Preview - multi select with instant alpha? Possible

Question

Level 1

12 points

Preview - multi select with instant alpha? Possible

Hi,

I have an image that is non-contiguous. I want to crop it out of its white background. I used instant alpha to select the solid black image. But there are two of them and I want them both to stay apart of one another. I tried "command" selecting the second one, but it seems to be an either/or situation. How do I get both solid black images at the same time. How would I get 3 or 4 or 5? Like if I wanted to take off big block text from a white background. I tried selecting the white background, but then the islands of white inside of D and P and B etc don't get selected. I know there's a way to do this, isn't there?

Much thanks!

Posted on May 16, 2012 11:49 AM

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Answer 1

enmphoto

Level 1

20 points

Oct 15, 2017 12:47 PM in response to Pianafiddle

I had this issue too... after an hour of fiddling around I realized you can select the background with Instant Alpha, then invert the selection (Shift+Cmd+I) and then crop. Hope this helps

EDIT: I know I'm a few years late, but I figured this might help others in the future

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Answer 2

cheung

Level 1

4 points

Jun 10, 2012 10:04 AM in response to Pianafiddle

I also had this question. This used to work in Leopard. Also, you used to be able to select everything and then use Alt+mouse to deselect specific bits, but that no longer works. My solution so far has been to select each island of white separately and hit delete, but it seems like they took a huge step backwards with the Lion version of Instant Alpha for some reason. If you have found out how to get the previous functionality back, let me know!

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Answer 3

Jun 11, 2012 12:33 AM in response to Pianafiddle

Photoshop, GIMP, or similar program. While Preview has these image editing options, they are limited in what they can do and I don't think it supports multi-selection editing like you need.

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Answer 4

cheung

Level 1

4 points

Jun 11, 2012 4:28 AM in response to Topher Kessler

Thanks Topher. I guess the point was that Preview used to do it (at least in Leopard, I skipped Snow and am new to Lion) and I was wondering if they had just hidden the feature under new key combinations or some checkbox I needed to tick, but I couldn't find anything (or rather, Google couldn't find anything).

It was nice to be able to open a PNG and quickly make it transparent without waiting for Photoshop to load, although now that my MacBook has a SSD that point is pretty moot.

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