About cell selection
The ability to select raster cells can help make the vectorization process more efficient. Raster cell selection is often used during the raster cleanup process. Additionally, during automatic vectorization you may choose to only vectorize selected cells. ArcScan allows for two types of cell selection methods: interactive and expression-based selections. Cell selections support other processes, such as raster cleanup and generating features. This section provides an overview of cell selections.
Interactive cell selection
The method for interactively selecting raster cells is similar to the way you select vector features in ArcMap. You can click a cell or drag a box around connected cells to select them. Cells that are selected become highlighted in the current selection color. You can deselect connected cells by holding down the SHIFT key and clicking them. Or you can use the Clear Selected Cells command to clear the entire selection. You also have the ability to control what you select with the Interactive Selection Target command.
Expression-based cell selection
ArcScan provides more powerful cell selection tools by means of the Select Connected Cells dialog box. This dialog box supports a variety of choices to narrow down your selection criteria. You can select connected cells based on their pixel area or the diagonal of the connected cell’s envelope. You can also select cells in the foreground or background or only cells that are in the current extent. In addition to creating new selections, this tool allows you to add to or remove from the current selection.
Using cell selections with other tools
Cell selections are intended to be used with other ArcScan operations. In the raster preprocessing stage, you can use cell selections to assist with your raster cleanup efforts. Commands such as Erase Selected Cells and Fill Selected Cells rely solely on a current raster selection. When generating features, you can choose to vectorize only the currently selected cells. Having this functionality can help reduce the time it takes to focus on what needs to be vectorized, which, in turn, can help increase your productivity.
Saving cell selections
Cell selections can be saved to a new raster file. This can be useful for when you want to narrow down the number of raster elements in the layer by allowing you to take only what you have selected. ArcScan can save your selected raster data to many different formats.