Select based on object size?

The script at that link is so helpful! Thank you very much.

I indeed aspire to play with it, as you put it. 🙂

I tried the script and was impressed, and I am very hopeful it will aid me greatly. I altered the "pat" function value to test the difference that made. I also tried your original code as well as the alteration you made later in the thread.

Since I'm a beginner, and since my goal is a little different than the person that needed that script, I really could use some assistance in understanding some things from the code. (Here's another example image, fwiw.)

So, the goal is to separate each letter (and ultimately to save each one to a file).

1. For one thing, I'm trying to figure out how to apply your code without any alterations at all to the letters themselves - no loss of color or resolution, no filling gaps, etc. (You mentioned some fill-in and some minor thinning and increase in contrast going on in the existing script.)

2. Would you mind explaining, if possible, exactly which part of the code uses size (pixel radius) to differentiate between small dots and letters?

3. When I run the script and then hit Ctrl+Z backwards through the steps, at one step I see small blue squares. Would you mind just explaining what those are? (My guess is they have to do with the measurements. But I searched, couldn't find anything online, and don't want to do too much guessing.)

Thanks! Here's a low-resolution example of a manuscript page:

I would like all instances of:

etc. These are rush jobs. But I'd like them a pixel or two outside the perimeters. And each saved as an image file. (And fwiw, there are many pages to this manuscript.)

I would really appreciate anyone's suggestions toward a solution. So far, only a couple of angles have come to me, but they are incomplete.

• One would be to slice the source page into small slices saved into individual files - small enough so that Object Select (or Subject Select?) works (as it seemed to when I tested a small cropped area of a couple of words a while back). Then invert selection and remove background. Then use a plugin that splits "islands" of pixels to layers (such as Troubleshoot fonts, or Split Layer to Islands). Then save layers to files.
• The other angle brings me back to my original notion of some script that utilizes selection size. I read that selection sizes (height and width) can indeed be accessed (With Navigator/Info palette open, Window>Info, use the Info tab, w/h shown near the bottom), and that there are scripts that can access these measurements. So I have still wondered why it wouldn't be possible to have a script that checked through all selections' sizes and only acted on the ones within a certain threshhold (eg, width of .5 cm to 1.5 cm) and ignored the rest. (In this case, I think I could just use color range to make selections, then rely on the script to winnow things down to what I need.)

All this said, I'm not particular to any method! Any help towards a quality, reusable solution would be wonderful.

All the best.

Thank for taking time to respond, and for your explanation.

By "object," I just had in mind the lingo of Photoshop's Object Selection tool from the Magic Wand group. Or even "subject" in the sense of the Select Subject tool. But yes, it's all pixels.

One reason I had this in mind is because I tried to use these tools. The results are not good. But if I focus in and select a rectangle with just a word or two enclosed, then use the Object Selection tool, it grabs the letters as desired. What I'd like is for this to happen for whole pages, of course.

(Another clarification, just in case: I'm trying to get at the letters themselves; the text itself - not even the words - need to be intact. I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.)

There is no punctuation in the document I have in mind (a medieval Latin manuscript), so that wouldn't be an issue. And since I'm aiming for the letters, smaller things getting left out would be okay anyways. Again, my hope is for a way to leave out things smaller than letters in general.

What I hear you saying is that there is no way to use size per se to dictate what does or what doesn't get selected. Thank you for clarifying that. If you think of any other angle, or any exception to this, I'd greatly appreciate knowing.

(For what it's worth, my relatively uneducated guess was that somewhere, somehow in the Subject Select tool's Sensei algorithm, size has to matter. (Kind-of like, "Hey, the full image is not a subject. It has to be smaller than that." And, "Hey, those little grains, regardless of color and contour, can't be subjects. You have to find something bigger." (This is closer to my simplistic way of thinking.)) And maybe this would be in the Object Selection tool's logic, too. (Idk.) Anyways, if this very loose concept had any resemblance of truth, then my hope was to likewise be able to instruct Photoshop to make size matter when making or working with (eg, subtracting from or adding to) a given selection.)

Thanks.