Refining a selection · Layer Comp

Refine Edge (Ctrl+Alt+R)

Snaps a rough selection to the image, for hair and foliage. Each pixel within Radius of the edge is compared with nearby colours that are surely inside and surely outside, then smoothed along the image's edges. Contrast and Shift Edge are in the redo panel.

Pixels to Shapes

Under Refine Edge in the Select panel. It traces the pixel selection into lasso shapes you can edit point by point and feather.

Holes become subtracting shapes, and islands inside holes add again.
Tolerance sets how closely the shapes follow the edge. Curves fits smooth handles.
Use it to keep a wand or brush selection editable, rather than baked.

Edge Guide and Refine on saved selections

Every saved selection has an Edge Guide input and a Refine size. Above 0, the mask is blurred along the guide image's edges. Connecting a saved selection to a node feeds the guide from that node's own image, so nothing loops.