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Magic wand - keystroke to change tolerance & auto-reselect?


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(My apologies if this has been discussed already. I used the forum search function, but didn't find any requests for this feature.)

I'd like the ability to use the magic wand to select an area, and then adjust the Tolerance level up or down and have the area be reselected automatically as if the user had clicked on the same spot in the image -- but without making the user actually click on the image. Some key combination using the plus and minus keys would be nice.

I sometimes receive images from a client, and need to clean them up in preparation for including them in a manual, report, or other document. The image is typically of a product, and it is typically not professionally photographed, and is often photographed just sitting on a desk, table top, or other surface that I'd like to eliminate from the image. To do this, I use the magic wand and click, change Tolerance, click, change Tolerance again, click, change Tolerance again, ad nauseum, until I eliminate the majority of the background.

How much easier this would be if I could click once, then use plus and minus keys to raise or lower Tolerance until I get the desired area! I've talked to a few other Paint.NET users, and they would also love to have this feature.

An additional feature that I think would be nice would be using the arrow keys to "walk" the "clicked point" around the image and automatically reselect. For example, using the magic wand, click on a pixel of the image and have the magic wand work its magic. Then, use some key combination including arrow keys to move the click point up, down, left, or right one image pixel and automatically perform the magic wand selection as if the user had clicked there.

I once received an image from a client of a device that was sitting on wood-grained table top. The problem was that the device was grey and the desktop was a dark red-to-black wood grain. Selecting a reddish portion of the grain and increasing the Tolerance eventually selected the entire desktop but not the device, but if I selected a blackish portion of the grain, the selection bled into the grey product, which was undesirable. I had to zoom in to make sure that I selected a red portion of the grain, zoom out to make sure that the product wasn't selected also, change tolerance, zoom back in to make sure that I clicked on a red portion of the grain, zoom back out to make sure I had not selected too much, etc., etc. Clicking to select, then using arrow keys to move the click point around and automatically reselect would have made this process quick and easy.

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