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Trouble with selection tools
#1
Hi all,

Just installed 2.10.4 to try retexturing the radio from Fallout 4 (although I have a few other things in mind too) and am very confused about a particular operation.  None of the many tutorials I read/watched helped out so hopefully someone here can.

Anyways, the DDS for the radio has a couple sections with quite thick woodgrained borders (for the wooden case of the radio) that I'd like to turn into solid colours.  The tools for selecting area via colour don't work very well, I think because of the woodgrain.  So I used the "free select" selection tool (the magic scissors were much to inaccurate) to highlight the outer border then hit Enter to get the marching ants.  So far so good, although around corners I had to use quite of few of those "connector nodes" (hope you know what I mean) while zoomed way in to make nice curves.  But, when I tried using that tool to highlight the inner border (i.e. I want the selection area to be the woodgrainy space between them), hitting Enter made the initial (outer border) disappear. 

I muddled around and eventually discovered that keeping CTRL pressed while making the second (inner border) selection made it possible (sometimes) to save the second selection without the first one disappearing.  So I was eventually able to make both borders and "bucket fill" the area inside them with a solid colour.

The problems: it took me ages to get this done because (i) most of the time, even keeping CTRL pressed resulted in the first selected border (marching ants) to disappear and I'd have to start over (I at least saved the file after doing the first border), and (ii) sometimes, seemingly related to having CTRL pressed, I had little control of placing the nodes.  I could only place them way higher or lower than I wanted.  That was also hit and miss, and starting over often corrected the problem  I'm actually guessing that all that is somehow related to the number of nodes I used.  I only got done by keeping the number of nodes to a minimum.   Which kinda sucked since around corners I like to use a lot of nodes/lines to make the curves smooth.

Although I got it done in the end, it was more ragged than I would have liked.  But I can't help but feel like I'm missing something obvious.  Surely there has to be an easier way?  Almost every tutorial I saw just explained how to make an outline and then edit whatever's inside.  But, in my case, I only want to change a portion of what's inside the initial selection so have to make another one.  I have a feeling that this must be a very common operation so, yeah... help?!  I don't think I can go through that again.

Anyways, hope that all made sense.  I can post an image of the dds if that would help.
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#2
The trick with the selections tools in 2.10 is that you have to strike Enter (or double click inside) to "commit" them. In you case this is a good thing because you can edit the node even after you have closed the selection.

Check if you have a grid defined/enabled (View>Snap to grid and Image>Configure grid).


Btw, even with the scissors you can add control points to fix inaccuracies.
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#3
Thanks much for the reply.  

I indeed hit Enter to commit (that's when the solid line turned into marching ants), if I'm understanding you correctly, and the grid stuff you mentioned looks okay (I think).  Well, I didn't have snap to grid on, but I just did a quick test and that didn't really help.  The big problem is that, after the first outline is "committed" everything looks fine for a while during my node-by-node drawing of the second outline but, as soon as I hit Enter again (to commit to that second outline), the first outline disappears.  If I CTRL-Z to undo, I get the first one back but have to start over on the second.  I lost count how many times I did that while doing my editing (literally spent hours doing something I thought would take 15 minutes - I wasn't doing anything really complex), and ended up with something a lot more ragged than I'd hoped for since I was reluctant to use too many nodes, especially around corners.

And what really baffles me is that holding down CTRL, while making the second outline, seems to be a work around for that (ignoring that, sometimes, the node placement gets extremely inaccurate).  But, even then, only sometimes. That seemed very arbitrary although my best guess (?) was that it had something to do with the number of nodes I used in the outline (or both combined maybe).  It seemed like it was while making the more node-heavy ones where I was never, even with holding CTRL, able to get the second outline established without the first one disappearing.  But, if I didn't keep CTRL pressed while making the second outline the first one disappeared every time when I hit Enter to try and establish the second one (and I mean holding CTRL down constantly, o/w it seemed like it was always doomed to failure).

I even started to wonder if it was something buggy with 2.10.4, as I believe it is only a few weeks old. But I'm very reluctant to start blaming the program considering my skillset is so crap.  Although maybe something went south on the install?  'Cuz I find this super-weird.
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#4
Just a suggestion.
Using the quick mask. Either for the whole selection or what I often do, tidy up a selection made by other means. Bottom of the select menu or Shift-Q or that little bottom left icon toggles.

[Image: X03OTYn.jpg]

Paint white to add to the selection, black subtracts, X key toggles FG / BG colours. making it easy to add/subtract.

Paint tool with shift key draws in straight lines, can clean up a border.

Toggle off to get the selection.

[Image: ZmQd9Ry.jpg]
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#5
(07-22-2018, 09:38 PM)KevKiev Wrote: I muddled around and eventually discovered that keeping CTRL pressed while making the second (inner border) selection made it possible (sometimes) to save the second selection without the first one disappearing.

About that CTRL key:

With one of the selection tool active, look at the the Tool Options. There is a Mode with 4 options. These are:
Replace the current selection
Add to the current selection Shift
Subtract from the current selection Ctrl
Intersect with the current selection Shift+Ctrl

So holding down the Ctrl key actives the 3rd option - Subtract from the current selection. Instead of holding down the Ctrl key all the time you can activate the 3rd option in the Tool Options.

If you don't use the Ctrl key the first option is active - Replace the current selection. So when you complete the second selection the first selection will be replaced ie disappear.
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#6
Nice! Thanks for the replies and tips - will be trying again later today.
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#7
Worthwhile reading:

https://www.gimp-forum.net/Thread-Painle...tion-tools
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#8
Thanks Ofnuts, that's some handy stuff. Still got a long way to go but the more I learn, even aside from the direct boost to competence, it helps point to more specific areas to get even more info.

Edit: Wow, I had to do a similar though much more extensive edit, and was able to do the whole thing in 15 minutes. Have a feeling someone who really knew what they were doing woulda done it in 3 but, still light years ahead of yesterday. Thanks again for all the replies.
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#9
(07-22-2018, 10:24 PM)Ofnuts Wrote: The trick with the selections tools in 2.10 is that you have to strike Enter (or double click inside) to "commit" them. In you case this is a good thing because you can edit the node even after you have closed the selection.

Check if you have a grid defined/enabled (View>Snap to grid and Image>Configure grid).


Btw, even with the scissors you can add control points to fix inaccuracies.

When double click my selection, it's disapears- do you know what I'm doing wrong?

When double clicking my selection, the selection disapears- does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I have done a ad alpha channel on my image.
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#10
(08-02-2021, 11:02 AM)Fifi Wrote: When double clicking my selection, the selection disapears- does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? I have done a ad alpha channel on my image.

Best guess from the description. Are you using MacOS and the BigSur update ?

It is a bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/-/issues/5952

The selection is still there. You can see it if you toggle quick mask and as far as I know it still works as a selection.
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