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I am having trouble selecting a color.


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spoot088

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I have a picture of some speakers with red wire. I'd like to select the red and put the wires on a new layer.

I go to select color range and set it to red and i see in the preview that the wires are selected. But the save option is greyed out in the dialog box.

well thats it I'm stuck. when i hit OK it says less than 50% pixels error??
 
Sounds as though you're selecting that color to change it, what you want to do is select that wire copy it, paste it back as a new layer than change the color with hue/saturation or color overlay. or you could use the color replacement tool change the red too whatever color
 
My punctuation is not something to brag about, wire copy means select the wire, copy it and then paste it you will have a new layer of wire, just wire
 
my problem is that it won't actually select. i use red and i see the wires in the preview isolated. but when i hit ok it gives me this error "less than 50% of pixels.."
 
Can you take a screenshot during the process?
 
That is strange. I have no problem at all with this process. You might try using the sampled color option, clicking on the wires, use shift to add any different shades or tones of the red, then hit OK. Are you certain you are on the layer with the color when you select? No insult intended by that.

If it's still a problem, try using a different selection process maybe. Try quick select or magic wand. If you get the same problem, you might want to try resetting your preferences. Sometimes Photoshop can go a bit haywire on you. Restting preferences can fix some problems. Of course, if you have change anything in preferences, you'll need to redo those changes -- ie: number of history states, measurements, grid colors, etc.

If you're still stumped, show us a screen shot or two of your workflow like iDad recommended.
 
Thanks for the responses.

I am selecting the proper layer. I don't do the eyedropper technique. I just pick "red" at the top. the weird thing is that i see the red wires in the preview window and nothing else but black. so it seems as if they are selected.
 
A screenshot of the image might help.

spoot088 said:
I go to select color range and set it to red and i see in the preview that the wires are selected. But the save option is greyed out in the dialog box.

well thats it I'm stuck. when i hit OK it says less than 50% pixels error??
Click to expand...

That's how its suppose to work. But unless I'm mistaken , the Save option can only be used in SAMPLED COLORS Setting. One reason why you get that 50% error is that there's not enough red that can be selected in your image or too small for PS to create the marching ant selection.

But this is just speculation. Which is why it will be better if you can upload a screenshot so we can determine better where your problem could be....


spoot088 said:
I just pick "red" at the top. the weird thing is that i see the red wires in the preview window and nothing else but black. so it seems as if they are selected.
Click to expand...

Is this what you're saying? it may be your preview settings....

wires.jpg


One more thing... are the red wires in your image as dominant as what I used in my sample image? or are they scattered , small or faint red in your image? If its the latter, this may be the reason why your getting that message.....
 
I must also say that in using a specific color , you will also be selecting anything in the image which may contain red in its color mix. If this is the case, these extra unwanted selections will be so scattered for PS to consolidate into a solid selection which can also lead to that error message.

And lastly......

It's not an error but more of a warning message. And because of what I've just mentioned, it's telling you that some parts of the image selected are too scattered and faint (less than 50% opacity) to be indicated with marching ants on your work document hence cannot be displayed as a selection.

But it's selected. You may have to zoom in close to actually see the selection ants or most times, there are no indicating ants.

As experiment to see what was selected.... go ahead with the color range selection... you may have to inverse it... copy via layer, deselect. Create a new layer below this and fill white. Depending on the complexity of your image, you'll see a lot of very faint red artifacts apart from the red wires (which may be almost completely selected) you initially wanted. CTRL+click the layer icon to make the selection ants visible..... you'll notice traces of color or artifacts outside the selection.
 
the wires are reddish and when i select the generic red setting they clearly become isolated, or selected just in the way you ( the poster a few above me did) only i get the 50% thing. i'll take a few screen shots when i get home. but i don't know why it says i haven't selected enough pixel when i see the color range properly isolated the red wires when i choose the basic red option
 
now i see that if i use the sampled eyedropper color i can get some type of selection. but it is very messy. it get like 50% of the wire so when i cut the selection the wires remain just less opacity looking. The whole picture is all black and grey to white so i don't know why the clear red wires couldn't be thoroughly isolated with the color range. when i use the normal red option the wires are better selected but i can't actually go through with making them selected.
 
What you are describing is very confusing or the way you're describing it I just can't seem to understand,please post the picture. Maybe take a screenshot and then circle around the area you're referring to
 
spoot088 said:
now i see that if i use the sampled eyedropper color i can get some type of selection. but it is very messy. it get like 50% of the wire so when i cut the selection the wires remain just less opacity looking. The whole picture is all black and grey to white so i don't know why the clear red wires couldn't be thoroughly isolated with the color range. when i use the normal red option the wires are better selected but i can't actually go through with making them selected.
Click to expand...

Be it by eyedropper or color range, this is because the range selection is set to select the RGB 256 shades of red and that only. But shades of red can also be present in the rest of the image. This is also detected and gets included in the selection. But they're too faint which is why you get that 50% message.

And you described the wires as reddish not pure red. This why is cutting the selection from the image leaves you with an opaque wire. You took out most of the red leaving unselected colors that make up the color data of the wires..

Unless your image was of HD quality, even using the fuzziness controls is not a guarantee of a total, clean select of a particular object in the image.

Which is why in this instance, it is best to use the pentool (as suggested earlier by others) or other selection tools in order to get a solid clean selection.

But that remains to seen with your screenshot.
 
first off i very much appreciate the help guys. nice to be on a forum where people really try to help you solve a problem. second i'm a novice at photoshop. i actually know after effects much better.

but you guys asked for a screen shot. I was able to finally select the red ( i don't know what i did different ) but again only a portion of the red from the wire is selected. i'd like to broad my range to get all the red. if you see the picture it seems like its the only red in the picture.

anyway heres the screenshot. as you can see i selected what i could of the wires and cut and paste to a new layer and moved it a bit up so you could see.
 

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Here's one quick solution possibly, duplicate that layer created of the wire, merge them together does that make it brighter
 
That is such a small image and resolutions is so low it will make impossible to get a good selection
 
What I think you can do, is created blank layer take your pencil tool using the red that you want to use and trace that selected wire you'll have a new layer with one pixel if need be you can enlarge the brush and retrace to increase size, keep in mind this is for low resolution only
 
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