Robert Feinman wrote:
> I know I have seen some some tricks for selecting telephone and
> electric power lines in order to remove them from the photo, but
> I seem to have forgotten them.
> Currently I use the magic wand tool which is slow and somewhat
> inaccurate especially when the wires are out of focus. After I
> have the wire selected I expand it by a pixel or two and then use
> the patch tool followed by some extra touch up, if needed. This
> is all slower than I'd like.
>
> So, does anyone have some good tricks for selecting wires?

As veryone else has suggested, the clone tool or healing brush will allow
you to *paint* them out of the picture.

However, if you have another reason for wanting to select the power lines,
try this.
Copy the image into a new layer and convert the whole thing to grayscale.
Now go into images>adjustments>levels and constrict the white and black
channels together to increase the contrast to the point where you're left
with a silhouette.
You can now use this silhouette layer, or selected parts of it as a layer
mask to pick out the relevant parts.