# Selections

This chapter gives a short introduction on selections.

You can select a part of an image masking off the rest. This is handy when you want to cut, copy or just modify a part of the image without affecting the rest. For processing selected objects &krita; applies a mask. Each pixel of the selection is processed based on a value of its mask, or the level of the selection, that can range from 0 (unselected) to 255 (selected). Yes, that is right, you can have fractionally selected pixels. And by working on individual pixels you can paint your selection.

The selection mask is visualized with unselected pixels having a blueish tint, and selected pixels looking like normal. Fractionally selected pixels are shown as something in between. Additionally a red border is drawn around the selected areas. Fractionally selected pixels are inside the border, so even inside the red border you can possibly see the blueish tint on some pixels.

## Making a selection

A whole range of tools exist to make selections. From rectangles, ellipses and freehand to the more exotic like color range select. When you make several selections they add up. So a rectangle select followed by an ellipse select select both areas. Later on, you can subtract areas from the selection by using, for example, the Erase Selection tool.

To get back to normal (no active selection), choose Select Deselect . To select all pixels, choose Select Select All .

You may think that those two actions give the same result, but it is much more efficient to have no active selection than to have selected everything.

After having deselected you can bring your selection back by choosing Select Reselect .

## Painting your selection

As said above you can essentially paint your selection, and just like when you paint normally you can choose to paint your selection freehand or guided with rectangles, ellipses, &etc;. You also have the choice of different paint tools like pen, brush, airbrush, &etc;. Choose the guide tool, and the paint tool in the toolbox, and go ahead and paint your selection.

The guide tools work just like you may be used to from other applications. So holding down shift while drawing a rectangle or an ellipse still forces them to be a square or a circle respectively.

Painting a selection Painting a selection

Painting a selection

Painting a selection Painting a selection

Painting a selection

## Unselecting

All the selection paint tools have an option to add or subtract from the selection. This means that you can use all your familiar tools to both select and unselect. There is also a true selection eraser among the selection paint tools.

Unselecting Unselecting

Unselecting

## Making a new selection

When you want to make a new selection, replacing the currently active one, you first need to deselect the active selection. Choose Select Deselect .

## Selecting a contiguous area (magic wand)

To follow the analogy of painting your selection &krita; also provides an equivalent to filling a contiguous area. Some paint applications call this selection tool the magic wand tool. What it does is select the nearby pixels as long as they have nearly the same color as the pixel you click on. The selection floods out from the point you click on. In the fuzziness option you can set how different the colors are allowed to be before the flooding stops.

Before the magic wand Before the magic wand

Before the magic wand

A magic wand selection A magic wand selection

A magic wand selection

## Selecting similar colors

The Select Similar tool lets you pick a pixel and then select all pixels that have a similar color. Picking a color in one corner of the image may select a pixel in another corner if they have similar color. With the Fuzziness option you can set how similar the colors must be to become selected.

Selecting similar colors Selecting similar colors

Selecting similar colors

## Inverting the selection

In some cases it is easier to specify your selection the other way around. That is, first you select the parts that ultimately should not be selected and then then you choose Select Invert . What invert does, is that for every pixel it flips the selection level so to speak, by setting it to 256 minus the current selection level. Thus what was selected becomes unselected and vice versa.