Selecting Areas

[admin]

There are several places in the software where you can select areas, but they all work in the same way.

The Brushes

To get the best results:
Go round the edge of the area, letting the edge detector find the edge
Use the flood fill icon (that appears once you've gone all the way round an edge) to fill in the middle.

The edge finder makes it easy to select complex areas. Because it automatically finds edges, you can use a large brush and quickly sweep around an edge and it will do the hard work of getting the edge accurate. To use the smart brush best, use it to go round the edge of the area you wish to select, keeping the inner detection circle within the area you want, while the outer circle covers out to the edge of the selection. You don't need to brush inside the area because you can use the flood fill icons that appear once you have gone all the way round the area to fill in the middle.

There are three brushes which are good at defining three different types of edge. You can pick the best one for your edge, although SPE chooses a sensible one automatically based on the selection name.
Find Soft Edge: is a brush that selects soft edges like hair or fur, or edges that are discontinuous like when patches of sky can be seen through tree branches
Find Hard Edge: is a brush that will find a single solid edge. (not available in all trial versions).
Airbrush: is when you want a soft brush that does not automatically stop at edges. This is particularly useful in the Area Treatment Tool where you want to brush in changes without a step where the brush stops.

The selection tools appear in the following places:

Select Area Panel allows you to select an area then browse a gallery of effects on the area
Area Treatment Tool allows you to selects several areas and tweak things like brightness and contrast
Composting Tool allows you to paste in parts of other pictures into your image
After you've applied an effect, you can mask out areas of it.

Going back and adjusting existing areas
To adjust an existing area, simply click where you see it in the tabs at the top of the software.

Showing Galleries on existing areas
You can always apply a gallery to an area you've already created using any of the tools. To do this, hover over the Effects Gallery button and the area will appear as a button in the description box that pops up.


There's also more discussion about selecting areas in the select area forum.