Using Color Select tool?

[Charley Graybell]

Hi, I've been experimenting with the the select color tool in Pixelmator Pro without much success. Maybe you could suggest how to accomplish my goal.

I have a black and white line drawing. see below

When I put the cursor onto the image in pixelmator, it turns into a eyedropper. And when I drag the eyedropper, more and more of the image is selected, but not in the way I need. Either not enough or way too much is selected.

I want to simply select all the white pixels in image and leave all the black pixels alone. (and ideally, smooth out the lines so they don't appear too pixelated) It seems like this should be a simple task for a such a sophisticated program, but I don't find any way.

Eventually, I want to replace the white background with a specific texture from another image.

Please advise.
Thanks!

Charley

[Aurelija]

Hey Charley! Have you tried changing the selection modes when working with the Color Selection tool? It may not be possible to select all the lines accurately in one go, so tweaking the selection using the Add or Subtract options should help. Generally, though, there are easier ways to select outlines in black and white line drawings like this. In this particular case, I'd probably use the Load Grayscale Selection option. To select it, open the Edit menu, hold down the Shift key and choose Load Grayscale Selection. Then, choose Edit > Invert Selection and finally, click Format > Mask > Add Mask to hide all white areas of the image. It shoud get your image looking something like this:


You can then insert any background you want below the outline layer.

P.S. If you'll be using a darker background, you'll probably also want to use Forrmat > Image > Decontaminate Colors, to get rid as much of the initial white background residue as possible. Adding a black Fill style to the outline should also work for this purpose.

Hope this helps!