Preserved Topic: Help with selections (Page 1 of 1)

I'm working a radiohead wallpaper, and I would like to include the lyrics from one of there songs. The lyrics are scanned from the cd booklet and contain diffrent font sizes, colors, and formating. The image can be found here Full lyrics. I attempted to use the magic wand tool to select and delete all the white from the image, but it only sorta worked. Here are two examples of some of the finer text after I have removed the background.
Before
After

Can anyone offer any suggestions on a better way to do this? I kinda think i'm just going to have to go back and fix what ever the magic wand messes up by hand, but I thought I would get some others opinion's on this.



[This message has been edited by Lao is good (edited 09-27-2001).]

Try instead of clearing the white away with a selection, just put the lyrics in a layer over everything with the layer set to multiply. That should make all the white transparent. It will also make the red letters look very dark blue... so what you do then is select just the red part and copy and paste it to it's own layer. Use the selection tool (antialiased, contiguous, with a tolerance of 32) to cut the white out from around the red... and it should look fairly clean.

~cough~ levels ~cough~
~cough~ colour range tool ~cough~

~Vp~

[This message has been edited by vogonpoet (edited 09-27-2001).]

Take a look at the separate channels of the image. Find the one which has all the text in black & white (I guess the blue channel.) Control-click it. Now, you have a selection of all the white parts. (white=100% selected, 50% gray=50%selected, black=not selected) . Move back to the layers palette, invert your selection (select>invert or CTRL-SHIFT-I), fill with black, done.



Edit: works best, especially as your text is in black and white.

[This message has been edited by mahjqa (edited 09-28-2001).]

**puts on dunce cap and raises hand**

Sorry, HumanShield, I'm trying to follow along, but you lost me. "just put the lyrics in a layer over everything with the layer set to multiply" what do you mean by "everything" and which layer am I setting to multiply? Just a bit too vague for my pea-brain to comprehend. I tried a variety of layer combinations and such and couldn't get the transparent effect you mentioned.

VP: sorry, couldn't quite catch what you said between the coughs. You feeling all right? Make sure to take your vitamin C!

BeeKay
Murphy's 50 Laws of Combat Operations
15. Teamwork is essential -- it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
19. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in and you can't get out.

Not that I'm presumptuous enough to think that I can speak for HS, but when you set a layer to multiply, the whites disappear and the darks overlay everything else...So it can create transparency in a way...But if your type was blue with a white background and you set that layer to multiply over a layer that was yellow, then you'd end up with green type...so it's not the best scenario for eliminating backgrounds most of the time...But in this case, it should work...As the topic suggests, this is not a way of making a selection, just a work-around. Does that help?

On the other hand, Mahjqa's method worked great! Learn something new everyday. Amazing how many different ways there are to accomplish the same thing ...
**takes off dunce cap**

BeeKay
Murphy's 50 Laws of Combat Operations
15. Teamwork is essential -- it gives the enemy other people to shoot at.
19. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in and you can't get out.

Thanks everyone. I used Mahjqa's method, so that I can more easily change the background text later. Works like a charm now. Thanks again.

**Hands Mahjqa a cookie**
Here ya go. Made it fresh this morning. Chocolate chips are still all gooey ...

Thank you! *takes cookie and eats it* *mumbles with his mouth full of cookie* It's delicious!