Selecting a complicated & rarified object

[hartpaul]

Quick and dirty
Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Threshold set to 109.

I tried other methods including increasing contrast and splitting into channels and also threshold again and combinations of these. All had problems with the finer filaments at the end of the branches.

Your best result would be by retaking the image on a cloudless day so that there is a natural high contrast between the tree and the sky.
This is what the older film photographers would have done, but nowdays we have the lazy attitude that we can fix all our photo mistakes in post editing.

[ehume]

Quick and dirty
Adjust > Brightness and Contrast > Threshold set to 109.

Never noticed that before. It's lovely. Too bad I cannot choose a transparency as a material.

[LeviFiction]

You can create a selection or mask from the luminance values though. Selecting the white areas and then deleting them.

[ehume]

You can create a selection or mask from the luminance values though. Selecting the white areas and then deleting them.

You're right, of course. That's what comes from staying up late. But that's a fine comment, since the point of this exercise is to make a selection; PSP had a function the allows us to change a selection to a paintbrush tip.

Edit: creating a mask works a treat. Here's a png:

Now, how does one make a picture tube?

[hartpaul]

Promote layer to raster select white with Magic Wand tool. Hit delete key to make that white transparent.
Drag thumb onto workspace gives automatic crop.
Then
File < Export > Picture Tube should have a 1 x 1` cell already filled out add new name and OK.

[ehume]

Promote layer to raster select white with Magic Wand tool. Hit delete key to make that white transparent.
Drag thumb onto workspace gives automatic crop.
Then
File < Export > Picture Tube should have a 1 x 1` cell already filled out add new name and OK.

I forgot all about the File > Export function. Thanks. Worked perfectly. Makes a nice icon, too.

[Jean-Luc]

But it is a tedious process.

You need to set Limits to Discontiguous.