Making selections

[MikeFromMesa]

This is the continuation of the discussion on a separate thread involving making selections using the PL selection tools. This discussion threatened to hijack that thread so, at the request of the OP, I have moved it to a new thread and hence those following this thread might want to first review the Exp: Selections and Masks thread.

> Actually, IMO you're approaching it incorrectly...what you may want to do (it's what I did) is select the sky (because that's pretty much a uniform blue color), and then invert the mask

I understand your comment but I was not trying to select the entire part of the photo apart from the sky. I was trying to select the terra cotta facia on the front of the church in order to play around with its color and hue. Here is an example of what I wanted to do, although this was done using Photoshop. Keep in mind this was only as an exercise to learn the selection tools in PL, not because I actually wanted to do this to the image (although I do like the way this looks).

SanXavier-1.jpg

> Depending on what you mean when you say you want to enhance the colour of the terra cotta, you can not even bother with making a selection and instead use a little known but very powerful tool -- Tool...Color...Hue Editor.

Yes. I know there are other ways to do this, but I think that is missing the point of the exercise. I want to learn how to use the existing selection tools in PL, not to use PS or Remask 4 or OnOne, all of which I feel competent in. I picked this photo, and the terra cotta facia, specifically because I thought the color differences between the white stucco and the brown terra cotta would make the selection process easy and thus give me a way to start to learn how to use PL to successfully make a selection.

But when I try to do what I think is automatic selection in PL (the Automatic Lasso), which I expect to act like the Quick Selection tool in Photoshop, this is what I get:

PL-QuickSelectTool.jpg

I know I can add to and remove from this selection, and here it is easy because the edges are so clearly defined, but I assumed that the selection would automatically try to adhere to the color and/or contrast edges, but it did not. It followed my (poor) tracing exactly. Using the Refine Edges button made no difference at all, so I don't know if I am expecting too much from the tool or if I am making a mistake.

Am I using the wrong tool? Is there some equivalent of the Quick Selection Tool in PS which automatically tries to adhere to the color/contrast boundary? Or does PL just expect me to do the selection completely manually?

[Hoogo]

The "Automatic lasso", that tool with the little magnet in its icon, doesn't work by dragging, but by clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking. You close the loop with a double click.
The behavior while dragging is just the same as the normal lasso tool.

But the behavior you expected looks like a fine idea to me

[Alan9940]

Hello Mike,

Yeah, sorry, I guess I didn't read your original post closely enough. Rather, I just assumed you wanted to replace the sky because that's such a common thing people want to do. That'll teach me to be working on this stuff late at night!

I understand your desire to learn about selections in PL, but you don't reach for the hammer when what you need is a saw! I think Ken was making a very valid point in the other thread (though not specifically stated, perhaps) that you're attempting to use the wrong tool for the job. If you wish to modify one parameter of HSL of the mission facade, then making a selection is perhaps not the best tool to reach for. This is no different from working in PS. If I was wanting to modify, say, the hue of the facade in PS I wouldn't select it first. Without giving it much thought, I would probably create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, use the eyedropper to pick the facade color, adjust the triangles along the bottom color bar to meet my needs, then move the hue slider. Done! No selections required. And, if there were other areas of the image with similar color that might get affected by my hue adjustment on the facade, then I'd first draw a rectangle selection around the facade to restrict the Hue/Saturation adjustment.

IMO, if you want to learn about selections, then play with your mission image to replace the sky as I did. Find other more challenging images--trees with leaves, for example--and try extracting just the tree from its background. Then, when you're feeling really confident that you're starting to nail your techniques, then try the Aniston image in Ken's post. That one is difficult on many different levels.

Good luck!

Best regards,
AlanH

[MikeFromMesa]

The "Automatic lasso", that tool with the little magnet in its icon, doesn't work by dragging, but by clicking clicking clicking clicking clicking. You close the loop with a double click.
The behavior while dragging is just the same as the normal lasso tool.

But the behavior you expected looks like a fine idea to me

Well, I guess that explains my problem. It is probably best to use the tool as it is supposed to be used.

So, given what you posted, I moved on to the Quick Selection Tool. Perhaps I am using this correctly, perhaps not. In this case I created a box around the area I wanted to select and then use the Mark Object to click around the boundary I wanted to select. When there were parts outside of my markings that were also selected (why would it select areas outside of my marks?) I marked them with the Mark Background marks, but the area inside of my marks did not all get selected and the areas outside of my marks, which I marked background, did not get de-selected. Here is a partial screen shot:

PL-QuickSelectionTool2.jpg

Is this working as expected? Or am I again doing something wrong? Is the selection intended to be color sensitive (which is what it appears to be)? Or am I (again) missing the whole point of the tool?

Thanks.

[MikeFromMesa]

I understand your desire to learn about selections in PL, but you don't reach for the hammer when what you need is a saw!

Ha! Clearly you never saw any of the home repairs I made. Reaching for a hammer when I need a saw is a brief synopsis of my repair work in general.

IMO, if you want to learn about selections, then play with your mission image to replace the sky as I did. Find other more challenging images--trees with leaves, for example--and try extracting just the tree from its background. Then, when you're feeling really confident that you're starting to nail your techniques, then try the Aniston image in Ken's post. That one is difficult on many different levels.

Playing with the sky will be a difficult job, given the trees, shrubs and small areas where the windows in the church reveal the sky in the background. My basic approach has always been to start with the simple stuff first so I can learn how to do the more difficult stuff. In Photoshop I select an area where I want the changes restricted to and then add an adjustment layer. That provides me with the ability to restrict my changes to the single area even if there are other places where the same color appears. For example, in the church photo, the wall in front of the church is roughly the same color as the facade so I chose to restrict my changes to the selected facade. My thought was that once I had learned how to properly select, then I could move on to other, more difficult, selections like the sky. Of course I have to make sure my intermediate changes will not affect my later changes, and selections may do that, but it is sometimes a good way for me to proceed.

While the sky is largely one color, and hence should be easy to select, the image has all of those trees, branches, shrubs and, in this case, the scaffolding, to make the image selection more difficult. In fact even with OnOne I had to be careful to keep the scaffolding and the small branches and leaves from being masked out of the image.

There is a great deal in PL to learn, at least for me, and my general learning process has pretty much always been to learn the simple stuff first until I can do what I want to do, and then to start to learn the more difficult parts of the tools. That way I can be productive while, at the same time, expand what I know to make my work more complete and more interesting. Often it may mean doing more work than absolutely necessary (learn how to do something and then learn that there was a better way to do it), but since time is not an issue for me, I don't mind spending the cycles doing something interesting.

[photoken]

Hi Mike,
I take your point about wanting to focus on making a selection (rather than modifying the terra cotta colour with another method). I think you've got a good approach about starting with a simple case to learn the basics.

Alan's comment is still valid, though -- sometimes the best selection is the one that isn't made.

Hoogo's description of the Automatic Lasso tool is very important. I kept click, click, clicking and didn't run into nearly the problems that you did along the top of the façade (using a Tolerance value of 7.0) :

Mission auto lasso.jpg

Some things to keep in mind about the Automatic Lasso tool:

• When you adjust its Tolerance value in the tool's settings, that changes the width of the search rectangle you see.
• If the automatic edge selection goes haywire and you inadvertently click to set the selection point, you can hit the Backspace key to undo the last set point. Keep hitting Backspace to successively undo the set points.
• For me, the beauty of the tool is that I can override its proposed selection method on the fly. In other words, if the $$#@# thing refuses to automatically select the "correct" edge, I can hold down the mouse button and drag and the selection line will follow the cursor, then release the LMB to return to the automatic click, click, click method for easier edges. It takes a little bit of practice to discover just when the drag method will be initiated and viewable -- sometimes the displayed selection line will not appear to follow the cursor, but when the LMB is released the selection line is, in fact, drawn along the path.

One question about your image: What kind of image are you working on? Are you practicing directly on the RAW image, or are you practicing on an flattened image like a layer or TIF?

[MikeFromMesa]

Alan's comment is still valid, though -- sometimes the best selection is the one that isn't made.

Yes. I completely agree and, although my main purpose in posting these questions was to try to see how the selection tools work, the comment about the Hue Editor was so valuable that I spent quite a bit of time playing with it and seeing just how much power it contains. As is true with other things, sometimes what you learn, even if it is not what you expected to learn, more than warrants the time spent. This is certainly one of those cases as the Hue Editor is simply a great tool that I will use a lot in the future.

Hoogo's description of the Automatic Lasso tool is very important. I kept click, click, clicking and didn't run into nearly the problems that you did along the top of the façade (using a Tolerance value of 7.0) :

Mission auto lasso.jpg

Some things to keep in mind about the Automatic Lasso tool:

• When you adjust its Tolerance value in the tool's settings, that changes the width of the search rectangle you see.
• If the automatic edge selection goes haywire and you inadvertently click to set the selection point, you can hit the Backspace key to undo the last set point. Keep hitting Backspace to successively undo the set points.
• For me, the beauty of the tool is that I can override its proposed selection method on the fly. In other words, if the $$#@# thing refuses to automatically select the "correct" edge, I can hold down the mouse button and drag and the selection line will follow the cursor, then release the LMB to return to the automatic click, click, click method for easier edges. It takes a little bit of practice to discover just when the drag method will be initiated and viewable -- sometimes the displayed selection line will not appear to follow the cursor, but when the LMB is released the selection line is, in fact, drawn along the path.

Once I had the proper use of the tool explained to me it seemed much more useful although I still had some problems around the bottom of the facade where the short pillars and the doors are located. I tried three times to make a selection including the facade but excluding the open part of the door and the pillars, but all three times the selection took long before I was finished. Perhaps I need to do the add and remove when that happens, but I was surprised that the selection completed without my specifically closing the selection.

Your comments about how to use the tool are very helpful. Thank you and I will keep practicing.

One question about your image: What kind of image are you working on? Are you practicing directly on the RAW image, or are you practicing on an flattened image like a layer or TIF?

Typically I work on the raw files although I may save an intermediate form of the file if I want to work on it later. When I do that I typically choose to save in psd format so I can open there file in other tools to compare the results. Most of the images I posted were from a psd layered file.

[photoken]

One question about your image: What kind of image are you working on? Are you practicing directly on the RAW image, or are you practicing on an flattened image like a layer or TIF?

Typically I work on the raw files although I may save an intermediate form of the file if I want to work on it later. When I do that I typically choose to save in psd format so I can open there file in other tools to compare the results. Most of the images I posted were from a psd layered file.

OK, but what I was getting at was I wanted to be sure the issues you were running into with selections weren't because you're practicing making selections directly on the RAW image.

[photoken]

Is this working as expected? Or am I again doing something wrong? Is the selection intended to be color sensitive (which is what it appears to be)? Or am I (again) missing the whole point of the tool?

Yeah, the QS tool is working as expected. As far as I can tell, it seems that it's calculations are based on both the colour differences and the value (lightness, or Black & White) differences. A long time ago I tried using the QS tool on a B&W image and it didn't perform nearly as well as I thought it should, given the value contrasts involved. That led me to assume the QS is using a combination of colour and value in its calculations.

One very big difference between PL's QS tool and PSP's AutoSelection tool is that PL's tool is always recalculating in the background. PSP's AutoSelection tool gives it its best shot and stops. That's why you see the PL tool change which areas have already been included when you mark an area to be included. PL's QS tool is also combining the PSP AutoSelection tool and the Smart Brush tool in one tool. In other words, when working in PSP I would first use its AutoSelection tool to do a rough selection and then switch to its Smart Brush tool to refine the selection. In PL, all that selecting and refining are handled in the same Quick Selection tool.

[Hoogo]

Is this working as expected? Or am I again doing something wrong? Is the selection intended to be color sensitive (which is what it appears to be)? Or am I (again) missing the whole point of the tool?

Just paint some more, and make sure that you keep the strokes on their side, don't cross the borders.

After switching to a lasso tool and applying some "enhance edge", this looks really fine.

[MikeFromMesa]

Is this working as expected? Or am I again doing something wrong? Is the selection intended to be color sensitive (which is what it appears to be)? Or am I (again) missing the whole point of the tool?

Just paint some more, and make sure that you keep the strokes on their side, don't cross the borders.

After switching to a lasso tool and applying some "enhance edge", this looks really fine.

I work on a laptop and have found that my ability to control the paint brush paths, or the selection paths, is a lot less on it than with a good mouse and mousepad. Because of that I look for ways to select without having to manually trace. Hence my search for easier ways to make selections and masks.

[photoken]

I work on a laptop and have found that my ability to control the paint brush paths, or the selection paths, is a lot less on it than with a good mouse and mousepad. Because of that I look for ways to select without having to manually trace. Hence my search for easier ways to make selections and masks.

I'm working on a notebook, too, using its touchpad. Didn't have much trouble making the selection with the Quick Selection tool (at least with the low resolution image):

Mission QS.jpg

In areas where I fussed too much (the upper right arch against the sky), I simply clicked with one of the QS tools instead of trying to drag and paint.

[photoken]

Mike,
After looking at these images again, I see that you're using a much smaller brush size in the QS tool (relative to the image size) than are Hoogo and I. Try using a much larger brush.

Tip: Hold down the Ctrl key and the Left Mouse Button to drag the diameter of the brush out or in. Hold down the Ctrl+Shift keys and the LMB to drag the inner circle of the brush to define the amount of softness of the brush. In the QS tool, you do not want to use a soft-edged brush.