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Selection Brush in Photo Issue


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I have only been using Photo on Windows 7 Ultimate for about a week. Thus far I have been quite impressed, though there are clearly some problems in these early stages. The problem I have just encountered involves the use of the Selection Brush Tool. Thus far I had found this tool to be much better to use than in Photoshop where I have much more experience - that is until just now! I was trying to select the ducks in the picture so that I could use the Levels tool on just them to increase the contrast with the rest of the image. The selection went relatively well as you can see from this image:

498972015_SelectionBrushIssue01.thumb.jpg.65c6b870761d13eb4249cd0613d343d0.jpg

The problem occurred when I used the Refine tool to ensure a smooth transition between the selection and the rest of the image. When I did this I was left with the following as the selection:

587396514_SelectionBrushIssue02.thumb.jpg.2fece3c29ca086e08ca8cd16211a4951.jpg

It is easy to see that the selection is now very different and not at all what was required. The program had clearly altered my selection and had made it impossible to achieve the affect I was aiming for. I tried doing the same process 3 times with exactly the same result. The Snap to edges was turned off each time and there appears to be no way that is immediately recognisable of avoiding this problem.

Any ideas and comments would be most welcome

For information the screen shots were taken at 200%, so the original is much sharper and the ducks form a much smaller part of the image.

PS Again for information; I was able to perform the operation I required using my very old version of Photoshop in less than 5 minutes. Not at all what I had expected.

Edited by anisah
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I seldom get clean selections so I too will be awaiting an answer. Feathering can help a bit. I often just put things like the ducks on a transparent layer, add a solid rectangle with a light color and clean up with the eraser tool set at zero hardness. Then change the rectangle to a much darker color and double check

It is not usually as bad as it sounds if I paint the edges in the refine module and correct any background / foreground mistakes

Some of the things that work in PS like bumping the edges with the smudge tool don't seem to give the same result in AP, which might be my ham fistedness :D

Affinity Designer 2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212 Affinity Photo 2.2.2075  beta 2.3.1.2212Affinity Publisher  2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212

Windows 11 Pro Version    22H2
OS build    22621.1928
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz   2.90 GHz
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Hi Anisah,

It sounds as though the Refine options (notably Smooth) you've used have feathered and smoothed the selection around the edges so that the opacity of the selection was less than 50%. When this happens the 'marching ants' are not shown, so the selection looks invisible. However it is still there which can be verified by using Q to turn on Quick Mask. See attached screenshots showing my selection, refine and then applied refine (with and without Quick Mask). Photoshop also has the same behaviour with pixel selections of less than 50% opacity. You could try using the Preview dropdown options in the Refine Dialog, particularly Black and White, if you see large amounts of grey scale then you will have lots of semi opaque selections.

PreFeather.thumb.png.3747768cfd4aa828bcb6839bbb8fa168.png

RefineFeather.thumb.png.988ea2170df16c7a61cef6dd3647e3d0.png

PostFeather.thumb.png.b754d19d0205d8a9a85754356cafa73d.png

PostFeatherQuickMask.thumb.png.18ef6c4ba06e1520c6ad50b0a5367c61.png

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4 hours ago, Sean P said:

Hi Anisah,

It sounds as though the Refine options (notably Smooth) you've used have feathered and smoothed the selection around the edges so that the opacity of the selection was less than 50%. When this happens the 'marching ants' are not shown, so the selection looks invisible. However it is still there which can be verified by using Q to turn on Quick Mask. See attached screenshots showing my selection, refine and then applied refine (with and without Quick Mask). Photoshop also has the same behaviour with pixel selections of less than 50% opacity. You could try using the Preview dropdown options in the Refine Dialog, particularly Black and White, if you see large amounts of grey scale then you will have lots of semi opaque selections.

Hi Sean P

Thanks for the comment, but the Opacity was set to 100%, unless, of course, it was changed by the program without my knowing. If so, that is another problem to be solved by the programmers!!!

 

 

 

 

 

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2 hours ago, anisah said:

Thanks for the comment, but the Opacity was set to 100%, unless, of course, it was changed by the program without my knowing. If so, that is another problem to be solved by the programmers!!!

It also is not clean and leaves an irregular bleed (for lack of a better word) and often a strange blockiness that has to do with pixelization I guess. I always end up doint a lot of clean up with the erasure 

Affinity Designer 2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212 Affinity Photo 2.2.2075  beta 2.3.1.2212Affinity Publisher  2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212

Windows 11 Pro Version    22H2
OS build    22621.1928
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz   2.90 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

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15 hours ago, anisah said:

Hi Sean P

Thanks for the comment, but the Opacity was set to 100%, unless, of course, it was changed by the program without my knowing. If so, that is another problem to be solved by the programmers!!!

It is not the Opacity slider, but the opacity of the current selection.

I think the best way to explain this semi opaque selection is by using a 'Feather' selection using the toolbar.

See the attached video. You can see my rectangular selection is feathered and rounded after releasing the mouse. When I delete the selection you can see that areas that didn't appear selected are also removed (although not completely) because less than 50% of the pixel colour was actually selected.

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Sean P

Have looked at the video, which, truthfully, does not seem to apply to what I have experienced. It does not explain why, when I have selected an area to work on and try to refine the edges that when I do so the program ignores my selection and includes areas that I do not want into the selection.

A second example, similar to the first is this
470846897_SelectionBrushIssue04.jpg.980e640b276214d9a8080440d5fb9144.jpg

The areas selected are clearly marked, as is one of the large unselected areas. When I apply "Refine", with or without "Smooth" the result is very similar to the next picture:

1212785729_SelectionBrushIssue05.jpg.4fe143690857c4bb57f76d79dc77a543.jpg

The changes made have altered the selection beyond reasonable for use for what I was attempting to do which was to highlt the family of ducks within the picture by applying colour changes to the originally selected area.

The areas that appear to have been added to my selection seem to be based on approximate tonal quality similarity to the orignal selection as some are not even really proximate to the ducks.

It is possible that the selection process might need simplifying as I was able to achieve the desired result in minutes using an elderly version of Photoshop. I am keen not to have to do this each time that I want to use this type of technique and hope that it is possible for someone to come up with a simple solution to the problem.

I look forward to further helpful comments and thank those who have so far tried to solve the issue.

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That happens sometimes when the areas are close in color or the lines are not well defined. Switch to background and a smaller brush and paint out the areas that were incorrectly added If you over do it switch to foreground and paint back in what should be "ducks" in this case. Then back to matte and the brush should fix anything around the edges

Affinity Designer 2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212 Affinity Photo 2.2.2075  beta 2.3.1.2212Affinity Publisher  2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212

Windows 11 Pro Version    22H2
OS build    22621.1928
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz   2.90 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

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2 hours ago, Rick G said:

That happens sometimes when the areas are close in color or the lines are not well defined. Switch to background and a smaller brush and paint out the areas that were incorrectly added If you over do it switch to foreground and paint back in what should be "ducks" in this case. Then back to matte and the brush should fix anything around the edges

Thanks Rick, I'll give that a try as it supports my feeling that it is more to do with tone/colour than anything else. It is something that might need some further investgation within the programming to ensure that the program does not alter the areas already selected by the end user - ie the end user knows what they want and that should not be overridden by the programming..

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7 minutes ago, anisah said:

 

Thanks Rick, I'll give that a try as it supports my feeling that it is more to do with tone/colour than anything else. It is something that might need some further investgation within the programming to ensure that the program does not alter the areas already selected by the end user - ie the end user knows what they want and that should not be overridden by the programming..

You might want to start clicking on the color channels until you find the one that gives you the most contrast ... green for the ducks. then tweak that and make the contrast greater withou clipping detail. THEN do your selection, get it the way you want it, hide that layer, select the original layer and you are good to go.

There are a bunch of tutorials about color channels and channel masking here is a great one. Below this is just the green channel from your pic

 

470846897_SelectionBrushIssue04.jpg.980e640b276214d9a8080440d5fb9144.jpg

Affinity Designer 2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212 Affinity Photo 2.2.2075  beta 2.3.1.2212Affinity Publisher  2.2.2075 & beta 2.3.1.2212

Windows 11 Pro Version    22H2
OS build    22621.1928
Processor    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700 CPU @ 2.90GHz   2.90 GHz
Installed RAM    16.0 GB (15.7 GB usable)
System type    64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

yoda.png

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Thanks Sean - I'll try and sort it out later in the week as I am a bit busy in the earlier part. The only problem I forsee is that we have an incredibly slow internet connection so uploading it might just be an issue.

Much appreciated.

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