Path selection question for an image of neurons

I have a photo of neurons taken by a microscope as a TIFF. I'd like to remove the black background color and any "cloudiness" that appears in the photo but still maintain the detail of the neurons and the connections. Essentially, I'd like to change the color of the neuron related pieces to something other than red. I'd also like to pick up most of the detail in the photo that relates to the neuron without taking along any of the black background (see second image attachment). I also want to be able to set the neurons on a different color background that's solid and not murky. I just upgraded my version of Photoshop from CS2 to CS5 and definitely noticed a difference in its ability to pick up the paths. I don't know if I'm being too demanding of Photoshop or if I'm not getting the result I want because there's a better approach. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on how to go about doing this.
Thank you!
Karen
I tried selecting a path with the color selection tool (taking just the reds) and copying it on to a new layer but as you can see, some of the detail was lost and the edges are picking up some of the black background:

I'd try an image processing forum. This forum is typically for Java-specific issues and there might not be that many people who've done this here. Sorry I couldn't help. Have you read some image processing books?

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Work Paths, selections, and general doing my job better question...

I currently work for a company that prints "Fathead" like wall graphics, i set the images up to print for them, but im looking for a better way to do what i do. Specifically my working with illustrator and Photoshop to setup the cut line for each image. Here is my current step by step procedure:
1) Open image (usually a JPG) in Photoshop CS4
2) Using mainly the Lasso tool's i select the subject to be printed. I'm very fast doing this.
3) Copy/Paste the selection i just made into a new and save it as a TIF file.
4) Back to the original selection i Smooth and Contract the line a few pixels and hit "Make Work Path"
5) Export that path to illustrator (which leaves me with an .AI file)
6) From here im done with Photoshop and i open both the .AI and TIF files into Adobe illustrator CS4
7) The .AI file i give a stroke and then on the Swatches tab i hit New Swatch, name it "CutContour", and select Spot Color & RBG
8) I then copy the CutContour line, paste it onto the TIF image, and line it up over the subject
9) From here all that's left to do is make it the right size it's to be printed at and save it as an EPS file and im done.
The main reason im asking for help here is because I'm not happy with the quality of the cutline Photoshop exports to illustrator (the ai file) after i make it a work path. The anchor points and handle's are often in need of a lot of adjustment despite the fact that my selection in Photoshop was right on the money.
One side note that might be a direction for me to head in,...
I recently was given a jpg file from a guy who said he had already made the selection for me. I wasn't quite sure what he meant but when i saved the image as a tif, opened it in illustrator, and hit CTRL-A to select everything i noticed a cutline was already present. After further examination of the jpg in Photoshop i noticed a "Path 1" on the paths tab, and more importantly that cutline when opened in illustrator was nuts on! Meaning none of the anchor points and handle's needed to be adjusted at all.
Now the person who sent me this file was a customer so i can't rightly ask them how to better do my job :-) lol ...but maybe someone here can tell me how they (for lack of a better word) embedded a cutline or path i guess it's called into a jpg file like that? This would at least save me the step of exporting my selection to illustrator as an AI file and im wondering if however they did it is more accurate then the "Make Work Path" option i currently use.

...useing File | Export | Paths to Illustrator is what i outlined above that i currently do...
My apologies for not catching that. Honestly, my eyes glazed over at about step 2 of your procedure.
I'm not happy with the quality of the cutline Photoshop exports to illustrator (the ai file) after i make it a work path.
A couple of possibilities come to mind. What Tolerance value are you using when you first make a work path out of your selection in Photoshop? 0.5 pixel is the highest precision available, and that's what you should use if you want your path to accurately reflect your selection. Be warned, however, that your path will likely end up with a lot of points, making for an unnecessarily complex path. (Try it with a simple circle.)
Another possibility is that you're working with a low-quality, low-resolution JPEG as your source image. JPEG compression artifacts can affect selection accuracy (with automated tools, like the magic wand or eraser), and overall resolution, of course, will limit path precision. Not much you can do about that other than to start with better-quality images.
After further examination of the jpg in Photoshop i noticed a "Path 1" on the paths tab, and more importantly that cutline when opened in illustrator was nuts on!... maybe someone here can tell me how they (for lack of a better word) embedded a cutline or path i guess it's called into a jpg file like that?
Using a low tolerance (high precision) value make a path from your selection in Photoshop and save the path. Save As a JPG, and the path will be saved along with the image. Do not use Save for Web to create your JPG file.
As others have pointed out in earlier posts, learning to use the pen tool is your best bet... and an absolute necessity if you're going to be doing a lot of this stuff.
Regarding the creation of clipping paths in Photoshop, slap me silly, but I'm going to refer you to the manual (online Help) for that. And if you think that unkind, try posting the question over at the Photoshop forum. Wear a helmet.

Feather radius for selection depending on the image size

Greetings everyone,
I have a question about setting the feather radius for a selection depending on the image size. I'd like make the edge in the resultant layer mask have roughly the 'same' feather appearance for varying image sizes.
For files below 2000 pixels I would set a feather radius of 0.2
For files above 2000 pixels I would set a feather radius of 0.3
However, I started working with 4000-10000 pixel images and I was wondering about the radius for those images.
Is there a more 'scientific' method I could follow? Any thoughts welcome
Many thanks
gr

You would need to use Photoshop scripting to do that. Also using number of Pixels might not be what you want to use. While number pixel is an absolute number pixels you have have no size information till there is a DPI resolution involved. At 300 DPI 300 pixels are 1" in size at 72 DPI 300 pixels are 4.16 inches in size.
A conditional action is not possible adobe conditional action support but is possible with the downloadable script Siva's Contitional Action

ADD FILES FOR UPLOAD - IMAGE PATHS DO NOT WORK IN WIDGETS

Hi There
I'm trying to add my own images to a widget I bought from Qooqee - the Wrapper_v2 image slider. But when I try to add my own images with the image path it doesn't work. I've tried adding the image with 'Add Files for Upload' - and then using the full path which I get from right clicking on it in the assets panel - but it still doesn't work.
Most of the widgets require you to either specify the image path, or an external URL. I do not want to use a third party image hosting site to get URL's for every image I want to use on the site - so I just need to know what I'm doing wrong with the Add files for Upload - why do my file paths not work in the widgets?

Provide the name of the program you are using so a Moderator may move this message to the correct program forum
This Cloud forum is not about help with program problems... a program would be Photoshop or Lighroom or Muse or ???
Also, you need to ask for help from the widget maker

Processing several images in a batch action to apply their individual auto camera raw auto setings individualy for each image selected.

Hi,
I have a folder with several images that I want to apply Camera Raw auto settings to all of then according to their individual parameters.
When you open a single file in Camera Raw you can click on the "auto" option to make an start point correction for that image.
I want to select all images in a folder and apply this procedure to every selected file without having to open every file individually and clicking in the auto option.
Can this be done from Bridge CC 6.1.0.116?
Appreciate comments on the viability of this task

kbarre wrote:
Auto Sync is functioning as expected, unless I choose Auto Tone first.
If I choose Auto Tone first, a small portion of the selected images will be updated, but most will not.
Lightroom's handling of auto-tone leaves something to be desired - I have a lot of experience with it, trying to make reliable develop-setting plugins which include auto-toning. Those plugins have a bewildering amount of logic - something like this: initiate auto-toning, check back to see if it has properly settled, issue the auto-toning again if it never seems to be properly settling... - usually it works out after a while, but even sometimes it never does, and generates an error: can't get auto-toning to settle across all photos.
The point of all this is that there are bugs in Lr's handling of auto-toning, as you are growing aware.
Try this:
* do the auto-toning, then let it percolate for a while.
* then visit each photo at 1:1 (to force Lr to finalize settings...), and confirm auto-toning has settled...
Then try auto-syncing that preset (make sure process versions are all the same, and preset does NOT include auto-toning - I would leave process version OUT of your presets).
Better?
I don't expect this is a workflow you'll want to do all the time, but as a test it might help shed some light on the problem.
Rob

I can select a rating and a color label for my images, but I can not sort by rating and color label.

I can select a rating and a color label for my images, but I can not sort by rating and color label. when I click on the filter drop down, color label is not one of the options. how do I get both ratings and color lables as an option to sort with.

You can Filter (not sort) on both color label and rating if you want, open the Filter Bar with the backslash key, then click on Attribute, and then select the stars and color label of interest. If you really meant "sort" and not filter, then you can't do this in Lightroom.

Question for Photoshop Experts - Selections to individual png's

I purchased a big jpg file from an online stock image provider that has a collection of items (a collage of 200 fruits in this case). I now need to extract individual fruit images from this big collage. By using photoshop selection tools I was able to select all the individual fruits in the image and now want to create new individual png's for each of the selected fruits in the image. Is it possible to automatically create a layer for each of the individual selections so that I can use Script -> Export Layers To Files . Any help is highly appreciated. I have been looking for a solution online but to no avail.
Thanks,
Jack.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you need to select one fruit from the base layer, hit cmd/ctrl-J - that will put that selection on a separate layer. Once you are done selecting all the fruit, then you can run the script. You will have to select each fruit, so if all of them are on a white background, you could select the entire white back ground invert the selection cmd/ctrl-I, then use cmd/ctrl-J to set all the fruit on one layer. Then you can just select each fruit with the rectangular marquee tool and use cmd/ctr-J to put them on their own layer. The one issue I foresee is that if you save use the script, you will have a buch of dead space in each image.

How do I disable auto select for the path selection tool?

For the move tool you can choose to disable auto selection, auto select a group, or auto select a layer. By default though the path selection tool autoselects a layer. How can I disable autoselection?

I can’t seem to reproduce what you describe.
Please elaborate, possibly with the help of some screenshots.

Question When I do a search for an image I only have a limited number of images. There used to be a ton of pictures on my screen and an unlimited amount of pictures to look through. Is there a way of changing this back to the way it used to be???

Question
When I do a search for an image I only have a limited number of images. There used to be a ton of pictures on my screen and an unlimited amount of pictures to look through. Is there a way of changing this back to the way it used to be???

Thanks. So there's no means of knowing whether a text message has been delivered, not to mention time of delivery. Perhaps I've gone for the wrong phone. It might do a lot but seems to miss out on some basics.

Whenever I select something, for example, I cannot see the marching ants selection until I either scroll up or down or zoom in or out. This occurs whenever I paste an image as well--nothing shows on screen until I scroll up or down or zoom in or out. Why

Whenever I select something, for example, I cannot see the marching ants selection until I either scroll up or down or zoom in or out. This occurs whenever I paste an image as well--nothing shows on screen until I scroll up or down or zoom in or out. Why is this?

Ap_Compsci_student_13 wrote:
ok sorry but doesn't sscce say to post the whole code?the first S is Short, and yes, it needs to be all the code needed to illustrate the problem and let use reproduce it. If you were developing a new Web framework, your example might be short, but for a student game it's very long.

Af:commandImageLink not processing the aboulite path for displaying image

All,
We are required to display an image in the UI. The image is not stored in the deployed ear file. It is stored in the "*<DOMAIN_HOME>\Inventory\images*".
Where DOMAIN_HOME=D:\JUPITER_CORONA\system11.1.1.3.37.56.60\DefaultDomain\inventory
I would process an image absolute path in the af:commandImageLink tag as follows,
*<af:commandImageLink "icon=file://D:/JUPITER_CORONA/system11.1.1.3.37.56.60/DefaultDomain/inventory/images/equipment.png" text"equipment" shotdesc="icon" />*
The problem is that the above tag is not processing the above mentioned absolute path and displaying text "icon" instead of actual icon image. As per the ADF documentation the tag processes absolute path as well.
Can someone suggest as to where I am going missing.
regards,
Chandra

I was not able to get what you want very well, the situation is a little bit un-usual,
but for solution I suggest the below way.
write a servlet/JSP that return the image (it is like copying the file, read the image from absolute path and send it to the OUTPUTSTREAM of the response aslo remember the MIME and the write filter for the jsp/servlet that end with .jpg or any extension for the image.)
then in the jsf page write the below code.
<af:commandImageLink icon="/jspOrservlerpath/servlet/filename.jpg" text"equipment" shotdesc="icon" />
your servlet (get the filename.jpg and then find the file and return it)
this solution is very common for cases that the file is not available physically such as when you want to read it from another place(your case) or database.
I hope this help you.
I can send you the source for the servlet/jsp if you want.

Newbie Question,preferences for saving images

Brand new to PS, CS5, how do I change or set preferences so all images, pictures, masters and versions are saved to external hard drive and not the pictures library in iphoto? Thanks in advance. r ahrens

Is the limitation of 1000 pixels something that's intended to sell Premiere Pro for people wanting true HD resolution?
The 1000 x 750 suggestion is for an SD/DVD-Video Project. With a BD Project, you would bump that up to match your intended output, say 1440 x 1080, with a bit of room to Pan on a Zoomed out image.
Personally, for an SD Project, I will Scale the vast majority of the images to the exact size that I need - 720 x 480. When I have a few images that will be Panned on, while Zoomed out, I will calculate the movement that I need and resize to those dimensions. The 1000 x 750 size takes the possibility of the Pan into account. I like to match things up as perfectly as I can, even if it means Scaling some image to one size, and others to another. Many just want something that will probably work for all images and just Scale to one size for everything.
The larger the image vs the Project's Frame Size, the more processing power will be needed, and the more Scaling that will be heaped onto PrE, resulting in slightly lower quality, as opposed to resizing in Photoshop.
I'm not positive about the limit in PrE, but in its "big-brother," PrPro, the limit is 4096 pixels in the largest dimension. Obviously, there are not many instances where one would want images that large, unless they needed to do a major Pan, while Zoomed out. It would not take too many such images, before the program is bogged down too much to function. If someone had such images, I would strongly advise that they look into Adobe AfterEffects to do the animations, and then output as a DV-AVI, or appropriate intermediate format, to be Imported into the NLE.
Hope that this helps and good luck,
Hunt

File Path Control question

Simple question: How do I invoke the Open command in the File Path control? My reason is of my user hasn't supplied a file, then I want to force the user to select one.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Most file related vi should prompt if there is no file path. If for some reason you are not getting that you could check to see if the file path is empty and add a prompt see below:
Tim
Johnson Controls
Holland Michigan

Metatags for multiple images?

I thought this was a no-brainer, but... apparently not:
I needed to add a keyword to several pictures, so I selected them all (from a very large set), clicked the Metadata pane, and entered my keyword, and hit return.
But it didn't stick.
So I tried to add the keyword to ONE image, and realized that "return" didn't "enter" the keyword, only put an actually paragraph return in the keyword field. Weird, but okay.
I then tried entering it for one image, and hitting "tab". Which made the keyword "stick".
So, I went and selected ALL my images again (very arduous and time consuming), and then entered my keyword, and hit "tab".
But it only assigned that keyword to the FIRST image of all the images I had selected.
I ended up having to do "lift/stamp" and choose only "keyword" from the menu. But, am I crazy, or should the way I initially tried to do this work? I mean, it's pretty common sense, right? Select multiple images, enter keyword, and done?
Hmmmm.
Is there a better way to do this?
tx,
e

Hi Jimbo
The User Manual (available directly within Aperture Help, or online) has at least two mechanisms which will address your question: the +Control Bar+ and +Batch Changes+.
The Aperture Interface > Control Bar
http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/#chapter=2%26section=7
Working with Metadata > Batch Changing Metadata
http://documentation.apple.com/en/aperture/usermanual/#chapter=11%26section=7
I've been using both of these techniques, so I know they definitely work for multiple images.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Gary

What PS file settings are used for still images for FCE?

I have images to use/create for the titles and transitions in my first FCE4 project. Using Photoshop CS6, the preset for File > New > Film & Video has the prest size and pixel aspect ratio selections. I thought to use this with HDV 1080p/29.97 and HDV1080/DVCPRO HD 720 (1.33) for any images I need for the project.
Most discussions I see only refer to the pixel size reference for HD image sizes, but nothing addressing the pixel aspect ratio setting for the image. Are these settings ignored in PS and handled in FCE only? Or does it make better quality images to get this "right" in PS when creating the still image?
Thanks in advance.

I'm not quite sure I understand your question. In an ideal world, the graphic material you build in PS should match the sequence settings you intend to edit them into - so, if for no other reason, it reduces the amount of reformatting FCE has to do when rendering them.
But frequently you want to build graphics larger than the frame size of the sequence so that you can re-size and reposition the graphic within FCE without losing quality.
The apparent pixel aspect ratio of your graphic can be controlled with FCE by editing the graphic to the timeline, double clicking on the clip in the timeline, and when that timeline clip opens in the viewer, click on the motion tab and adjust the Aspect Ratio Paddle (this is the correction for a 1920 x1080 square pixel clip being placed into an HDV 1440 x 1080 timeline):
In Photoshop, you can change the way your work is displayed by going to the menu View > Pixel Aspect Ratio:
Does any of this help?
MtD

Path selection question for an image of neurons

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