Message 292 of 316

Color Select Tool

The Select by Color tool is designed to select areas of an image based on color similarity. It works a lot like the Fuzzy Select tool (“Magic Wand”). The main difference between them is that the Magic Wand selects contiguous regions, with all parts connected to the starting point by paths containing no large gaps; while the Select by Color tool selects all pixels that are sufficiently similar in color to the pixel you click on, regardless of where they are located.
I like this tool so much more than the Fuzzy Select Tool, time to check out the details of this tool, inside......
GaryJames's profile
The official Gimp tutorial page:

GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
The following video explains the Color Select Tool at minute marker 4:51.

Click here for Part 2 of the Selection Tools Video Tutorial

GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
We covered all of the options in the Tool Options box in the tutorials for Rectangle Select and Ellipse Select.
Toolbox Items - Rectangle Select (tutor by group member(s)) Toolbox Items - Ellipse Select Tool (tutor by group member(s))

We will spend some time on trying to understand the use of the features in the "Select by" drop down menu.
GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
A review of the options in the Tool Options Box Select Transparent Areas

This option gives the Magic Wand the ability to select areas that are completely transparent. If this option is not checked, transparent areas will never be included in the selection.

Sample Merged


This option becomes relevant when you have several layers in your image, and the active layer is either semi-transparent or is set to another Layer Mode than Normal. If this is the case, the colors present in the layer will be different from the colors in the composite image. If the "Sample Merged" option is unchecked, the wand will only react to the color in the active layer when it creates a selection. If it is checked it will react to the composite color of all visible layers. For further information, see the glossary entry Sample Merged.

Threshold

This slider determines the range of colors that will be selected at the moment you click the pointer on the initial point, before dragging it: the higher the threshold, the larger the resulting selection. After the first button-press, dragging the pointer downward or to the right will increase the size of the selection; dragging upward or to the left will decrease it. Thus, you have the same set of possibilities regardless of the Threshold setting: what differs is the amount of dragging you have to do to get the result you want.

Selection by

With this option you can choose which component of the image GIMP shall use to calculate the similarity. The components you can choose from are Red, Green, Blue, Hue, Saturation and Value.

It is the components listed above in red that I would like to explore in this tutorial.
GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
I could not find much information that went into details with selecting the above mentioned components. Instead I will show an example of using the Color Select Tool:

Here is the base image we will use:



Next I selected the Color Select Tool and selected the options as shown in the following image:



Then I clicked on the solid color area just below the word Chat on the image which gave me the image below:


Then I selected a paintbrush and a new color and painted over the image as shown above which resulted in the image below. Noticed how the paint only covered the selected area.



I then deselected the image and little marching ants went away as shown belo:


I the decided to make the image stand off the page a bit so I went to "Filters", then "Decor" and "Bevel" and put a bevel on the image to raise it up. Then I went back to "Decor" and did a "Rounded Corners" with a drop shadow to give the image some depth as shown below:

GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
I really like the way Color Select works compared to Fuzzy Select and I may use the above image for the Chit Chat Chums group's banner.
GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago
That's really neat, gJ. I like the final results a lot!
Mimi58's profile

over 2 years ago
TY!
GaryJames's profile

over 2 years ago

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