Selecting background and object?

[sisom]

I'm trying to select a 1280 x 1px piece of an image, to use for a vertically tiling background.
The image consists of a coloured background, and a white box with a shadow on top of the background. I want to select a 1280 x 1px slice of it, but when I try to select, I only get the white box and shadow, not the background colour. I can use Faststone Capture to do it, but I have to do it in two parts (as my monitor is only 1280px wide) and I'm sure it can be done in PI12.
Does anybody know how to do this?

[Ron P.]

I don't know if this will achieve what you want, but this is what I done...

First since my monitor is limited in size, similar to yours (1280 being the widest), I choose a common web page document size when I opened PI. I applied a fill color to the background, then placed a white box w/ shadow to the box.

1. You need to convert your background to an object, by right-clicking on the background, choose Duplicate.
2. Hide the background by clicking on the eye icon in the Layer manager.
3. Using the selection tool, choose the rectangle selection shape.
4. Click the + (plus) icon on the Selection tool bar, to place the selection mode to additive.
5. You will need to be zoomed in to max to get the 1px accuracy. Have the ruler activated, and the units set to pixels.
6. Drag a selection across your stage, making sure it is only 1px wide.
7. Go to Selection menu, choose Convert to Object.

Now highlight / select your 1px wide object. I also hide all other objects, using the Layer Manager. Then go to the Adjust menu, select Resize. In the dialog that opens make sure you choose Selected Object.

Then under New Image size, set the unit type to Pixel if it is showing Percent. Make sure to uncheck the option Keep Aspect Ratio. Now set the width to 1280, and Height should remain at 1px.

Now you have your 1280px X 1px object. So you can now export it, by using the File>More Save As>For Web Page, or just go to Web>Image Optimizer, and choose a format, preferably GIF if you intend on using this for a web page.

Again in the prompt that appears be sure to check Selected Objects. If not it will use the complete document, and not just your selected object.


Now you should have an object that is 1px wide, by however long your document object is. In your case 1280px.

[sisom]

Thanks for your reply, Vidoman. In between my posting and your reply, I did this:
I created a rectangle with the colour of the background that I wanted, 1280px wide and 100px high, then I copied the white rectangle on top of it, then used 'Select All Objects', then used a fixed selection of 1280 x 1px, and that worked fine.