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

[photodrawken]

Cassel,
But it will make a good attempt at selecting the red car on the left, or the two dark brown doors in the center (but not the rightmost door). They're all of equal sharpness in that photo.

[photodrawken]

OK, I've tested the Auto Selection Tool on dozens of images-- full colour RGB, B&W RGB, and Greyscale. This image kind of summarizes my results (posted image is 50% of the original size):

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I first applied a 3px Gaussian blur to the original image to eliminate any sharply defined edges, then used the Auto Selection Tool on it. Notice how the selection does not include the shadowed area of her photo left arm, the shadowed area of her face, or the dark bead on her bracelet. My thinking about the excluded portion of her hair is that the Tool followed the contour of her swimsuit up until it met the selection coming down from the light portion of her hair that was against a very dark part of the background. Since this is an old, faded publicity photo, the colours of BB and the background are very similar.

So, my current theory is that the primary criteria of the Auto Selection Tool is a high contrast of values between the object and its surroundings.

This image mostly confirms the theory (no blur was applied):

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Unfortunately, my theory doesn't explain the failure of the Tool to select the white car in the streetscape image. So, the algorithm is probably taking into account the size of the selection area, as Tadjio suggested; but increasing the size of that streetscape image by 300% still did not allow the white car to be selected.

[pdxrjt]

Ken, I've tried about a dozen images....and while I don't think it is all that useful a tool just yet.....what frustrates me most is that I can't figure out what it will or won't pick up. I'm not really sure how to post pics (and they are not all that special) but the fruit is a great example,.... it ignored part of the white box, but selected another part of the same white box. Plus, what's up with the red house..... the whole side of the building appears a very similar shade of red....so what does it select just a portion in the middle? It seems like the crew here has done some good work trying to figure it out...... but it just isn't ready for prime time. I agree with you.... they threw it in to say "look what we did." Fortunately the auto brush works pretty well, I like that!

[photodrawken]

what frustrates me most is that I can't figure out what it will or won't pick up.

Yep, same here. What I found is that I can now predict somewhat the selection by looking at the values (black and white tones) of the image. For example, in this image of a Wilson's Phalarope:

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by considering the black and white tonal range of the image, it's obvious why the selection followed the shade line across the head, neck, and breast.

Bear with me on this, though, because I found that (unfortunately) the criteria used for making the selection seems to be a little more complicated:
1. Although the black and white tonal values are the primary criterion, colours do seem to play a role -- I've found some images where the selection done on the full colour image is different from the selection obtained when the image is first converted to black and white.
2. There's a kind of "simplification effect" inherent in the algorithm where long, narrow parts of the object are not selected. That's why the phalarope's beak is not selected, even though there's good contrast between it and the background. You'll also see this effect with images of the Statue of Liberty, where the rays emanating from her crown are not selected. Or with images of elk, where the tines of their antlers are not selected. And so on....
3. The algorithm used for making the selection seems to have a problem distinguishing between an object and its surroundings when the object and/or its surroundings are composed of multiple, contrasting, varied colours.

The bottom line is that the Auto Selection Tool will do an outstanding job on all those photos you have of black cats on a snowbank, or polar bears in a coal bin.

I'm not really sure how to post pics

Yeah, it's especially important in discussions like this for us to see the images you have questions about.

This forum's software requires that an image be available somewhere out on the Internet and that the Internet URL of the image be surrounded by [IMG] tags in your message. Fortunately, the free ImageShack site
http://imageshack.us/
will do all that for you. Once you've uploaded your image there, you'll get a confirmation page. Click on the "Continue to image links" text, and on the subsequent page copy the "Forum code" text into your message here.

Fortunately the auto brush works pretty well, I like that!

Oh, yeah! Another great thing about the Smart Selection Brush is that it actually combines two tools into one: Use it with the "Smart Edge" option enabled, and then when you de-select "Smart Edge", it acts like a selection brush tool so you can "paint" the selection edges to align them with the image. Good Stuff!

[Tadjio]

To upload an image from your PC, click on the "Upload attachment" tab below where you type the text.
There are limits e.g. 950 pixels wide and about 250kb.

[pdxrjt]

Thanks for the tips on posting photos..... have copied them into my little "photo tips" file. I was playing around with one and again continue to find strange phenomenon with this tool. I hope we get some direction or Corel decides to improve it.