Help with magic selection brush

[rayman22]

Hye everyone ! i have been trying to figure out how to use the magic selection brush,but nothing works !! i read the help and that's exactlly what i'm doing .Maybe i have a problem in the software ? ( i'm using PS Elements 4.0) thanks :)

[kimi_boo]

Not sure I understand...

But. make sure you are on the correct layer. (highlighted) when you click with the tool you should get the marching ants. Is that happening??? then all you have to do is hit delete. If your layer says background?? Hit Ctrl J to make a new layer, work on that layer.

[mswnow]

Yea, I never was able to get the magic selection brush to work as advertised (the fish example on the box... as far as I can tell its a marketing scam) It takes too long for me, and never comes out with a satisfactory selection. I gave up with it and find that the magic wand works better. Its much quicker and easier, and if theres gaps in the middle I use the selection brush to get rid of them. If anyone out there knows what we're doing wrong, I would appreciate it.

[mswnow]

Not sure I understand...

But. make sure you are on the correct layer. (highlighted) when you click with the tool you should get the marching ants. Is that happening??? then all you have to do is hit delete. If your layer says background?? Hit Ctrl J to make a new layer, work on that layer.

Can you explain this marching ants thing, ive been wondering what it was for months, ive never seen any marching ants... thanks

[rayman22]

Yea ,that's the problem,i'm on the right layer ,i do everything that it says to do ,but no ants ! nothing , i know that the magic want is a great tool to,but i really want to understand what i'm doing wrong .Thanks,do you have other suggestions?

[sanarita]

This is a tool that sometimes works OK, but as posted previously, it is usually easier to use another selection process. When you click on it, you get a pencil tool with which you are supposed to draw, mark, or scribble on the object you want to select. when you do the marking, a red line is placed. Then when you are done marking, a selection outline appears. This is a thin line with moving black and white dots on it, a.k.a. the "marching ants". In theory, the selection outline should be fitted neatly around the object you want to select, but I don't think this happens right very often.

In the options bar, there are three pencils to choose from: a plain pencil, one with a plus sign next to it, and one with a minus sign next to it. Try selecting the pencil with the minus sign next to it and scribbling in the areas of the picture which you don't want to select, and see if this improves the selection outline. When I tried it, it made things a little better, but the selection wasn't acceptable.

A similar tool is the Magic Extractor, which is found in the Image menu. It works a lot better. In general, I think this type of tool works best when there is a lot of contrast between the object you are extracting and its background, and the reason for using it would be if the selection was going to be very difficult otherwise.

However, aside from experimenting with these tools, I never use them, since as mentioned previously, the magic wand, the selection brush tool, and the various lasso tools are more controllable and precise for getting the job done.

Helen :)

[TonyW]

Not sure what you're doing wrong. It's not perfect but does work well with the appropriate image. Here's an example. I just drew a number of lines on the flower with the foreground brush and the marching ants show the selection (they don't march when you take a snaphot as in the image below). In this case I didn't need to use the background brush but it the selection leaks into the background you can use that to refine the selection. It will almost always need fine tuning with the normal selection brush though.

346

Tony