• Global community
    • Language:
      • Deutsch
      • English
      • Español
      • Français
      • Português
  • 日本語コミュニティ
    Dedicated community for Japanese speakers
  • 한국 커뮤니티
    Dedicated community for Korean speakers
Exit
0

idea for selection in photoshop - new feature

New Here ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

lets say i have a grid of square tiles, say they are square marble floor tiles.  the grid is 8 tiles wide by 8 tiles high.

 

lets also say they are all the same color/hue/saturation/lightness.

 

what i would like to do is add brightness variation to randomly selected tiles. say 3 variations - lighter, darker, and original.

 

a masked adjustment layer would be a great approach to this. i could create 2 levels adjustment layers, one for darker and one for lighter.

 

i would like to be able to click & shift click on some of the 64 tiles in my work space (not in the layers panel), then go over to the layers menu in the layers panel and click "make selection from selected layers", then click add adjustment layer>levels and that would be automatically masked.

 

or is this possible already?  i know the part about adjustment layers being auto masked from selection marquee (aka marching ants), but how about "make selection from selected layers"?  thanks.

Views

584

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines

correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Having wood grain or other varying pattern would be an issue with any selection method, current or future.

Votes

Translate

Translate
Adobe
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Are the 64 tiles currently in one layer or separate layers?

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

sorry yes, separate layers. one layer for each tile.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

The magic wand should be able to do this. Just shift click on each tile. You might try having contiguous checked and uncheck, and see which one works best for you. You might have to use Select and Mask to refine the edge a bit, as magic wand can be pretty crude with harsh edges.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

thank you. good thought, however, i might be misunderstanding.  in my most recent use case, i have wood planks, the planks themselves have various grain colors, some with quite the contrast.. if i use the magic wand, i either get every similar color in the whole document or just locally, and not the entire layer.  in the tile example, there could be marble veining which would be not selected as well.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Since they are on separate layers, will it work Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Click on the layer thumbnail to multiple select?

  • Cmd(Ctrl)+Click to select the layer pixels
  • Shift to add to the selection

If not, can we see a screen shot so we can better assist?

 

~ Jane

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

Having wood grain or other varying pattern would be an issue with any selection method, current or future.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

i was going to say - what i do now is shift click layers (so individual tiles in various parts of the image) and then expand my layers panel as big as i can get, then scroll through the layers panel and clt click > clt shift click each layer that i come across.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

One thing that could simplify that: Use the filter menu in the Layers panel to list only the layers you selected, and hide the rest. That should greatly reduce the amount of scrolling you have to do when Ctrl-clicking to select each layer. When you're done, click the filter toggle on the right to show all layers in the panel again.

 

Photoshop-Layers-panel-filter-selected.jpg

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
New Here ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

woa, has that always been there?  yes, that would help! good deal, i can see myself using that quite a bit. thanks

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines
Community Expert ,
Mar 26, 2020 Mar 26, 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Copied

LATEST

Being able to filter the layer list has been there for a while, but I sometimes forget it’s there. It does help manage very long layer lists.

 

Also — I thought of a way to automate this:

  1. Record an action (macro) that contains two steps: Ctrl-Shift-click the currently selected layer thumbnail (add its selection to the existing selection), and Alt-[ (select the next layer back).
  2. After filtering the layer stack to show only selected layers, select the front layer only (top of the list) and Ctrl-click its thumbnail to create a selection of it.
  3. With the action selected in the Actions panel, click the Play button at the bottom of the Actions panel. That will run the two steps in the action, adding the selection of the current layer in the stack and then going to the next layer back.
  4. Click the Play button again as many more times as you have layers to add to the selection.
  5. Add your adjustment layer (you said you used Levels, I used Curves), which will use the existing combined selection as its layer mask.
  6. When finished, toggle the filter to see all the layers again.

 

Photoshop-select-some-layers.gif

This could probably be automated further by building it as a script. For example, a script might be able to figure out whether the initial selection needs to be made, and how many layers need to be added to the selection. But I am not good at scripting.

Votes

Translate

Translate

Report

Report
Community guidelines
Be kind and respectful, give credit to the original source of content, and search for duplicates before posting. Learn more
community guidelines