Photoshop is such a baby.

June 15, 2008 10:10 AM

CS3: I am having trouble getting Photoshop to select the semi-transparent pixels when I cmd-click the thumbnail. Can you help me?

In CS2, if I cmd-clicked a thumbnail of a layer in the layer tablet, it would create a selection of the whole layer, including semi-transparent pixels. In CS3, when I try to do the same thing, I seem to only get pixels with 100% opacity. For example, in this pic, I feathered a selection of the original text, and deleted the selection, leaving me with a feathered outline of Metafilter. However, as you can see, when I cmd-clicked the thumbnail, Photoshop only made a selection of a very small part of the layer. How can I fix this? I would like when I cmd-click the thumbnail, or choose "select pixels" when right clicking, for ALL pixels of that layer to be selected. Is this a change in CS3, or is there something funky going on with my version of PS?

posted by milarepa to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Or is it that I am not remembering how CS2 functioned? Has it always worked this way?
posted by milarepa at 10:26 AM on June 15, 2008

Looks like funkiness to me. I've got CS3 on both Mac and PC. On the PC, cntrl-clicking the layer thumb selects the alpha with full transparency intact. But, oddly enough, on the Mac version, cmd-click selects only the 100% opaque pixels. This is weird and I don't know what the equivalent to PC's cntrl-click is for the Mac. I will investigate and report.
posted by bz at 11:28 AM on June 15, 2008

Err, intentional funkiness, that is.
posted by bz at 11:28 AM on June 15, 2008

Well, I take that back. Cntrl-click on the PC also appears to only select those pixels that are fully opaque. Geez, how did I miss that?
posted by bz at 11:31 AM on June 15, 2008

Thanks bz. So basically it has always worked like this and I somehow didn't realize? That is weird.
posted by milarepa at 11:42 AM on June 15, 2008

Except I just tried it on my PPC and, despite the fact that the PC version keyboard shortcut chart claims only "opaque pixels," I am able to select the full range of transparency with cntrl-click.
posted by bz at 11:48 AM on June 15, 2008

Crap, I swear I remember that with CS2 on my powerbook I was able to do this. I really want it back. :(
posted by milarepa at 11:52 AM on June 15, 2008

Just tried this on my CS3 (Windows version) and it works fine. It selects the alpha on the layer in question (like it's supposed to).

(Methodology: Create a new image, create a blank layer, paint around a bit on the layer with a soft brush, ctrl+click layer thumbnail, save selection as a new channel to check it out.)
posted by neckro23 at 5:57 PM on June 15, 2008