2.6. Select By Color
| 2. Selection Tools |

### 2.6. Select By Color

Revision History
Revision $Revision: 2562 $ | 2007-12-22 | P.P

Figure 13.17. Select by Color tool icon in the Toolbox

The Select by Color tool is designed to select areas of an image based on color similarity. It works a lot like the Fuzzy Select tool (“Magic Wand”). The main difference between them is that the Magic Wand selects contiguous regions, with all parts connected to the starting point by paths containing no large gaps; while the Select by Color tool selects all pixels that are sufficiently similar in color to the pixel you click on, regardless of where they are located.

#### 2.6.1. How to Activate

You can activate the Select By Color Tool from an image menu through Tools → Selection Tools → Select by Color; from the Toolbox by clicking on the tool icon; or from the keyboard by using the Shift +O shortcut

#### 2.6.2. Key modifiers (Defaults)

The select by color tool does not have any special key modifiers, only the ones that affect all selection tools in the same way. See Selection Tools for help with these.

#### 2.6.3. Handling tool

Figure 13.18. Using Select by Color tool: selected pixels are not only contiguous

As with fuzzy tool, the selection starts as soon as you click and the reference is the first clicked pixel. If you click and drag, you can change the threshold by the same way as with the fuzzy tool.

To move the selection see Moving selections.

#### 2.6.4. Options

Figure 13.19. Tool Options for the Select by Color tool

You can find the Magic Wand options by double-clicking on the icon in the Toolbox.

| Note
See Selection Tools for help with options that are common to all these tools. Only options that are specific to this tool are explained here.

Modus; Antialias; Feather edges

  Common select options.

Similar colors

  All these options work exactly the same way, they were described for the fuzzy selection already. See for Section 2.5.4, “ Options ” details.

2.5. Fuzzy selection (Magic wand) |  | 2.7. Scissors