a straight line segment.

Cheers

Burkhard.

Good grief -- I am shocked rigid! I have never even noticed the Tolerance setting which, of course, is important for such a tool!!! Or rather, I don’t remember noticing it -- but remembering is a whole other ball game. I probably DID notice it and set it to something pretty low early in my use of the tool, then just ignored it from then on. Set and forget. I am expert in forgetting.

What I have been concerned about is the soft edge. At some time, I must have inadvertently set tolerance to zero when I was setting the soft edge. Obviously a tab will move you between the fields.

Oh boy -- sometimes I wonder how tunnel-like my tunnel vision is becoming with advancing age, to say nothing of my tunnel mind.

Anyway, I set it to above zero and I am once again a happy camper -- it is working faultlessly.

Thanks for the heads up, Burkhard.

I have found this took very useful, increasingly. I long used the line tool in Canvas to trace around stuff and lift it out of the background -- it has a very useful feature called "Trim (Image) to Path". But PhotoLine's automatic lasso is better for this -- easier to follow the desired to outline the object. This was brought home to me yesterday when I was doing a manual tracing in Canvas for the first time for some considerable time having switched to PL and the automatic lasso for this task. Doing the path manually in Canvas was relatively clumsy and time consuming.

Anyway -- back to the automatic lasso now! And in future, RESETTING THE TOLERANCE when appropriate!!! LOL!

Cheers, geoff

[greenmorpher]

Ho, ho, ho -- I had another job to do with this this morning, car to pull out of the background. So having got the automatic lasso functioning again, I ripped into it -- making full use of the tolerance setting.

Only the tolerance setting couldn’t help me!!! It bright direct sunlight and I was trying to trace a silver gray car sitting on a koronas (dead coral) surface which is a kind of dirty white. How much contrast between the two? About zero! So the lasso found its path around the individual little lumps of coronas giving the car's lower regions a very pleasant serrated look!

I did all kinds of things with the tolerance and it couldn’t beat it.

Anyway, I did the job then cleaned up with the eraser. It was only for the faded background of a business card so any problems with the edges won’t be apparent in the final job. My client has taken delivery of the PDF file with a happy cry!

Hey, would like to make it clear that I am not complaining about this. I think the automatic lasso is an amazing tool, this was one of those circumstances where automated anything wasn't going to work well. Even with the problem and having to adjust the under sides with the eraser, however, it was still faster doing the whole image than tracing out by hand with the path tool.

Cheers, geoff

[Martin Huber]

Imo, with tolerance set to 0, the autmatic lasso should behave like with CMD pressed and add a straight line segment.

I will modify the behavior.

Martin