An image selection is a region of interest inside an image that indicates where edits are to be made. Once you have made a selection, any operation will affect only the area of the image within the selection, leaving the rest of the image untouched.

MagicViewer displays a marching dotted line to indicate the edges of the selection. You can turn the display of the selection edges on and off using View > Show/Hide Selection Edges. You can use the Magic Wand or the Rectangular Selection tool to make image selections.

Using the Magic Wand selection tool

The Magic Wand tool  selects adjacent pixels in the image that have similar colors. The similarity can be controlled by choosing View > Selection Option and specifying the Tolerance value in the dialog box. A value of zero selects pixels in the exact same color and a value of 255 selects every pixel in the image.

Using the Rectangular selection tool

The Rectangular selection tool  selects pixels within the rectangle you drag out in the image. If the image has irregular shapes it selects the intersection of the rectangle and the image.

Moving a selection

The image selection can be moved by using the arrow keys or using the Move tool . The image selection can be cut or copied to the Clipboard and pasted into another image or application.

Modifying a selection

You can hold down the Ctrl key while using either of the two selection tools to subtract the newly selected pixels from the existing image selection. Use the Shift key to add the newly selected pixels to the existing image selection.

To cancel the image selection use Select > None. You can also use Select > All to select the whole image. Image selections are composited ontop of the image. The Select > Inverse command will bring the image to the front and make it the new image selection.

Feathering selection edges

If you want to make the image selection blend into the image or background, you can use Select > Feather. This command will not change or blur the image.