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FranOnTheEdge
01-25-2009, 01:50 PM
Hi, I've just spent hours reducing and enlarging the selected outline of a figure, I then darkened the interior of the selection to dead black (or so I thought) copied that selection and pasted it into a new layer - this was in order to get rid of the fuzziness that would keep appearing - outside the selection! - as I tried to darken the lines.

I thought if you selected a massive brush and clicked with an area selected then the colour would only go on the area selected, and not outside it... so a) why am I getting faint colour appearing all over the place outside the selection?

b) why when I copy the selection do I just get patchy faint lines instead of the dark black lines I thought i'd just made?

I've tried starting with channel selection but it's not very good - magic wand ditto so I've had to go over the selection with the freehand selection tool to get rid of patchy selection and firm up the lines.

The first image:- "BlackOutline.jpg" is what I want selected, but when I paste this and turn off the other layers to have a look, what I get is the second image:- "BlackOutlineFaded.jpg"

Can anyone help?

(this is CS4 on a PC)

Oh and if I have "preserve transparency" (- or lock transparency - whatever you call it) selected then although this stops the fuzziness appearing outside the selection, it also means that I can't darken the inside of the selection either.
moiremusic
01-25-2009, 06:18 PM
I may not be able to answer the questions you have posed, but I have a few comments...

Your selection obviously isn't what it seems. It may appear to be a clean line, but it isn't. The question is: what are you doing that's allowing a fuzzy selection? Without watching over your shoulder, it's nearly impossible to say, because there are a number of ways this could happen.

To make the black area of your image a selection, why not just make the image high-contrast (using Curves, Level, or Brightness/Contrast) so the white area is all pure white and the black area pure black, and copy/paste the image into the Quickmask? It would literally take seconds to do and would give you a reliable selection. Another way would be to copy/paste the high-contrast image into an Alpha Channel and make it a selection there.

Also, "Lock Transparent Pixels" can be turned on and off as often as you like... once you set it, the layer is not set that way forever. You could just turn it back off to fill the inside of the shape. Hope I'm understanding your dilemma correctly.
FranOnTheEdge
01-25-2009, 06:57 PM
I may not be able to answer the questions you have posed, but I have a few comments...

Your selection obviously isn't what it seems. It may appear to be a clean line, but it isn't. The question is: what are you doing that's allowing a fuzzy selection? Without watching over your shoulder, it's nearly impossible to say, because there are a number of ways this could happen.

I know that the line is fuzzy to start with, that's what I'm trying to cure. You see I've done a hand drawn animation which I need to colour in photoshop and them get into AfterEffects- or Premiere, as a sequence of images, and no matter how I try I can't get the penciled drawing any darker, - thus PhotoShop... brightness/contrast, etc might help a bit though... except that scanned paper never is all white... worth a try though.

To make the black area of your image a selection, why not just make the image high-contrast (using Curves, Level, or Brightness/Contrast) so the white area is all pure white and the black area pure black, and copy/paste the image into the Quickmask? It would literally take seconds to do and would give you a reliable selection. Another way would be to copy/paste the high-contrast image into an Alpha Channel and make it a selection there.

Also, "Lock Transparent Pixels" can be turned on and off as often as you like... once you set it, the layer is not set that way forever. You could just turn it back off to fill the inside of the shape. Hope I'm understanding your dilemma correctly.

Lock trans pixels - Oh I know but it doesn't help, if I keep it on, then the transparrent areas don't get dusty, true, but that also means I can't darken the lines inside the selection either - if I turn it off, I can darken the lines, but the rest of the image - outside the selected area, also begins to accept colour, thus making it look dusty.

Cleft stick.

What I did in order of action was this:
Drew the animation on paper - 1 frame per sheet of paper.

scanned each sheet into the PC

opened each image in Corel PaintShop Pro PhotoX2 - (because the crop area can be set to stay the same size each time in there) and using previously drawn registration marks, cropped each image to exactly the same size.

Moved to PhotoShop, opened 1st image. (same must be done to every frame)

selected entire image area, copied it, & pasted it to new layer,

Deleted background layer, added new layer with transparency, moved it under the 1st layer with the pasted image.

On layer 1, moved to channels, used channel selection to select all white areas, invert selection and attempt to darken lines...fail...

Okay, I'm off to try adjusting the levels - Brightness/contrast thingies

.....................................................
Yes, as I thought, I can darken the line okay with levels, and or Brightness/Contrast, but this also shows up imperfections elsewhere on the paper. And when I try to remove that dustyness the lines inside the selection - even though I inverted the selection so that the lines shouldn't be selected the white should be - the brush still fades the black lines.

Now I do realise that I can do this correction by hand, inching my way along each line - zoomed in 700% or something, but that will take forever, and I need to do this with loads of images, I could still be doing it in a couple of months! As it is I already have to correct the selection in places.

If the selection would only work as a proper selection, that is allowing things to be done only in the selected areas, this would already be finished...

Please can someone help?