It is important to understand that Photoshop is different from other programs in which you select things. Typical reasons to make selections include:
• Editing a portion of your canvas
• Creating a mask or layer
• Cropping
• Applying filters and special effects to portions of your image
To select a portion of your canvas, you will have to use one of the selection tools that we will look at later. But all selection tools do the same basic task, they draw an outline around some bit of your canvas with a little flashy marquee that looks like a dashed line or a row of little parading ants.
Once you have selected an area, you can manipulate that area in many cool ways. We will do a lot of manipulation of selections over today and tomorrow, so it is crucial that we get a good sense of how to select areas.
Modifying a Selection
Deselecting a selection Click outside
We will talk about several tools to make an initial selection however we should mention here that all selections share several properties.
To add to a selection
Hold down the SHIFT key and use the selection tool to add to the existing outline.
To subtract from a selection
Hold down the OPTION or ALT key and use the selection tool to remove from the existing selection.
To create an intersection selection
Hold down the ALT and SHIFT and use a selection tool to deselect all but the overlapping portions of two selections.
SELECT Menu
There are also several built in selection modification tools in the SELECT menu item. These include Grow, Similar, Border, Smooth, and Expand/Contract. These all modify the selection in predefined ways.
Grow
includes all adjacent pixels falling within the tolerance range specified in the magic wand options.
Similar
include pixels throughout the image, not just adjacent ones, falling within the tolerance range.
Border
creates an anti-aliased selection. To paint a hard-edged border around a selection
Smooth
cleans up stray pixels left inside or outside a color-based selection
Expand
Increases the selection
Contract
Decreases the selection
The Marquee Tool - The list of tools that you can use to create selections.
The Marquee tool is the most basic of selection tools and often the one most useful. This tool is used to draw selections based on geometric shapes. Specifically, the marquee tool allows you to draw rectangular and elliptical selections. To form the selection, simply click and drag the mouse.
You can easily choose the geometrical form by changing the value for Shape in the options palette. A fast way to access the Marquee tool is the "M" key. The "M" also allows you to cycle between the rectangle and the ellipse
• get a square from a rectangular marquee or a circle from an elliptical marquee, simply hold the SHIFT key while you drag out your selection
• press and. use the EDIT --> FILL or EDIT -->STROKE menu item to either fill or outline the shape.
• To draw the selection out from the center, press and hold the ALT key while dragging out the selection.
• to anti-alias your selection, you can use the Anti-alias checkbox or the Feather checkbox or both. The feathering checkbox simply affords an extra degree of anti-aliasing.
The Lasso Tool
The Marquee tool is certainly cool and when you use the SHIFT and ALT keys to add or subtract from the selection, you can create some pretty complex selections. However, often times, a free form selection tool is what you really want. A freeform tool like the Lasso, allows you to draw out a selection area much like you were tracing over an image through tracing paper.
To create a free form selection, simply choose the Lasso tool and click and drag on the canvas. The selection will follow your drag. Obviously, it is unlikely that you will succeed in making a free form selection right the first time since it is very easy for your mouse to slip. Fortunately, you can use the SHIFT and ALT keys to add or subtract from a selection as well as use the ALT key down while you drag with the Lasso to create polygons much like you would do to create lines using one of the paint tools
Note that if you do not perfectly align up the beginning and the ending of a lasso selection, Photoshop will complete it for you by drawing a line from the end to the beginning as the crow flies.
The Magic Wand Tool
I wanted to select the black area in the sample above. "Lasso Select" would have been too tedious and time consuming. The "Magic Wand" is the tool of choice here. With the right settings, the "Magic Wand" tool can select a complex area with just one click. I played around with different Tolerance settings.
The Move Tool
The Move Tool is quite handy indeed. This tool allows you to take any selection and move it to a different location on the canvas. It is also very easy to use. Simply click and hold on the selection and then drag the mouse to move the selection.
Note
You can also move a selection pixel by pixel by using the arrow keys. this gives more precisemovement but is less convenient for large moves. Note also that you can get the exact screen positions by looking at the info palette.
The Crop Tool
The cropping tool does exactly what you would expect, it crops out a rectangular portion of your canvas and throws away the pixels outside the crop. To create a crop marquee, simply select the Crop Tool, click on the canvas and drag out an area.
