Question about selection tools

[rinaldop]

Do they stack? For example I am doing a Color Select and it is working perfectly but I do not want it to select the color throughout the entire image. I only want to select the color on a  piece of the image. I tried using Rectangle Select to select the portion of the image that I am interested in and then I tried to use Color Select just in the previously selected area but instead the color was selected throughout the image.

I tried using Select Fuzzy but that still selected too much of the image. There must be a way to have Select Color look for the selected color in just a part of the image.

For example in the image below I want to turn the blocks of green that form a ( and turn them blank. I have gotten SO CLOSE but either a bit too much or a bit too little gets selected.  

   

Here is my best attempt but too much of the blocks remain. 
   
Here too much of the image is removed.
   
It would be nice to have the Select Color tool just look at a small area surrounding the blocks. 
 
Thanks

[rich2005]

(04-28-2024, 10:03 AM)rinaldop Wrote: Do they stack? For example I am doing a Color Select and it is working perfectly but I do not want it to select the color throughout the entire image.
..snip..
For example in the image below I want to turn the blocks of green that form a ( and turn them blank. I have gotten SO CLOSE but either a bit too much or a bit too little gets selected.  

Get to grips with the various selection modes: see: https://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tools-selection.html

   

(1) I can make a rough selection using the Free select tool (in replace mode which is often default)
(2) Moving to the Color select tool, put it in Intersect mode.
(3) To get a more inclusive selection, increase the threshold value (value depends on image, experiment)
(4) Click on square to make the selecion
Then you can clear the selection.

[rinaldop]

Ah ha! Intersect mode was the key!

I read the docs on Select Color but I missed that somehow.

Thanks!

[PixLab]

Another way to do it.

duplicate then go to Colors > Color to Alpha,

   

Clean a bit with the Eraser Tool, then roughly select all around those green at once with the Free Select Tool, then CtrL+C (copy), then Ctrl+V (paste), this action will select separately each square, then commit the floating selection by going to Layer > To New layer

   

Put that new layer in difference mode, and blur it a little bit with Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur...