Anybody having much luck with the Auto Selection tool in X6?

[pdxrjt]

I was hoping Corel would add some more "smart" tools and they have the Smart Selection Brush and Auto Selection Tool. The Smart Selection Brush seems to work ok, but I sure can't figure out the Auto Selection Tool. On page 181 of the PDF manual they show a nice pic of kids on a camel They draw a big square around the children and saddle and the children and saddle are selected. I'm having no such luck. For example, I took a pic of a red flag against a blue sky. Did a big square around it and a small part of the inside part of the flag was selected. Did the same thing with a red building in a city scene (the scene was much busier than the solid blue sky) and again, a small part of the red building was selected. Nothing else inside the square was red.... just one building. Okay, tried a green statue against a basically gray sky. At times I could get it to select parts of the statue but at other times the square was basically the same shape as the square I drew (the edges were rounded a bit.) I don't expect miracles, but I can't even get it to work on, what I would think, are some pretty clear cut tasks. So, what am I missing? TIA

ps Personally I just think this is a way underdeveloped piece of code. Continued to try to work with it on very simple backgrounds with no luck. I'd like to give Corel feedback (not asking for their support--but would appreciate it from the community if someone can make this tool work) is there a way to do this?

[LindaSue]

I didn't have much luck with it either. It couldn't even select an object that was on a solid white background properly. I think it's odd that there's no setting for the tolerance.

[pdxrjt]

That's why I tried with a red flag on a gray background. If it can't pick that!!! Good to know I'm not the only one. It is pretty "simple" to use (no real settings) so I wondered if I was missing something. Thanks for the reply.

[photodrawken]

The thing to remember about the two new quick selection tools is that the operative word is "quick". If it works, great; if not, you've only lost a couple of seconds.

Here's some interesting results from using the Auto Selection (rectangle) tool:

It did a good job on this image with not much contrast or colour difference between the subject and background:

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On this image (which I thought would be easy), starting to drag in the white area at the lower right and dragging to the upper left gave this result, which ain't very useful:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

However, when I started the drag at the lower right inside the toe, the result is very good:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

It doesn't surprise me that there's no "tolerance" setting, since
a) the algorithm is probably too complicated to adjust both a colour and a contrast tolerance.
b) it's a quick selection method, after all....

[Tadjio]

I think a factor is the size (in pixels) of the area you are trying to select.
I just tested with an area 300x100 and the Auto Selection tool didn't select any detail
but when I copied and pasted the selection into a new image and then increased it in size by a factor of 10 to 3000 x 1000 the Auto Selection tool worked fine.
Not very scientific but an indication...

[pdxrjt]

Well, Ken and Tadjio thanks for looking into the tool. That is certainly more insight than was in the help file. Ken, I do disagree on one point, (okay 2 ) I don't think a quick selection tool should mean you only waste a few seconds to see if it doesn't work, I think it "should" mean it makes you work quicker or does the job quicker.... point #2, it is an Auto Selection Tool (not a Quick Select Tool)..... I don't think it auto selects very well. So I did some (more) experiments. I took a photo of fruit (various types) at an outdoor market. Jumbled texture but similar colors in different boxes....peaches in one box, strawberries in another etc. The tool made "interesting" selections (and I could see little difference in any tests selecting inside or outside in the dialog box). When I clicked strictly inside the fruit nothing...just a square box. When I included a bit of the white box, not much. When I included almost the entire bunch of fruit I got various selections..... such as: almost everything including yellow fruit and white box, or just a portion of the yellow fruit, or most of the yellow fruit with a small part of the white box. I returned to the red building in the cityscape. I increased the size (300ppi) x20. When I clicked inside the building nada. Started just outside the building then Auto Select selected just a tiny portion of the building....made no sense as the one side was a very very homogenous shade of red and the other wall was also a homogenous red, but a bit darker (it was in the shade.) The tool kept picking a few small portion of the red side that was in daylight, but not the entire unshaded wall, just a tiny piece of it. Made the box very large to include the entire building and it did at different times selected the entire building....sometimes including the shade side and sometimes not. Finally opened an old pic of a bright red telephone and post box from England. Auto Select picked them fairly flawlessly. Almost didn't matter what I did, picked them just fine (well if I started inside the red and ended inside the red, nothing happened but whether I got a bit outside the red or selected the entire red area....it did work well.--no difference whether inside or outside was selected in the tool dialog--that I could see)

So I remain puzzled. It seems you "must" go outside the boundaries of what you are trying to select (ie, the tool will not sample and then go with that sample until it finds something different outside of the box. Thus, I could not click inside the red post box and have the tool select the entire red box.) My "best" results came when the box contained the entire area I was trying to select (I did not have success like Ken did with including a portion of the chicks) and even so that was mixed. Auto select picked only a small portion of the red side of a building. Auto Select again totally ignored the red flag on gray (no matter what I did including start inside the flag.)

Sorry, trying to accurately describe the numerous experiments I did is somewhat difficult. Hope my post makes sense.

[photodrawken]

point #2, it is an Auto Selection Tool (not a Quick Select Tool)

That's where I strongly disagree. Even in cases where the Auto Selection Tool does a very good job, it's usually not going to be a perfect selection -- some manual refinements will be necessary. So, as far as I'm concerned, both the new selection tools are a quick way of making a basic selection that's useful as a starting point.

A couple of years ago, when I was using PSE, I wound up reaching for its Quick Selection Brush first about 95% of the time. Then I used one (or more) of the other selection tools to refine the selection. It was a very fast way of working, so I'm really happy to have the Smart Selection Brush now in PSP. Right now, I don't see any particular advantage to using the Auto Selection Tool as opposed to the Smart Selection Brush, but it's not a bad thing to have and costs nothing to use as a first selection attempt.

The good thing is that we're all experimenting with the Auto Selection Tool and learning its quirks and limitations.

[Tadjio]

I would just add that I think the Auto Selection tool followed by the Smart Selection Brush (in Add mode) is a good combination.
With the subsequent Smart Selection Brush you have to keep the brush within the desired area.

[Kathy_9]

Interesting. . . Sometimes when you select with the Auto Selection brush you will get a square or rectangular selection. When this occurs, double-click within the square or rectangle and it will produce a more precise selection.

[pdxrjt]

Never said I thought it was going to be perfect, because it is far, far, far from that. But so far I can't even say it is slightly useful. On 7 pics, it made a good selection on One-- the bright red boxes. On some, it didn't do anything at all. I don't mind the tool creating a starting point, but drawing a square around a red flag on a gray background should be pretty easy for an "Auto Selection Tool" to work (IMHO.) I can (and will have to) use other tools, but right now, I'm not sure why it was included. I'm getting the kind of results I expect from the Smart Selection Brush.... a very good to decent selection that I can tweak. Not only has the Auto Selection Tool only given me a decent or above selection on one photo, it would have been a total waste of time on the others. Especially on some of the "simpler" ones like the isolated flag or red house, I would expect it to be better. Ken, I am not saying you are wrong if you are happy with the tool....I'm not (although I appreciate the fact they tried to make it useful ). I understand that your approach is "give it a shot and if it works great"--but I'd be a lot happier if I thought it would work on even simple selections. On the website they say "Quickly select an object or area in your photo by dragging a selection window to enclose the desired area. The selection marquee automatically snaps to the edges it detects, making further refinements a snap!" However, I would think a red flag edge in a grey field would be pretty easy to find. I get your point, I guess I'm just disappointed in their effort. Anyway, I'm happy for the Smart Selection Brush.

I was hoping that there was something I didn't understand about using it. Apparently I more or less get it, I just don't think it works well enough to bother trying. But I do think the Smart Selection Brush has some potential. Perhaps one day Corel will grace us with the video on how to use the Auto Selection Tool.

Kathy, not sure how to double click the Auto Selection Tool (which is different than the Smart Selection Brush.) I get good results with the Brush, but when I double click the rectangle for the Auto Selection Tool, nothing happens.

ps If you visit their webpage on X6 and click on the little box describing Auto Selection Tool, a pop up shows you the tool making a wonderful selection...... hmmmmmm. That's a bit more of what I expected.
http://www.corel.com/corel/product/inde ... de=en#tab2

[Kathy_9]

I don't know if it happens all the time as I'm just experimenting but you need to click "within" the square or rectangle, not "on' it and yes, I agree the Auto Selection tool is different than the Smart Selection brush.

[Cassel]

I did some testing too, and what I found is that soft edges don't do good, while sharp edges will work well, and that is almost independent of the surroundings.

Here is what I did:
Selecting the head on a solid background yielded nothing. The person is further and more blurred.

Then, I selected the had, and although it is not perfect, it is definitely better.

So maybe it is not about the color contrast but the edge itself??

[pdxrjt]

You may be onto something there in the sense that the red post box had a very sharp edge.... the house etc. had sharp edges all around it. If you look at the Corel link and their example, it seems that what they selected had a sharp edge. That might be it.

[photodrawken]

pdxrjt,
No, I'm not happy with the Auto Selection Tool -- you're right that there's too many cases where it fails to give useful results. As of now, it seems to me like it's a "Let's include it for the hell of it" gimmick that inflates the "new" features of X6. I probably won't go to it much, but time will tell.... I'm just not that disappointed with it since the Smart Selection Brush is what I really wanted.

Kathy_9,
I couldn't get a more precise selection using your method.

Cassel,
Your explanation makes sense for the hat image you posted, but it doesn't explain the results with the two chicks, nor with other images where the failing and working results were of equal sharpness (within the same image).

All,
Just so we're all talking about the same thing, I happened to come across this image on the Web:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Larger sizes can be downloaded from here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dylanpassm ... otostream/

which turned out to be a maddening test case. Nothing I do will select the boy on the bike or the white car in the background.

My theory is this: When I try to select parts of the image (like one of the dark doors, or one of the windows) it seems that the Auto Selection Tool fails if the surrounding area is composed of colours that are somewhat different from each other. But my theory doesn't explain Cassel's results, so we're still in the dark. I wish Corel had given more guidance in their Help about the criteria the tool uses so we could at least have some idea of when to try it and when not to.

[Cassel]

In that photo, Ken, I would not have expected anything good since both the boy and the white car have soft edges.
I don't know the reason or explanation behind the working (or not working) of the tool, but I tested with another photo. Notice that where it has soft edges, it does not select but SOME areas are selected, which seem to have sharper edges within the fluffy area:

Again, those are only the results I get. And I have no solid explanation, just guesses based on what I get.