User Guide

Using Selections204
• To apply a brush stroke along a
selection border.
You can save and reload selections.
Saving a selection creates a channel.
Loading a selection reactivates it on
the canvas, where it controls your
painting and image effects.
Corel Painter lets you combine
selections in powerful ways. Refer to
“Combining Selections Using
Boolean Operations” on page 212 for
more information.
About Selection Types
There are two types of selections:
• Path-based selections are defined
by a closed path. They provide two
levels of selection—what’s inside
the path is selected, and what’s
outside is not. You can move path-
based selections around, and scale
and rotate them with the Selection
Adjuster tool. Path-based
selections offer some other
advantages you’ll learn about later.
• Pixel-based selections are defined
at the pixel level. These selections
can be moved, but they cannot be
resized or rotated. They can be
transformed into path-based
selections.
Pixel-based selections provide 256
levels of protection to the canvas.
Each pixel in the selection sets a
level of protection for its
corresponding color pixel in the
RGB image. Opaque areas of the
selection provide 100% protection
and prevent brush strokes and
effects from marking the canvas.
Clear areas of the selection provide
no protection and allow brush
strokes and effects to mark the
canvas. Where the selection is
shaded, or semi-transparent, brush
strokes and effects are partially
applied. This lets you paint and
apply effects with varying levels of
intensity within a selection.
The method you use to create a
selection determines its type.
Selections created with the
Rectangular Selection, Oval Selection,
and Lasso tools, and selections
converted from shapes, are path-
based. Selections created with the
Magic Wand tool or the Auto Select or
Color Select command are pixel-
based.
When you save a selection, it becomes
a channel, which is pixel-based. When
you load a channel to a selection, the
selection is always pixel-based. A
pixel-based selection can be converted
to a path-based selection. For more
information, refer to “Transforming
Selections” on page 214.
Selecting a Drawing Mode
The drawing mode determines
whether the inside or outside of a
selection is protected when you paint
on an image.
To select a drawing mode:
1 Point to the Drawing Mode icon in
the bottom-left corner of the
document window, and hold down
the mouse button.
2 Choose one of the following
buttons:
Draw Anywhere disables
protection based on the
selection—brush strokes are