Blank Spaces... Not Blank?

[BondJamesBond]

Beginner question here.

I've got an image (originally a part of a photo), and I took the eraser and the brush and cleaned up some of the jagged edges. The hardness on both was set to 100. Now, when I select the area surrounding the image, the (now blank) areas where I used the eraser are left unselected. What's going on here? I should add that changing the tolerance setting of the select tool does not make a difference.

 

[IamSam]

Now, when I select the area surrounding the image, the (now blank) areas where I used the eraser are left unselected. What's going on here?

It's hard to tell without further info or perhaps seeing your layers panel. I can only guess. I suspect that you may be using either another layer or a layer mask that does not reflect the "clean up" you did with the Eraser and Brush Tool to make your selection.

You could upload the PSD file as well.

 

[Babine]

Without the PSD file, in this case, I used a hard edge brush and the various colours to smooth out/refine the selection.


I then used Select/Colour Range to get the selection as shown in yellow

 

[thebestcpu]

Beginner question here.

I've got an image (originally a part of a photo), and I took the eraser and the brush and cleaned up some of the jagged edges. The hardness on both was set to 100. Now, when I select the area surrounding the image, the (now blank) areas where I used the eraser are left unselected. What's going on here? I should add that changing the tolerance setting of the select tool does not make a difference.

View attachment 143112

HI @BondJamesBond

Several things are going on here.

1) Using the Erasure Tool with the Brush setting (not the Pencil setting) and hardness set to 100 still does not give a hard erasure edge. That is the characteristic of Photoshop Brushes (yes, it is misleading when PS says "hard"). If you want a much harder edge, use the Pencil tool option. Remember that if you use a very hard edge for many edges, you will end up with pixel jaggy edges, so there is a tradeoff. I most often use soft edges in my work.

2) Regarding the selection tool, the sample size and the tolerance make a difference in how much is selected. Because of the original image's variations and that you were effectively using a soft erasure edge, the edge pixels gradually change in tone and color. So, one often has to set the tolerance to a higher number.

Here are two screenshots with different selection settings with the associated selection results:

Tolerance 3 with point sample


tolerance 32 with 3xsample


So, one has to adjust the numbers sometimes in large ways to get the right selection.

The JPEG you provided may not be the exact image your were using yet when I turn up the contrast with a Curves Adjsutment Layer, you can see the edge variations and why the select tool might get confused:



I hope this helps some
John Wheeler

 

[IamSam]

Another possibility is that you had lowered the opacity setting of the Eraser Tool. This might leave slightly transparent pixels behind that the selection tool is picking up.