AP Selection Tools function awfully and need serious improvement

[radfjord]

Hello there,

Just want to begin with this - coming from PS, I loathe Adobe's business model and I'm happy to support Serif's business model and product.

Having said that - dear lord the Selection tools of AP are just awful. I feel like I'm using MS Paint in 1997 sometimes!

Here's the crux of the problem - basic selection of SIMPLE shapes should be a 1-click process. I should be able to open ANY simple low-res logo (400-500px), click Magic Wand, click on the SOLID background and be able to isolate the logo. This should take 30 seconds from the moment I open the file, to the moment I export a PNG with a transparent BG. The notion that this task should require messing with Refine Edge and spending 3-4 minutes to paint over the Matte, the FB and the BG just to get a decent result is like living in the 1990s again!

Examples provided: Blue is PS and Green is AP. Both are just selected with Magic Wand with Tolerance set to 20 in both apps. The PS results aren't perfect - I can get them close to perfect by massaging the Tolerance to the right number, but the PS results are acceptable. Meanwhile AP results are a just bad - look at the tail, the feet, the ball, and all the edges. And this is with a solid BG and an almost round logo. Having to deal with more complex/organic shapes and a low-res original file is an incredible pain in the your know where in AP.

And to add to the list of issues - being able to Select a specific colour sample creates more issues than it resolves.

Look, I don't need AP to have the most obscure functions of PS - I need it to execute the basics with CONSISTENT success. I can cut out the logos from the BG of 15-20 files like this in PS in under 10 mins, while the same task would require 35-40 minutes in AP simply because the selection tools are bad at their job. This is no way to work.

[NotMyFault]

Hi and welcome.

Don’t know which logo file you used, I get a one click perfect result using that from :

no refine or anything required. It is a bit larger (717x717).

 

 

[radfjord]

Hello there!

Thank you for trying it out on your end. I see that you're using the iPad version of the app. I am using the Desktop version of the app on a Mac.

I attached the file I was trying it on, if that is helpful.

[PaulEC]

The "Flood Select Tool" ("Magic Wand") works fine for me, on Windows. There will always be problems using this tool on areas that have low contrast between adjacent areas, hence the need to adjust the tolerance setting. Also, low res. images will inevitably not have such sharp edges as higher res. ones. If possible, start with a higher res. image, cut it out, then lower the res. if you need to.

[Pšenda]

2 hours ago, PaulEC said:

Also, low res. images

... not only low resolution, but also low JPEG quality, which then results in many compression artifacts, which then complicate the selection.

For this situation, where the logo includes a shadow, and it is on a white background, it is advisable to use the Erase White Paper function.
However, because white is part of the logo, it is necessary to limit the execution of the function by selection - Flood Select Tool, click to white background, Inverse Selection, Shrink selection 2px, Inverse Selection, Erase White Paper. About 10 sec.

Unfortunately it is not possible to insert a picture - Error 200 😞

Edit: Using the Erase brush, it is then necessary to clean the mentioned compression artifacts.

Top image - your post from PS, bottom image - Erase White Paper from APhoto.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Pšenda

[radfjord]

14 hours ago, PaulEC said:

The "Flood Select Tool" ("Magic Wand") works fine for me, on Windows. There will always be problems using this tool on areas that have low contrast between adjacent areas, hence the need to adjust the tolerance setting. Also, low res. images will inevitably not have such sharp edges as higher res. ones. If possible, start with a higher res. image, cut it out, then lower the res. if you need to.

Hello there!

Just for comparison, did a try with the Selection Brush Tool - not any better. So if the Flood Select and Selection Brush are both not good at the job, then what selection tool should be used?

[radfjord]

12 hours ago, Pšenda said:

For this situation, where the logo includes a shadow, and it is on a white background, it is advisable to use the Erase White Paper function.
However, because white is part of the logo, it is necessary to limit the execution of the function by selection - Flood Select Tool, click to white background, Inverse Selection, Shrink selection 2px, Inverse Selection, Erase White Paper. About 10 sec.

Hi there!

Thank you for trying it out and for the suggestion! I did not know about the Erase White Paper filter. Unfortunately it's still producing bad results, while requiring more steps and more time than PS's Magic Wand Select tool :(((

Re highest possible quality image - yes, of course, agreed!
But that's not exactly the point. Even MS Paint will do a good job with a high-res image. The point is that a good tool would do a good job with a low quality image with lots of artifacts. And PS can handle high-artifacts, low-res images better than AP and that shouldn't be the case.

It's one thing to find a high-res image of a sports team logo - good luck finding a high res image of a local charity.

Attaching the image that caused so much pain and frustration, which spawned this post. The white BG image - that's their HIGHEST quality image and it's an awful starting position.

In PS, getting the Tolerance up to 63 is a sweet spot and results in an acceptable result - it's NOT great because the starting image isn't great. But it takes under 1 min to get that result and to have an exported file to work with.

In AP, using Flood Select, a tolerance below 21% leaves too much white noise around the black letters. Going over 28% results in the light-blue areas getting cut out. There's very little wiggle room in the Tolerance setting - no hope of using a value of 63% that is most ideal for PS to produce its results.

Then using the Erase White Paper function - as you showed - is better than Flood Select results, but there are a TON of artifacts that remain around the light-blue and star areas and there's a black line around the black text. AP requiring a clean-up with Erase tool to produce something acceptable - that's just adding insult to injury, when I know how fast PS can produce a better end result.

Perhaps there's an AP-specific workflow that will create same results in same amount of time as PS. If so, what would that be?