Selecting and copying text

Although the above procedure works well for selecting objects in an image or for selecting individual letters, it is often desirable to copy or reposition an entire label. This is easily done by the following procedure:

1. Select a rectangular region around the text with the mouse.
2. Move the mouse pointer over the text, inside the rectangle indicated by ``crawling dots''.
3. Double-click on the text. The crawling-box rectangle will be replaced by crawling-dots outlining the portion of the text that was inside the box. It is important to click directly on the text, and not on the background near the text; otherwise, everything except the text will be selected, creating a stencil.
4. Move the mouse pointer over the crawling-dots. The cursor will change to double arrows.
5. Click and drag the text to its new location. When the mouse button is released, only the selected pixels will be copied to the new location.
6. If the ``move'' button in the information window is depressed, the text will be moved instead of copied.

Copying a region of text.

Notes:

1. If the mouse is clicked on a point containing a label or graphic element, the alpha channel is used to select the object. Otherwise, the object is selected on the basis of its RGB distance from the threshold value. This allows anti-aliased text and multi-colored graphic elements to be selected.
2. If a rectangular area has been selected (by dragging the mouse), the region selected by a double-click will be confined within that rectangular area. If no rectangular region is selected, the object can be as large as the display size or the image (whichever is smaller).

To summarize:

• To select an entire image, single-click on the image.
• To reposition an image, click and drag on the corner of the image.
• To select a rectangular area, click and drag on the area to create an `outline' of the desired area.
• To select a non-rectangular object (such as an element of text), double-click on the object.
• To manually select a non-rectangular area, select ``Image..manually select area'' or press F3.
• To confine the automatic area selection to a specific region, select the boundary rectangular region by clicking and dragging with the mouse first.
• To copy a non-rectanglular selected area to a new location, click on the crawling-dot outline along the edge of the selection and drag it to the desired location (this can be in a different image or even a different window).
• To copy a rectanglular selected area to a new location, click on onw of the four corners of the crawling-dot outline of the selection and drag it to the desired location.
• To resize the area selection, click and drag near the middle of one of the `crawling-dot' line segments, or use the Shift+Numeric Keypad keys for fine control.