Building a brush that can paint into a selection/mask

[Chris Northcross]

I'm finding my encounters with manually creating selections unsatisfactory.  Particularly try to draw them in using the lasso tool.  I normally use either the source or source texture to start the selection and then switch to the lasso to clean up but the results aren't pleasing many times.  I think I'd like to build a patch that allows me to paint into a selection, but I'm at a loss for how to head down that path.  Anyone have a suggestion?

[Synthetik]

Any paint preset you are working with will mask to the current selection if you turn on the Mask checkbox in the main operation toolbar.

There are specific settings you can use in Path Start and Path End control panels of the paint synthesizer to force path starts to only occur in selected regions, and to stop paths from drawing outside of the selected area. There's also a Path Application probability setting selection option as well.

[Victor Ingrassia]

also (in case this hadn't crossed our mind) you can use Image Ops (like threshold) to set the region selection ... to get better control of your region selection before you paint.

[Chris Northcross]

Thanks for the input guys...what I'm looking for is a brush that would act like a quick mask brush in photoshop - I can take any brush and use it to fill or remove from the current selection. Much like the eraser can be set to a preset brush now only that it would target only the selection.

I am, at this point, more interested in a manual brush tool that will allow me to create/refine a selection than I am working with painting into the selection once its been created.

Is this something that SA is currently capable of doing?

[Victor Ingrassia]

ah. so you mean something along the lines of SA 3.5's region selection "circle paint"... i think

[Victor Ingrassia]

tho i suppose, an indirect method might be to use a 2nd layer to draw (in black) the area you want to be your selection... then use threshold imop on that layer to set region selection, then go back to the image layer and use the selection area there. ??? maybe? you might involve onion skin somewhere along the way to hep you see better during the process.

i am weak in all things alpha... but maybe you could paint w an alpha brush and then use "selection> set to> canvas alpha"... somewhere. not sure if that would be the most elegant way to handle it...

[Chris Northcross]

Victor, you nailed it. Yes! Pretty much like that. I'm thinking a custom brush would be much flexible in terms of feathering/softness options, but the circle paint brush from 3.5 is essentially what I'm looking for.