Paint Shop Pro support - Make selection x-parent ?

Author

Make selection x-parent ?

Retroed Bob

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Is there someway to do a "background eraser" effect on a large
selection without manually painting the backgrond ? I need to be able
to "sample" as there might be content on the background, but then I
just want to make the entire are x-parent without using the brush
inch by inch.

Thanks,

Fred Hiltz

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Retroed Bob wrote:
> Is there someway to do a "background eraser" effect on a large
> selection without manually painting the backgrond ? I need to be
> able to "sample" as there might be content on the background, but
> then I just want to make the entire are x-parent without using
> the brush inch by inch.

Sure. Make a big selection and press Delete. Making selections is
such a common and important part of image editing that PSP provides
several tools for it. Details in Help > Contents > Making Selections
in Images. Briefly, the Selection tool drags out rectangular or
other shapes with the mouse, Freehand Selection does what its name
implies, and the Magic Wand selects an area based on its color, hue,
brightness, opacity, etc.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com

Kris Zaklika

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Retroed Bob wrote:
>
> Is there someway to do a "background eraser" effect on a large
> selection without manually painting the backgrond ?

Do you want to make something transparent the way the subject
line of this post implies or do you want to paint over something
the way the above sentence implies?

> I need to be able
> to "sample" as there might be content on the background,

What do you mean by "sample"? What property of the image do you
want to sample using which tool?

> but then I
> just want to make the entire are x-parent without using the brush
> inch by inch.

What area do you want to make transparent? According to what
criterion? Do you want to make transparent something you have
selected with the Magic Wand? Or, do you want to make transparent
what is not selected?

> Thanks,

There are many ways of making images transparent in PSP. You
have not made it very clear - at least to me - what constraints
you are placing on the process. All I know is that you don't
want to ever use a brush.

Retroed Bob

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:33:27 -0500, "Fred Hiltz" <not@home.ca> wrote:

>Sure. Make a big selection and press Delete.

Yeah, I know that one :-) But, I will loose the part of the image
I want to retain in addition to the selection, unless I spend a
_lot_ of time manually selecting the portions I want to retain.
That would take longer than just using the background eraser.

Since I didn't explain what I want to do clearly. Let me try again.
With the background eraser, I can slick on a pixel and erase all the
pixels of the same "color" within tolerance from a layer of a graphic.
So, this would allow me to remove a white background (make it
transparent), for example, from behind a person in a portrait. Then
I could copy/paste the person into another layer and just the person
would show up since any surrounding non-person area is transparent.
Perfect, I'm all set!

What I am looking for is a way to do this more efficiently than
manually erasing-transparenting the graphic using the background
eraser. When the area is large, it would be nice to be able to do
this in one quick operation. I can use a very large background eraser,
but it moves a bit slowly when you do that.

Thanks,

Kris Zaklika

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Retroed Bob wrote:
>
> On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:33:27 -0500, "Fred Hiltz" <not@home.ca> wrote:
>
>
> Yeah, I know that one :-) But, I will loose the part of the image
> I want to retain in addition to the selection, unless I spend a
> _lot_ of time manually selecting the portions I want to retain.
> That would take longer than just using the background eraser.
>
> Since I didn't explain what I want to do clearly. Let me try again.
> With the background eraser, I can slick on a pixel and erase all the
> pixels of the same "color" within tolerance from a layer of a graphic.
> So, this would allow me to remove a white background (make it
> transparent), for example, from behind a person in a portrait. Then
> I could copy/paste the person into another layer and just the person
> would show up since any surrounding non-person area is transparent.
> Perfect, I'm all set!
>
> What I am looking for is a way to do this more efficiently than
> manually erasing-transparenting the graphic using the background
> eraser. When the area is large, it would be nice to be able to do
> this in one quick operation. I can use a very large background eraser,
> but it moves a bit slowly when you do that.

First, don't drag the Background Eraser around when it is
big. Click it instead. This will make things much faster.
Second, how you place the Background Eraser tells the program
what you think is background at any point and it then figures
out what to erase and leave behind. If you don't do that, the
program must read your mind in some way to know what you want
to keep and what you want to erase. For example, is a hat part
of the person or not part of a person? Or, are the leaves of
the tree to be kept along with the leaves of the flower or are
they different and need to be erased? If you'd like to suggest
how much pointing out of background you want to do and how
you'd like to do it, then maybe we can suggest a suitable
approach. In the interim you may find this link to be helpful:
http://campratty.com/4tooltours/kz/bge1.html

> Thanks,

Retroed Bob

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:23:28 -0600, Kris Zaklika
<Kris.Zaklika@corel.com> wrote:

>First, don't drag the Background Eraser around when it is
>big. Click it instead. This will make things much faster.
>Second, how you place the Background Eraser tells the program
>what you think is background at any point and it then figures
>out what to erase and leave behind.

Thanks Kris. I guess what I am really looking for is a way to
tell PSP "within the selection area make all pixels of this
color X, within this tolerance Y, transparent".

I'm thinking that there is a better way to do this than
"erasing" the pixels individually, even en masse.

Thanks again.

Fred Hiltz

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Retroed Bob wrote:
[snip]
> Thanks Kris. I guess what I am really looking for is a way to
> tell PSP "within the selection area make all pixels of this
> color X, within this tolerance Y, transparent".
>
> I'm thinking that there is a better way to do this than
> "erasing" the pixels individually, even en masse.

Yes, there is. Read up on Selections > Modify > Select Color Range.
Given a selection, it can subtract all pixels of this color X,
within this tolerance Y. Invert the resulting selection.

The inverted selection contains the desired pixels. Press Delete.

The inverted selection will also contain all the area outside your
starting selection. If deleting this would be a problem, save your
original selection to an alpha channel. Load it back after selecting
the color range and inverting, choosing "Subtract from current
selection" and "Invert image." Then press Delete.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com

Fred Hiltz

2005-02-17, 6:51 pm

Retroed Bob wrote:
[snip]
> What I am looking for is a way to do this more efficiently than
> manually erasing-transparenting the graphic using the background
> eraser. When the area is large, it would be nice to be able to do
> this in one quick operation. I can use a very large background
> eraser, but it moves a bit slowly when you do that.

Is it the speed of erasing large areas away from the edges of your
subject, by any chance? Hold space-bar to make the BGE behave like
the regular eraser. With Alt-drag changing its size, this is a very
fast way to delete large areas while retaining the "before" data
that BGE needs near the edges.
--
Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com

Kris Zaklika

2005-02-17, 11:19 pm

Fred Hiltz wrote:
>
> Retroed Bob wrote:
> [snip]
>
> Yes, there is. Read up on Selections > Modify > Select Color Range.
> Given a selection, it can subtract all pixels of this color X,
> within this tolerance Y. Invert the resulting selection.
>
> The inverted selection contains the desired pixels. Press Delete.
>
> The inverted selection will also contain all the area outside your
> starting selection. If deleting this would be a problem, save your
> original selection to an alpha channel. Load it back after selecting
> the color range and inverting, choosing "Subtract from current
> selection" and "Invert image." Then press Delete.

What I was going to say :)

> --
> Fred Hiltz, fhiltz at yahoo dot com