Expanding Selections - confused (Photoshop)

nicedwar

I'm going through the hard surface tutorial at:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024

I can't get the part about undercoat/primer to work.

It involves expanding an all layers flood fill selection.
When I select the layers, most of the Modify menu is grayed out. I understand how it should work, and can simulate it with the magic wand, but I'm wondering if I'm missing something. I'm using the PDF tutorial, but the forum one is essentially the same.

Basically it's calling for a layer of white scratches, and another layer of paint, using the paint bucket tool. The paint goes neatly around the scratches when using the All Layers option with the paint bucket. I'm then supposed to be able to select the paint and expand the selection.

Anyone done anything like this before?

Thanks

HarlequiN

To select the paint hold CTRL and click the thumbnail of the layer you want to select - this will select the opaque areas, and leave the transparent areas alone.

Then go to the select/modify menu and you can expand or contract the selection as you need to.

If there is no transparency in your layer then the whole image will be selected and only "Border" will be available under your modify panel - it sounds like this may be the issue you're having.

Make sure that when you do the fill for the paint you're on a new clean layer rather than the one with the scratches on. The reason you use the All Layers option with the fill tool is that there will be nothing on the selected layer to stop the flood fill, so the layers beneath are used instead.

I can't think of another reason for the modify menu to be mostly greyed out other than having the entire image selected (no selection at all will grey out the menu itself, not the options within).

Not a technique I generally use (I work upsidedown, with the paint as my base layer), but I've done similar things before.

Hope that helps...

fogmann

If your paint is on more than one layer, then ctrl+click the first one to select opaque areas, as Harle said, and then ctrl+shift click the rest of the paint layers' thumbnails in layer palette to add their contents to selection. Then you can go to selection> modify> expand. If you have multiple layers selected in layers palette, I think a lot of tools won't work, because the tools work on a specific layer and Photoshop doesn't know which layer you want them to work on. Basically, you're not selecting layers, but adding their contents to your selection, which is what I think it means a "selection of all the 'paint' layers".

HarlequiN

HAving multiple layers selected at once shouldn't affect the selection options though - but you're right fogman, it does stop you using a lot of other options.

Also a very good point about adding multiple layer transparency to your selection.

nicedwar

Good calls. Got it to work. It was specifically clicking the thumbnails and when to use Ctrl that was throwing me off. What is the difference between Ctrl-click and Ctrl-Shift-click?

Thanks much for the help. I was scrambling all over Google, CGTalk and 3D Buzz for help, and Polycount is the only place I found help... at all... and right away at that. You guys are my new heroes.

Slum

ctrl-click selects the layer contents, and only the layer you click on. ctrl-shift-click selects the first layer, and adds to the selection any layer contents you click later. just like doing shift-drag when marquee selecting, only with layer content.

nicedwar

Oh I see. Interesting. Thanks.