How can I do to select a piece of land within demarcated borders in Photoshop?

[Tristan274126715utr]

Hi,

I ask this question because I wanted to select the magic wand tool because I remembered this is how I was able to select what was supposed to be water or land in a fictional map.

But after I draw the demarcated borders for my fictional map, I now want to select only the piece of land of a single bordered nation.

But this seems harder than what I except and I wasn't able to do it.

What I want to do is to select a portion of the land layer I created a few months ago in my Photoshop file, but instead using the entire layer, I would want to select only the portion within demarcated borders, then create new layers with this for each of the country and territory of my fictional world.

That would theoretically allow me to create charts (similar with MapChart) directly in my Photoshop file instead having to create a MS Paint version of the same file.

So, I wonder if  you understand my issue and if you could be able to help me.

Thanks you, and have a good day!

[Michael Bullo]

When using the Magic Wand Tool are you familiar with the Contiguous option within the Options bar running along the top of Photoshop? When active, it will confine the selection to a single cluster and will ignore the rest of the image.

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Select Blue (water area) with magic wand.

Use Shift + Ctrl + i to inverse your selection.

Does that help you?

[Tristan274126715utr]

I think what I had to do is to select the water area layer, create a new layer called "coastal borders", draw borders with "contour" and 3px, then select the lakes with the land layer and draw the same borders. After I had draw all the borders from the "coastal borders" layer, I had to merge it with the other "national borders" layer, and voilà! Now, it is possible in my map to only select a country / territory with the magic wand tool. So, thanks you, and have a good night!