Detailed area selection?

[henryb]

I used an old photo of my late dog in my car and tried to make the best - to my abilities - area selection around him (toggling all the time between On and Off in the Snap To Edges for the selection brush tool to get the most detailed selection I could at the dog's hair endings). Then I inverted the selected area to select everything around the dog, and lowered the color saturation slider completely down to take the color of the surroundings away (so the dog stands out in contrast). But because the selection of the dog's hair edges was far from perfect, the result looks horrible and "unrealistic" when the colorful dog is then in a black&white environment. It looks like someone just cut out the dog from another photo using a pair of scissors, and stuck this cutout atop a different photo!  

 

Is there some kind of technique, or tool, within AP that would do this MUCH better?

 

*The last attached file is the original photo I used BTW

 

[carl123]

A slightly different approach...

I selected and refined the selection of the dog then outputted it to its own layer

Then I just "lowered" the colours on the original layer

APhoto file attached

 

 

 

dogincar.afphoto

[henryb]

Ok the result is FANTASTIC!! WOW!! ❤️❤️ 

But HOW did you accomplish such a fine selection in all the edges where the hair gets really thin, and the background's color (the brown leather seat's, in this case) shows "through" the ever-so-thin hair?? Ok my selection below was crappy and hasty, but I don't think I could've made it significantly better anyway... What did you do to make the selection so perfect??

 

 

And, I don't think I really understood the difference in your method to mine.  Did you 1) Duplicate the layer (CMD+j), then 2) make the pixel selection and 3) apply the color change via desaturation or via color sliders on one layer while leaving the other layer (with the dog mask) untouched? Is that what you did? Is there any diff really to what I had done?

 

 

[carl123]

Just select the total outline of the dog - don't try to deselect the bits, say, where the chair shows through in above image

Once selected hit the Refine button then use the Matte Brush to paint around the fur edges (and where the chair shows through) which does a pretty good job (in this case) of separating the fur from the background

 

26 minutes ago, henryb said:

Did you 1) Duplicate the layer (CMD+j), then 2) make the pixel selection and 3) apply the color change via desaturation or via color sliders on one layer while leaving the other layer (with the dog mask) untouched? Is that what you did? Is there any diff really to what I had done?

If you look at the attached APhoto file, not the JPG file, (in my original post) you will see that I used a HSL adjustment layer and Levels adjustment layer to desaturate the original layer the rest is essentially as you have surmised

There are many different ways one can desaturate the image - no one method is correct in all situations

 

 

[henryb]

13 hours ago, carl123 said:

Just select the total outline of the dog - don't try to deselect the bits, say, where the chair shows through in above image

Once selected hit the Refine button then use the Matte Brush to paint around the fur edges (and where the chair shows through) which does a pretty good job (in this case) of separating the fur from the background

 

 

 

 

THANK YOU!  I found this Affinity Photo tutorial on the Matte Brush Refinement method (that you mentioned) and it was GREAT! Thanks again!!  

 

[henryb]

I'm having trouble with this Refine Selection tool thing.. After I've made my marquee selection around the dog, I click on the Refine button, then the area outside the dog turns to red, I then start painting around the edges to refine the edges, and after a couple of places I've refined, the red-colored areas around the dog just disappear and I can no longer use/see the brush on the image. I then click on the Refine button again to bring the red back so I can continue from the point where I got interrupted, but we are back to square one again and I have to start over. It's happened over 10 times and I've given up - I can't keep doing this over and over. There must be something wrong with the tool. Anyone know what the problem is?

[henryb]

27 minutes ago, henryb said:

I'm having trouble with this Refine Selection tool thing.. After I've made my marquee selection around the dog, I click on the Refine button, then the area outside the dog turns to red, I then start painting around the edges to refine the edges, and after a couple of places I've refined, the red-colored areas around the dog just disappear and I can no longer use/see the brush on the image. I then click on the Refine button again to bring the red back so I can continue from the point where I got interrupted, but we are back to square one again and I have to start over. It's happened over 10 times and I've given up - I can't keep doing this over and over. There must be something wrong with the tool. Anyone know what the problem is?

I tried restarting, trashing caches, launch agents/deamons etc etc but it still just doesn't want to work.

Step 1 make selection around dog

 

Step 2 click Refine button to open Refine Selection tools/brushes

Step 3 - no matter what I do (whether I start painting around edges with matte brush, or simply do nothing and just wait..) after a few seconds the red mask is gone and I can no longer affect the image with the brush so I have to close the Refine Selection window and start over...). Any work I had done using the matte brush is lost. This is an endless loop...

 

 

[v_kyr]

Just a quick take, the background is overall not the best in terms of contrast and coloring for cutting out the main subject here.

 

• hund.afphoto

[carl123]

@henryb

Try turning off Hardware Acceleration in Edit > Preferences > Performance if it is on

 

[henryb]

12 hours ago, carl123 said:

@henryb

Try turning off Hardware Acceleration in Edit > Preferences > Performance if it is on

YES!!! That did it!! I turned it off and now it works (meaning the Refine window doesn't automatically turn off after a few seconds)!!. What did I just do to fix this problem? (I mean Hardware Acceleration sounds like a "good" thing to have turned on... No??)

 

 

Slightly off the topic, but does anyone how how to save this marquee selection below that I've made around my dog (now that I've refined it as much as I could with the brushes) so that I can get it out of the way for now, and maybe make new selections to edit other areas of the image (as it doesn't seem like I can have simultaneously selected area "groups" A, B and C, and be able to apply different effects to different groups). And later on me able to toggle my selected area/s at will? (So somewhere I can save this selection/s, deactivate it for now, and be able to bring it back later). 

 

[henryb]

And BTW, can someone please tell me how come when I export the final jpeg, the colors in it look different than they do in the original AP project page?

 

[carl123]

38 minutes ago, henryb said:

What did I just do to fix this problem? (I mean Hardware Acceleration is, it sounds like a "good" thing to have turned on... No??)

Hardware acceleration is a fairly recent addition which is meant to speed up your use of the Affinity software by harnessing the processing power of your graphics card to do certain graphic intensive operations.

Normally you would just leave it on but as it is new there are numerous reports of it not working correctly on certain operations.

If your usage of the Affinity software is light to medium you will probably not notice any difference with this option being switched off. It is mostly beneficial to power users that push the Affinity software to extreme levels.

Serif are aware of the issues and periodically bring out new betas with improvements/fixes in Hardware Acceleration

You can install and test these betas if you wish or just ignore hardware acceleration until the next official release 1.11(?) and then test it again

 

38 minutes ago, henryb said:

Slightly off the topic, but does anyone how how to save this marquee selection below that I've made around my dog

Select > Save Selection will allow you to save a selection to a File or a Spare Channel

Saving to a file is probably easier for new users of the software
 

Use Select > Load Selection from File... to retrieve a previously saved selection

[RichardMH]

21 minutes ago, henryb said:

And BTW, can someone please tell me how come when I export the final jpeg, the colors in it look different than they do in the original AP project page?

How are you exporting? From the File menu or Export persona? Are you on mac or PC?

[henryb]

5 minutes ago, RichardMH said:

How are you exporting? From the File menu or Export persona? Are you on mac or PC?

Mac - Big Sur. I just went to File -> Export in the page you see in my last-attached screenshot. (Dunno what "persona" - whatever that is lol - this is)

[RichardMH]

I have a PC so not sure about macs. Could it be its exported the layer you have highlighted?

In Export select Area: Whole document. You may have Selection Only selected.

 

[henryb]

26 minutes ago, carl123 said:

Normally you would just leave it on but as it is new there are numerous reports of it not working correctly on certain operations.

If your usage of the Affinity software is light to medium you will probably not notice any difference with this option being switched off. It is mostly beneficial to power users that push the Affinity software to extreme levels.

Serif are aware of the issues and periodically bring out new betas with improvements/fixes in Hardware Acceleration

You can install and test these betas if you wish or just ignore hardware acceleration until the next official release 1.11(?) and then test it again

 

Select > Save Selection will allow you to save a selection to a File or a Spare Channel

Saving to a file is probably easier for new users of the software
 

Use Select > Load Selection from File... to retrieve a previously saved selection

Ok I'll just leave the acceleration thingy off  ("power user" lol)  

 

Thanks for that! Will be using this then as it will prob be very handy!  After saving the AP file, I had shut the app down. Now that I re-opened it in order to save this selection as you explained; to my surprise I see that, for some reason, the marquee selection I had made around the dog, and the brush refinements around it, are all gone!!   Is this normal? So I shouldn't shut the app before I save my selections, otw I will lose them??   Also, the history of adjustments & actions is also gone! So I can't go "back in time" until I find the most recent time-point where this selection was active, either. So I guess when saving and exiting AP, the only thing that's saved in the file is the most recent "state" of the photo you were working on and everything else is deleted??

[carl123]

1 minute ago, henryb said:

Thanks for that! Will be using this then as it will prob be very handy!  After saving the AP file, I had shut the app down. Now that I re-opened it in order to save this selection as you explained; to my surprise I see that, for some reason, the marquee selection I had made around the dog, and the brush refinements around it, are all gone!!   Is this normal? So I shouldn't shut the app before I save my selections, otw I will lose them??   Also, the history of adjustments & actions is also gone! So I can't go "back in time" until I find the most recent time-point where this selection was active, either. So I guess when saving and exiting AP, the only thing that's saved in the file is the most recent "state" of the photo you were working on and everything else is deleted??

File > Save History With Document will allow you to use the History panel to go "back in time"  when you reopen the document

But beware, switching this option on can significantly increase the size of the document(s) you save. So best to only use it when there is a particular need to

[carl123]

52 minutes ago, henryb said:

And BTW, can someone please tell me how come when I export the final jpeg, the colors in it look different than they do in the original AP project page?

I don't have a Mac but it could be some sort of Colour Management issue with the Mac app you are previewing the file with (as also occurs on Windows)

Hopefully someone with a Mac will be able to advise further

 

[R C-R]

12 hours ago, henryb said:

After saving the AP file, I had shut the app down. Now that I re-opened it in order to save this selection as you explained; to my surprise I see that, for some reason, the marquee selection I had made around the dog, and the brush refinements around it, are all gone!!

As mentioned, you can use an AP Select > Save Selection option to preserve it. Typically, the As Spare Channel one is a good choice. Do that, save the file, & the next time you open it, the spare channel will appear in the Channels panel & with a right-click on it you can (among other options) load or add it to a pixel selection.

If needed or wanted, you can save several different spare channels, name each appropriately, & use them individually or in combination after that.