Can not use the selection brush in the Photo Persona in Publisher

[phila3]

I have a head scratcher that maybe someone can help me with. I have been using Publisher ever since it came out. I have the latest verson install 1.92.1035 and have been using the photo persona to cutout that backgrounds on images that I use in a newsletter that I publish.

I went to try to cut our backgrounds on a few images that I imported today into Publisher by selecting the Photo (same version of Photo) persona where you have access to the selection brush tool and I tried to select the image and it selects nothing. I tried the selection brush on another image with the same result, no selection, no marching ants at all.

So I decided to open Photo and try removing the backgrounds in Photo. I copied the images and pasted them into Photo, selected the selection brush and it works flawlessly just like it should. After making the selection, I selected a mask, rasterized and trimmed the image and copy and pasted it back into Publisher with no background. All of this I could do before inside of Publisher but now can't for some reason. Am I missing something or is there a bug.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help.

[R C-R]

The Selection Brush Tool has Add & Subtract modes (the first item on the context toolbar). If it is set to subtract then nothing will be selected.

[phila3]

I understand the Add & Subtract function and it works as it should in Photo but not in the Photo persona in Publisher. Thanks for the thought though.

[thomaso]

The Selection Tool works only if used on an active page. Do the items in the layers panel of in Photo Persona belong to the page / layout view where you try to use the tool?

Since there is no pages panel in APub's Photo Persona it's not obvious what page currently is active when you use the Selection Tool without having an object selected. This way it can happen that you try using the tool on an inactive page – where it doesn't react. To make sure the active, current page is the wanted page select any of its objects with the move tool – although the Selection Tool / its Refine Mode don't need to have a layer selected when used.