# Select By Color

The Select by Color tool is designed to select areas of an image based on color similarity. It works a lot like the Fuzzy Select tool. The main difference between them is that the Fuzzy Select tool selects contiguous regions, with all parts connected to the starting point by paths containing no large gaps; while the Select by Color tool selects all pixels that are sufficiently similar in color to the pixel you click on, regardless of where they are located.

## Activating the Tool

There are different possibilities to activate the tool:

- From the main menu: Tools Selection Tools By Color Select .

- By clicking the tool icon in the Toolbox.

- By pressing the Shift O keyboard shortcut.

## Key modifiers (Defaults)

The select by color tool does not have any special key modifiers, only the ones that affect all selection tools in the same way. See Selection Tools for help with these.

## Handling tool

Using Select by Color tool: selected pixels are not only contiguous

As with fuzzy tool, the selection starts as soon as you click and the reference is the first clicked pixel. If you click and drag, you can change the threshold by the same way as with the fuzzy tool.

You can move the selection outline with the arrow keys, not with the mouse.

## Options

Tool Options for the Select by Color tool

Select transparent areas, Sample merged, Draw mask

  These three options work exactly the same way they were described for the fuzzy selection already. See for details.

Tools Selection by color
Selection Selection by color
Color Selection by color