How to invert a selection (1 Viewer)

Trying to learn PS3 I am playing around with B&W e.g. selecting part of a photo and changing just that part to B&W.
To do that I use the 'quick selection' tool to draw around the main subject and then (theoretically) change that to B&W or invert the selection and change the other parts.
The problem is sometimes (for some reason I can't fathom) it just won't invert the selection.
An example is this photo of a bee on a flower.......(the choice of subject is irrelevant as I'm just playing with different subjects but attach this as it's the one thats giving problems).
I select the bee (only roughly-not bothered about individual hairs etc as I'm only playing around) but it will not invert.
Normally when I click 'invert' the 'line of ants' stays around the subject while another line goes around the whole photo but in this case nothing happens:C
Any ideas why ?
In case it matters it is a jpeg file.....does it only work in RAW??
Helpppppppppp!:-C

Hi, David.

I have Photoshop Elements 4 and I had a go with your pic, just out of interest. I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the bee and clicked on Select –> Invert and it worked fine. There's definitely no problem with inverting selections on Jpegs. Try using a different tool to make the selection and see if that makes any difference.

Malcolm

MalR said:

Hi, David.
I have Photoshop Elements 4 and I had a go with your pic, just out of interest. I used the polygonal lasso tool to select the bee and clicked on Select –> Invert and it worked fine. There's definitely no problem with inverting selections on Jpegs. Try using a different tool to make the selection and see if that makes any difference.
Malcolm

Click to expand...

Much appreciate your response......could I ask a big favour ? would you try it with the quick selection tool and see if it works for you.
(I notice I said 'magic wand' in my post but that is not correct so I have changed the original post)

David Smith said:

Much appreciate your response......could I ask a big favour ? would you try it with the quick selection tool and see if it works for you.
(I notice I said 'magic wand' in my post but that is not correct so I have changed the original post)

Click to expand...

Sorry, David, just picked up your last post now. Unfortunately, Elements 4 doesn't have a quick selection tool. Just out of interest I did a very rough selection using the magic wand tool and I was able to invert that too. Whatever is causing your problem, it's certainly nothing to do with the image. Have you tried looking in Photoshop Help for an answer? There might be something in there. Sorry I can't be more help.

Malcolm

Just had another thought. Are you trying to invert the selection by using a keyboard shortcut? If so, it might be worth trying to do it "the long way", ie through the menu. Conversely, if you aren't using a keyboard shortcut it could be worth trying it.

Malcolm

Works fine here with Photoshop CS3, Quick Select the bee and invert.

I have Elements 7 and it does have the Quick Selection tool. Inverting a selection works fine.

I cannot imagine why it is not working for you David. I know that if you feather or modify a selection a lot, when you invert it it can give you odd results sometimes, but that is not what you are describing.

Only thing I can think of is kind of unlikely - if you are not seeing the entire image (you are zoomed in and have scroll bars), you might not be seeing the ants around the edge of the image after the inversion. However, now that I am talking, I suggest you try one thing - after the inversion, copy the selection to the clipboard and paste it as a new image. That will tell you whether the selection really was inverted or not.

Going to \Select\Inverse should work fine in any version of PS, so its curious that you're having the problem. In the meantime there is a work-around.

Select/highlight your subject, go to \Edit\Copy, then Paste it right back into the image as a new layer. Then, select the backgroud layer, perform whatever edit to the entire 'background' image, then re-select the copied layer. Once done, you can Flatten the image and get the same results. I use this method for Noise reduction using some freeware software that doesn't allow selective noise reduction.