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Documentation - Selections
Pocket Artist supports full 8-bit depth of a selection. That means
a select does not have to have hard edges and lie on pixel boundaries,
but can take on 256 values of opacity in which some edges are soft,
some are hard, etc. Pocket Artist features a rich set of selection
tools and techniques to make selections. Most paint and manipulations
are "constrained to the current selection." That is, if you have a
donut shape selected and draw all around, there will only be paint shown
in the donut. If you adjust brightness and contrast, it will only
take effect on the selection. Selections can be moved around on the
screen by either tapping inside the selection, or by pressing up/down/left/right
on the Windows CE device (or using the cursor puck on a Casio E100 series, for
example).
A selection can be "defloated"
or "floating." A defloated, or "normal," selection is one that is still "laid
on the document," where you are still blurring (feathering) it and
manipulating it to your liking. It bounds the data that
would be erased with a Cut operation, or duplicated with a Copy
operation. A floating selection is one that contains RGB data -- a
piece of a picture.
For example, if you paste (after a cut/copy), you
will have a floating selection that contains whatever was on the clipboard.
To the right is an example of a floating selection. Above, the lasso
tool was used and the selection feathered (blurred), and then a cut command
was issued, filling the selection with white. It was pasted on the
document again. It has become a floating selection, and may be moved around.
When there is a floating selection, a pop-up window of blending modes will
appear. You may adjust the opacity by moving the slider (have a selection
tool active before pasting) and the changes will be shown dynamically in
the document.
In the next image the dashed outlines have been hidden
via the "Toggle Outlines" command on the Edit->Selection menu, and the
blending mode has been changed to Screen (which in effect lightens the image).
Note that you can still see the contents of the floating selection (somewhat).
By changing blending modes you are still retaining the RGB data of the
floating selection. You may defloat the selection (and yet not deselect)
by choosing the Defloat command on the Edit->Selection menu.
Below are descriptions of the selection tools.
Selections
Select Rect: this selects a rectangle. By clicking and dragging
on the document, a rectangle outline is made and ready for further
manipulation. By holding down Shift (HPC) or Action (PPC) before
tapping, you will add to the previous selection. By holding Shift or
Action while dragging, you constrain the selection to a square shape.
Letting go of Shift/Action while dragging will release the symmetrical
constraint, and if you pressed Shift/Action before dragging (adding
to a selection) you will still add to the selection after releasing.
By holding Control (HPC) or Exit (PPC) you will subtract (cut a hole in)
the current selection. If you release the Control/Exit key before
releasing the stylus, you will be intersecting the old selection with
the new selection instead. The options bar contains a slider for
opacity settings of floating selections, as well as some text that
describes the current selection's (x,y) offset and size (Width x Height).
Select Row/Column: these tools do the same thing as Select Rectangle,
except they are constrained to be a single row or column.
Select Ellipse: this selects an ellipse. It has many parallels
with the Rectangle Selection tool, in that holding Shift/Action will
constrain to a circle, and the same rules for adding / subtracting / intersecting
also apply. The "Smooth" option makes the selection have a smoother,
antialiased border.
Magic Wand: this tool is like a flood fill (see the Paintbucket
tool) but instead of filling with a color, it selects the area. By
tapping in an area, it selects every pixel that touches it whose
color is within tolerance of the color of the pixel that was clicked.
The "smooth" option makes the selection have a more smooth and antialiased
shape, depending on how "far off" the target color is from the source.
The same rules for adding / subtracting / intersecting
also apply.
Lasso: this tool selects any shape that you draw. By selecting
this tool and drawing a quick shape on the document (a circle, figure 8, etc),
that shape is selected. The "smooth" option makes the border slightly
antialiased. The same rules for adding / subtracting / intersecting
also apply.
Select Polygon: this tool selects a polygon that you draw. By
drawing a polygon as you would a polygon shape, and the closing it
by tapping at or near the starting point, Pocket Artist will select
that polygon. The "smooth" option makes the border a bit
antialiased. The same rules for adding / subtracting / intersecting
also apply.
Move/Copy: these tools take the current selection
(if it is not already floating) and float it above the document
for moving or copying around, changing the opacity or blending
mode, and layering. See the discussion above about floating
selections and their manipulation.
>> Other Tools
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