Pixels outside of selection getting deleted.

[Umagula]

I'm working in Photoshop CS2, and I never had this problem with previous versions, but I don't know if that really has anything to do with it.

I'm isolating a person's face in a photo I'm editing. I spent a good 20 minutes getting the selection of their face just right. I copy & paste the selection into a new layer and then hide the other layers. At and near the edge of the selection I noticed a good amount of pixels didn't copy over, so there's a smattering of transparency inside what I pasted.

So I tried it a different way (started over, reloaded the PSD). I duplicated the layer, hid the other layers, loaded my selection, inverted it, and then deleted everything that was selected so only the face would remain. It deleted the same pixels that it didn't copy over before.

If I look at the saved selection in Channels, it's missing the pixels there as well, but if I load the selection, there's nothing left out of the selection.

So here's a close-up of one part with the selection in place before deletion:
http://darkseam.com/pss1.jpg

Here it is after deleting the selection (or copying and pasting, it's the exact same result):
http://darkseam.com/pss2.jpg

Here's what the channel looks like:
http://darkseam.com/pss3.jpg

I can't figure it out. I don't want to lose those pixels. What do I do?

[iDad]

not sure what is happening but you could create a duplicate layer and smudge the pixels over on the lower layer then merge....... just a suggestion, I have never seen that happen before, just a quick fix, not a solution if it keeps happening

[JLBerry]

This can indeed happen depending on the selection method you used. How did you select the face? Please be accurate.

[Umagula]

At first I used the Magic Wand, holding Shift to select multiple areas. Then I just started using the Lasso tool, holding shift to add to the selection, and holding alt to remove from the selection. I've done it this way many times in the past, but I've never had this problem before.

That's really it. I didn't use any sort of automation or plugins to do the selection. Just Magic Wand and Lasso.

[iDad]

is your tolerance level set to a different level from previous use?

[JLBerry]

At first I used the Magic Wand, holding Shift to select multiple areas.

You probably zoomed out pretty far before you used the magic wand tool, not noticing that it missed some pixels that you did see when you zoomed in again at the end.

[Umagula]

But if I zoom in, it all looks selected. The screenshots I posted are zoomed in to the point where you can see the individual pixels (that's why it looks so blocky). Also, if I try to add to the selection using the lasso tool in the area that the pixels are missing, it still has the problem (I can look at the channel and see that they're still missing). However, I can add to the selection by selecting outside of the area.

Weird.

[Umagula]

Actually I just realized that after reselecting the pixels, I need to save the selection again before it shows up changed in the channel. So, it did actually add the lasso'd pixels to the selection. It'll let me do it in the channel view, too, so I have a method of adding the pixels.

I think the problem arose from anti-aliasing, although I haven't had this problem before. It seems that it's not dropping the pixels completely, just making them very translucent. Therefore, the pixels are selected, but they're being made translucent. Is there a way to change it from doing this?

[chefranden]

Is your selection tool feathered at all? If it is feathered just one or two pixels I think it would give you an edge like this. I would make sure the feather is set to 0 and anti-aliasing is off, if I understand what you are doing right.

[JLBerry]

I get the impression that Umagula doesn't know what he is doing, after all... he does post in the newbies forum.

I would advice him to upload the file to some sharing host so that we can have a look at it.