Creating Backgrounds and Skies

[eadams Profile]

I discovered how to get the arrow - it only appears when you first define an area (not when you want to edit an area already defined).

Steps to reproduce:

1. Load image
2. Click Select Area button
3. Select one of the default selection names (Sky, Subject, Background, etc.)
4. The "selection editing screen" appears, and the little drop down arrow appears next to the name of the selection, as in the screenshots that Tony and Denn posted.
5. If I click on the drop down arrow even without selecting a different name, after selecting the desired area with the area selection tools a dialog box appears asking me to name my selection.

This is not very useful, because at this point I don't know that I chose the wrong name and don't want to change it.

In practice, what happens is this:
1. Load image
2. Click Select Area button
3. Select one of the default selection names (Sky, Subject, Background, etc.)
4. The "selection editing screen" appears, and I use the tools to select the area I want
5. Click "Confirm Selection and Browse Effects"
6. I don't find the effects I want because I selected "Background" instead of "Sky" (assuming that "background" is the more generic term and would include sky effects).
7. I have to apply any old effect to my image. Then I can click on the mask at the top to get the "selection editing screen". I haven't found a way to get back into selection editing mode again without first applying an effect.
8. In the "selection editing screen" there is no drop down arrow, so I can't change the name of the selection.
9. I start all over from step 1. and this time I select "sky" instead of "background", or I define a custom name (like "blah")

I really hate having to make a choice that unexpectedly reduces my options.

The behavior I described at the beginning is VERY user unfriendly:

If I define a Background area and opt to view the Gallery for that selection, I can scroll through 589 pages of effects. However, if I use the search to search for "skies" or "sky" I find nothing. Sometimes I do want to see how a sky background would look, and am very frustrated by not finding any.

Regarding the reply:

1. The effect is stored under the name of the selection name the author specified.

I am going to look for tutorials describing how to create an effect that requires a selection.

[admin]

Hi Eadams,

I take your point about being able to change the selection name after the fact. Does anyone else see this as a major problem? Presumably there's not many of the default selection names that could be interchanged.

Tony

[eadams Profile]

Hi Tony,

I take your point about being able to change the selection name after the fact. Does anyone else see this as a major problem? Presumably there's not many of the default selection names that could be interchanged.

This discussion has got a little off-track. The problem is NOT the inability to change the name of a selection.

The problem is that your Search functionality is completely broken.

The Search functionality is always poor, it is just more obvious when a selection has been made. Once I have defined a selection, some effects are not searchable!! In other words, the search behavior differs according to what selection was made. This is very user-unfriendly.

Let me sum up the problem with steps you may be able to reproduce:

1. Select Area "Sky"
2. Search for "skies"
3. Currently, I get one page of results containing 11 effects
4. Search for "sky"
5. Currently, I get 5 pages of results containing 60 effects

1. Select Area "Background" or Select Area "Subject" (behavior is the same for both selections)
2. Search for "skies"
3. Currently, I get one page of results containing only 1 effect
4. Search for "sky"
5. Currently, I get 1 page of results containing 5 effects

A user-friendly implementation would be: If an effect has been tagged under any circumstance as "sky" or "skies", the user should be able to find the effect by searching for "sky" or "skies" no matter what kind of a selection has been made.

[Arwin Profile]

Hi Eve,

Needed the time to give you some directions to tweak the Select Area a bit, in a way you like to use it.

I add a Selection To Image node and an Image To Selection node (and if you like to be able to alter the 'none' selected area separately, I add an Invert Selection node, of course only if the node not already exist.)
This is something I use myself when I like to re-use a mask from the Select Area feature but wanna use another category, like Stones instead of Metal, because I can name the Image To Selection node to the category I like. In fact you can name any Select Area category yourself, like; Sky, Subject, Background, Skin, Water, Ground, Stones, Metal or Plants

(Click Image to enlarge)

Select Area Tweak.jpg (85.19 KiB) Viewed 6850 times

(Click Image to enlarge)

Mask Selection.jpg (47.6 KiB) Viewed 6849 times

I agree with you as to your search suggestion, I hope there will be a better search implemented in the future.
I did created some sky effects (with selection Sky) but they are not shown when I choose for Sky in the Select Area tool, they only show up when I search for Cloud, which is the tagg of the effects, so I guess a lot of users will miss my sky effects

Hope this will be as any help to you Eve.

Regards,
Arwin

[eadams Profile]

Thank you, Arwin, your explanation about the Image to Selection, Selection to Image and Invert Selection Nodes helped me a lot!

I agree - many users will probably not find your sky effects when they need one, and I know that I have had trouble finding them. Even when I perform a Select Area - Sky and then view the gallery, your cloud effects don't appear early on. I gave up after scrolling through 12 pages. I really have to search for "cloud" to find them. I decided to test the efficacy of user-tagging on one of them. I tagged your Cloud 004 effect as "Sky" and updated the Gallery. I am curious to see if I can find that effect by searching for "sky" in a day or two. Unfortunately, the ability for users to tag effects in the gallery is a hidden feature. If the UI made it easy for users to tag effects, I am sure that many effects would be more discoverable.

Eve

[Arwin Profile]

Hi Eve,

Glad it helped you a lot.
Forgot to mention as I forgot it myself, I've already tagged my Cloud effects as Sky sometime ago, because I had the same thoughts as you I just tried a sky selection and two of my cloud effects are now on page 7, when searching for Sky, I see my Cloud effects on the first 4 pages, so tagging the effects as Sky did atleast something I've even tagged some cloud effect as Lightning as there is some lightning in the scene.

To see the taggs given to an effect would also be a plus

Cheers,
Arwin