Marquee Tools and Similar Color Selection

What This Feature Does

The marquee tool lets you first select an area, then perform operations on the content within that area. It has three common modes:

• Rectangular Selection: Drag to create a rectangle and only affect the content inside it.
• Object Selection: Click or drag to select a specific pixel-based object.
• Similar Color Selection: Click a color and automatically select pixels with similar colors.

After making a selection, you can proceed with fill, clear, lift and move, deselect, and more.

How to Access It

Switch to the Select tool in the editor toolbar.

Main Features

1. Rectangular Selection

Best for first enclosing a range and then acting only on the content inside that range.

How to do it:

1. Choose Rectangular Selection mode.
2. Click and drag on the canvas to draw a rectangle.
3. Release the mouse; the area will be marked.
4. You can then continue editing within this area.

2. Object Selection

Best for selecting a specific pixel object that has already been drawn.

How to do it:

1. Choose Object Selection mode.
2. Click on a pixel on the canvas, or drag to define a range.
3. The system will select the pixel content within that range.
4. You can continue to add to the selection or subtract from it.

3. Similar Color Selection

Best for quickly selecting all pixels of the same or similar color.

How to do it:

1. Choose Similar Color Selection mode.
2. Click on a pixel.
3. The software automatically selects pixels with colors similar to the clicked one.
4. You can adjust the similarity tolerance to make the selection broader or narrower.

What You Can Do After Selecting

Add to Selection or Subtract from Selection

• If you want to select more content, you can continue adding.
• If you selected too much, switch to subtract mode and remove the excess.

Invert Selection

• Swap the current selection with the unselected area.
• Useful when you want to work on the remaining part.

Select All

• Select all non‑transparent pixels in the current layer at once.

Deselect

• If you no longer need the selection, click Deselect to return to normal.

Lift and Move

• Lift the selected content and drag it to another position.
• Ideal for moving parts of a character, adjusting positions, or rearranging.

Fill

• Directly replace the selected area with a new color.

Clear

• Delete the content inside the selection.

Suitable Scenarios

• You want to change only a part of a character’s clothing.
• You want to uniformly replace a certain color.
• You want to move a specific element independently.
• You want to quickly clean or fill an area.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why doesn’t anything change after I just drag on the canvas?

You may have only entered the selection state without performing a subsequent action. First confirm that the content is actually selected.

Why can I select an entire color area with a single click?

If you are in Similar Color Selection mode, clicking once automatically selects a whole range of similar colors.

Why does my edit still affect only a small area after I’m done?

Check whether the selection is still active. When a selection is active, many operations only affect the selected portion.

Why does the selection sometimes turn out empty?

If the area originally had no content, nothing selectable will be obtained.

Suggested Illustrations

• Entrance of the Select tool
• Switching between three selection modes
• Dragging a rectangle selection
• Before and after comparison of similar color selection
• Fill, clear, and move buttons after selection