Selecting specific areas of floor plan in Photoshop

[fultonh]

I am new to photoshop and I am looking to enhance my floor plans with photoshop. When I take a floor plan from cad (Just the line work) and make it into an EPS file, and then try selecting a single item with the pointer (not sure if that is the right name for it) - it looks like a magic wand - this selects the entire plan, resulting in the whole plan looking the same colour, or the same texture etc.

 

Is there any way to select one item, for example a plank of hard wood or the entire floor that i want to be the same, or select a single object (chair or sofa)?

 

Also is there any good books or tutorials that explains what i want to do. I am having trouble finding anything on how to enhance cad drawing in photoshop.

 

Thanks any help would be appreciated as I am stressed using photoshop, because I don't know how to make it do what I want.

[kezflake]

I dont use EPS files so have no experiance but I dont think it brings your ACAD layers after the import process.

 

If you are looking for a good book then I suggest one called enhancing cad drawings with Photoshop by Scott Onstott. Its absolutely brilliant and gives you some good tutorials for getting familiar with Photoshop too.

 

Its quite cheap on amazon and even tho it deals with Acad 2005 the same techniques apply in later versions.

 

Depends on what version you are using but you can import your Autocad layers directly into Photoshop layer you will need to use a lisp command show in this book. This book is designed for a version of photoshop that uses image ready so some of the commands are different but a quick search on the adobe website shows you how to emulate old image ready commands in newer versions of photoshop

 

I really don't know the lisp script off hand and I know I could just take it out of the book but im not sure if im allowed to do that for copyright issues.

Any mods know if this is ok?

 

If you do manage to get hold of this book or script then it allows you to select the individual layers and apply layer styles which allow you to add texture shadows and other details.

 

Alternatively you could do what I used to do and trace over the plan on separate layers using either the pen tool.

 

google Search for pen tool tutorials in photoshop

[fultonh]

Thank you very much. I was looking at buying the book but was debating whether it would be good or not.

 

I am using autocad 2008 so would the book still be okay seeing as it deals with autocad 2005?

[kezflake]

Works for me, its photoshop that causes the most problems what version are you using?

[fultonh]

I am using photoshop CS3, and I am really knew to photoshop. I just bought the book you recommended on chapters so I am hoping that it will explain things for me.

[CADTutor]

When using the Magic Wand to make selections, you can control whether the selection is made from the whole drawing or from just the single area you are selecting. Check the "Contiguous" option to select a single area within your plan. You may also want to reduce the Tolerance for more accurate selection.

 

 

As for a book, I recommend "Photoshop CS3 Essential Skills" by Mark Galer and Philip Andrews.

[kezflake]

I am also using CS3. When I got to chapter 5 the book asks you to switch to image ready this is in the section about transferring multilayer drawing to photoshop.

 

Image ready was included in older versions of photoshop so what you will need to do instead is follow the instruction on the adobe website which show you what to do instead. http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb400899

See import folder as frame.

 

The thing with photoshop is that one technique dose not always work on the next project which can sometimes be a bit frustrating you can always experiment tho like the method CADTutor suggested. This method sometimes works for me on similar projects sometimes not.

[Fritz]

Though I haven't actually tried important a .eps into PS, I do know a good deal about the program. First off, the magic wand tool. If you're not familiar with it or haven't used it before it can be a tad confusing. What the magic wand does is select all pixels of the same or similar color within the canvas. You can adjust the tolerance level up to accept a broader range of colors into the selection, or down to narrow it. With tolerance at 1, it well select all pixels that are the exact same shade of black. With a tolerance of 50, it will also accept some dark grays or dark colors into this selection. The contiguous check box is used to determine if you want to select from the entire canvas (off), or only select pixels that are adjacent to where you click (on).

 

Again, not having important an .eps I'm not sure the best way to do it. But I have exported a .pdf from AutoCAD (using a print to .pdf driver) and imported that into Photoshop. Upon importing you choose the resolution, I usually go around 600 or so, you can always downsize it later. Depending on what you're making this Photoshop document for determines your resolution. If it's just appearing on a computer screen you really don't need any higher than 72, if it's going to be printed out as a draft, perhaps 100-200, high quality, 300, or very high quality, 600. Anyway, after you open the .pdf of your floor plan in Photoshop, it should be on it's own layer. If it is on a layer called "background", double click the layer in the layers window and click "ok" when the box opens up, changing details if you desire. This will turn the layer from a background layer (which is tied to the size of the canvas) to a free layer, able to be resized and manipulated as desired. First thing I would do is resize your floor plan how you want using the transform tool. (In the edit menu I believe). If you only want a specific portion of your floor plan there's a number of things you can do to eliminate the excess. You can simply use the eraser tool to eliminate what you don't want (probably the easiest), or you can use the polygon-lasso to draw a box around what you want, copy it, and paste it to a new layer. Layers can be turned on or off in Photoshop with the little icon that looks like an eye, much like in AutoCAD.

 

I hope that helped explain how to isolate your floor plan, I'd be happy to help if there's any other questions I can answer.