Save a selection for use by other programs?

I am using Photoshop CS2, but I don't know a lot about it.

I would like to do some computations on pieces of an image, I don't believe that Photoshop can do these computations for me. A bit of a research project for me.

The "pieces" I refer to would be spatial pieces, such as a rectangle, an ellipse, or a human face, carefully traced out by hand.

I would like to use the nice features of Photohop to define the selection: rectangle, ellipse, etc. Then, I would like to save the selection as a disk file.

Can Photoshop do this? I don't know what form the disk file would take, perhaps a binary (one bit deep) image file? Obviously, I would also need a software definition of the file format, so that I could interpret it in my own software.

Thanks for any suggestions!
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David Arnstein (00)
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In article <ej97cl$s3k$ says...

I would like to use the nice features of Photohop to define the selection: rectangle, ellipse, etc. Then, I would like to save the selection as a disk file.

Make your selection, hit ctrl-J to copy that to another layer, turn off the background layer by clicking the eyeball in the layers pane, save as your file.

I have only been using PS7 for about a month. Someone else may have a better way.

In article <ej97cl$s3k$>,
(David Arnstein) wrote:

I would like to use the nice features of Photohop to define the selection: rectangle, ellipse, etc. Then, I would like to save the selection as a disk file.

Can Photoshop do this? I don't know what form the disk file would take, perhaps a binary (one bit deep) image file?

Absolutely. In fact, that is what the "Save Selection" command under the Select menu is for.

Choose Select->Save Selection. In the Save Selection dialog, set your destination to New Document. You will end up with a grayscale file. Save it in any format you wish.

Note that a selection is grayscale, not a 1-bit bitmap, because it is possible for a part of the image to be partially selected (as in a selection with a feathered edge, for example).

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