✨ A Complete Guide to the Paste Selection As Binary (Mask) Tool

In PhenoCapture AI, sometimes you don’t just want to manipulate the pixels inside a selection; you want to capture the exact shape of the selection itself. The Paste Selection As Binary tool allows you to instantly extract your currently active selection’s boundary and save it as a standalone black-and-white (binary) mask.

Instead of interrupting your workflow by pasting over your current canvas, this feature conveniently routes the newly generated mask directly into your Drag & Drop Image Box.

💡 Key Features

• Instant Shape Extraction: Seamlessly converts any active selection boundary—whether a simple rectangle, a hand-drawn polygon, or a highly complex AI-generated contour—into a crisp, perfect binary mask. The selected area becomes white, and everything else becomes black.
• Direct to Drag & Drop Slots: This tool intelligently bypasses the main workspace and system clipboard. It safely places the cloned binary image directly into a specified slot (slots 1 through 10) in your Drag & Drop Image Box, keeping your main canvas clean.
• Smart Metadata Tracking: To help you stay organized, the engine automatically tracks the origin of your new mask. It securely copies the file path data (Tag) from your original workspace image and embeds it into the new binary image (appending “Mask image.png”), ensuring you always know exactly which image the mask belongs to.
• Non-Destructive Background Processing: The extraction process is completely safe. It uses isolated memory cloning to generate the binary mask, meaning it does not alter your original image, nor does it destroy your current selection state.

🛠️ How to Use Paste Selection As Binary

Extracting a selection shape into a reusable mask takes just a few clicks:

Step 1: Define Your Selection

Start by creating an active selection on your main workspace image. You can use any of PhenoCapture AI’s selection tools to define the area you want to extract.

Step 2: Execute the Extraction

Navigate to the edit menu and select Paste Selection As Binary (or use the designated menu item for your desired Drag & Drop Image Box slot, from 1 to 10).

Note: The cursor will briefly change to a wait symbol while the engine processes and safely clones the high-resolution mask boundary.

Step 3: Utilize Your New Mask

The software will instantly calculate the mask and place a perfect black-and-white representation of your selection into the chosen Drag & Drop slot. You can now save this binary image to your hard drive, use it for additive masking, or apply it to other images in your analysis workflow!