trying to figure this out.

[nate_7]

Brand new to photoshop, pardon the ignorance here.  I got this software to digitize my hand drawings to clean up for different uses.  My issue is when trying to select the object in my photo with the object selection tool, it wont find the drawing (object) but rather auto selects all the paper that the object was drawn on. The entire screen turns pink when using the object selection tool. Any ideas what Im doing wrong here? thanks for your input

[Conrad_C · Accepted solution]

It might be better to use a different tool. The best thing about the Object Selection tool is sometimes the worst thing: It’s trained with AI. It’s trained to pick out common subjects in photos like a person standing in front of buildings or a house in front of trees, and it’s often very good at that. But I’m not sure how much it’s trained to recognize things like a hand drawing; if it isn’t trained for that then it might just go for the whole sheet of paper.

For a drawing, it might be better to select by tone. For example, use Select > Color Range to create a luminosity selection that excludes paper white, and convert that selection to a layer mask. Or, make the drawing a layer over a white Color Fill layer, and use the Blend If options to drop out the lightest tones, shown in the demo below. The steps in the demo are:

1. If the drawing is a Background layer, convert it to a normal layer; I did that by clicking the lock icon. 

2. Create a new Color Fill layer. I set mine to white. 

3. Drag the drawing layer so that it’s on top of the Color Fill layer.

4. Double-click the drawing layer (not its thumbnail preview) to open the Layer Style dialog box. 

5. For Current Layer, drag the white slider to the left until the drawing background is solid white. If you need to feather the effect, you can split a Blend If slider by Option-dragging one half of a slider.

[nate_7]

Hi Conrad,

Many thanks for your thoughtful response!  The demo you have attached is pure gold. Thank you, I appreciate your expertise and prompt response!  I am excited to give this a go tonight. All the best, have  a great evening!

Nate