# Help with annoying thing in Ps CS3



## MainaraShenzai (May 29, 2013)

I've always had this problem, but now it's starting to really bother me... D:<
Let me try to explain:

So, here I have my prettyful lineart (let's pretend... lol) ready for coloring:






So I select around it with the magic wand tool and then go R-CLICK > Select Inverse:





Then I Paint Bucket the color in:





And it seems just perfect. Yay. But it's not...





If I turn the BG black, you can see there's a bit of color coming outside of the lines.





And it's VERY annoying to keep erasing it all MANUALLY (cuz nothing else works) in every single drawing!

Is my method of coloring stupid? It's quite possible...
I've tried to google a solution, but I nothing useful came up. 

I'm really tired of this! >.<

Does anyone know a way around it?


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## Car Fox (May 29, 2013)

I think it's the tool that's the problem. The magic wand isn't the best tool to use for this job, because it selects things (generally) withing a certain color band, and may be selecting more than you anticipate... I may be wrong.

Have you tried other methods of doing the same task?


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## Kalmor (May 29, 2013)

I'm not an expert in ps, or any other art program for that matter, but try playing around with the tolerance and see if that works.


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## MainaraShenzai (May 29, 2013)

The only other way I found is to paint manually, which is very time consuming too... x.x

I've tried putting the tolerance on both 0 and 255 (the max) and nothing changes in this situation.

I'm a very slow artist. Wasting time because the color seems to be stubborn is seriously demotivating... :\


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## Car Fox (May 29, 2013)

What paint program are you using?


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## Arshes Nei (May 29, 2013)

Change the anti aliasing

Also you need to adjust your selections.

One other thing. You need to make sure CS3 is up to date with the latest patches.


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## MainaraShenzai (May 29, 2013)

Tried un-checking the anti aliasing on both the magic wand and the paint bucket but could see no difference.

I'm not sure about the patches, will check.

But how do you adjust selections? (I began using CS3 in 2010 and I'm still a total n00b about its functions DX)


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## Taralack (May 30, 2013)

I usually fix this sort of thing by going to Select > Modify > Contract and setting it to 1px.


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## MainaraShenzai (May 30, 2013)

Thanks, Toraneko! That just did it! ^^
Actually, for some reason, I think I had never seen the "select" tab up there. o.o It took me a while to find it lol

I can now have no stress with coloring my lineart! ^u^


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## Arshes Nei (May 30, 2013)

This might also be of help. http://designshack.net/articles/software/8-ways-to-get-the-selection-you-want-in-photoshop/

I am also rather old school and use the quick mask tool from time to time due to feathered and soft selections. I may also save selections to a channel. So it depends on what you want, but refine edge is helpful too.

I gotta agree with the article though, magic wand is pretty crap and there are better tools to use in CS3 to get what you want.


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## Zenia (May 30, 2013)

I am curious... why are you selecting OUTSIDE what you want and then inversing it... instead of just selecting what you DO want.

Also... I like using the Modify option to adjust the area captured... or just using a paintbrush and coloring everything in like it was traditionally done.


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## Arshes Nei (May 30, 2013)

Most newbies fall in love with the magic wand tool because other kinds of selections seem tedious. But yeah inverting is pointless on the example. 

But then some don't understand the contiguous option. That or using modifier keys like SHIFT or ALT.

Quick selection can be more accurate and quicker


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## MainaraShenzai (May 30, 2013)

Zenia said:


> I am curious... why are you selecting OUTSIDE what you want and then inversing it... instead of just selecting what you DO want.
> 
> Also... I like using the Modify option to adjust the area captured... or just using a paintbrush and coloring everything in like it was traditionally done.



Yeah, it's pointless because that's just a silly example. But in something like the following picture, I'd have to select every little feather separately, and other than being more tedious, it would leave a gap between each feather (that could possibly be fixed easily, but I do not know how), and even though I have just tried and it gives rather interesting results, it's not what I want for this. 





I used to color it all with the paintbrush, but it always came to my mind "this is a program with lots of options. There's probably a much more efficient way to do it and you're just wasting your time being a derpy loser". Then I started to color just the outline and fill with the paint bucket, and that left a gap between the two colorings (that again could probably could be fixed easily...), so when I learned about selecting outside and inverting, it looked like the best way.




Arshes Nei said:


> Most newbies fall in love with the magic wand tool because other kinds of selections seem tedious. But yeah inverting is pointless on the example.
> 
> But then some don't understand the contiguous option. That or using modifier keys like SHIFT or ALT.
> 
> Quick selection can be more accurate and quicker



I've never been much a fan of the magic wand, and on the beginning I actually hated it. I've only started using after I've learned about the invert selection thing. I never really select much stuff in my drawings (other than lineart edits, which I do with lasso tool), and when I do, I never really need it to be much precise, so messing with the tolerance and the contiguous always does just what I need.  

But I've just tried the quick selection tool (that I forgot even existed DX) and it seems to be very efficient, but not quicker than the magic wand for my purpose, because I need to be more careful and pay more attention to certain edges. But I'll sure play with this tool more. It's cool!

Oh, and there's refine edge. When I was trying to find a solution for the color coming out of the lines, I've tried a lot of things in refine edge, and I could never get it right, even messing with all the options separately, toghether and at max. and min. to see if I could figure out if any of them would help.
I'm bookmarking that article you posted, though. It can come in handy.



Buuuut maybe I'm just way too newbie with my art and messing-with-programs skills to know anything actually right...


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## Arshes Nei (May 30, 2013)

Well I only use selection to cut out what I what I don't need. I found it easier to paint it all in than doing a paintbucket/fill, since if you're just doing the lineart style with painting underneath, you set the lineart layer to multiply. Selections leave too many things prone to gaps. Now when I had a mouse, I was more selection independent, with a tablet, less so.


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## Taralack (May 30, 2013)

MainaraShenzai said:


> I'd have to select every little feather separately, and other than being more tedious, it would leave a gap between each feather (that could possibly be fixed easily, but I do not know how)



Select > Modify > Expand and set to 1-2px depending on how thick your lineart is.


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