Selection
Tools
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
We use selections in
Photoshop to isolate editing to specific areas in an image, or for cutting out
portions of an image. Similarly, masks are used to protect specific image areas
from being modified, or for removing portions of an image. For a more thorough
overview on the differences between masks and selections, see part two of my
article.
 Unless
you're entirely new to Photoshop, you probably have some familiarity with the
marquee selection tools. It's difficult to do much of anything in Photoshop
without them. These include the rectangular marquee, the elliptical marquee, the
single row horizontal, and single row vertical marquee tools. As you learned in
a previous lesson, the shortcut key for the marquee tools is M and
Shift M toggles the rectangular and elliptical marquee tools. Let's look at
some additional shortcuts for the marquee tools:
- Holding down the
shift key while dragging a selection marquee constrains the selection to
a square or circle.
- Holding down the
shift key while dragging a selection marquee when an existing selection
is active adds to the selection.
- Holding down the
Alt/Option
key while dragging a selection marquee when an existing selection is active
subtracts from the selection.
- Holding down the
Alt/Option
key while dragging a selection marquee creates the selection from the center
out from where you initially clicked.
- The Shift and
Alt/Option
modifier keys can be used together when making an initial selection to
constrain proportions and draw from the center.
- The Shift and
Alt/Option
modifier keys can be used together when another selection is active to
create a selection from the intersection (the areas where the two
selections overlap).
- To reposition
a selection while you are in the process of drawing it, hold down the
spacebar. As long as the spacebar is held down you can move you
selection, when you let up on the space bar you can go back to drawing your
selection. The selection will not be finalized until you release the mouse
button.
- You can move a
selection after it has been finalized by moving the cursor inside the
selection marquee as long as the marquee tool is active. The cursor will
change to look like this
and then you can click and drag the marquee into a new position. You can
also use the arrows on your keyboard to reposition a selection.
-
Ctrl/Command-A
selects the entire image.
-
Ctrl/Command-D
removes the selection.
-
Shift-Ctrl/Command-I
inverts the selection.
-
Ctrl/Command-H
acts as a toggle to hide the marquee but preserves the selection.
| Notes
for Version 6.0 |
In
Photoshop 6, you can also choose the add/subtract/intersect modifiers
from the set of buttons on the options bar.
In Photoshop
6, the Ctrl/Command-H
shortcut toggles more than just the selection marquee, so you may need
it to press the key combination multiple times before the marquee is
hidden. You can control what items this toggle controls by checking them
off in the View > Show submenu. |
 The
marquee tools have some options you can access by double clicking the tool to
bring the options palette to the front. You can adjust the feathering,
anti-aliasing, and style.
- Feathering
lets you fade the edge of the selection, but in most cases you will leave
this setting to zero since there are more accurate ways of feathering a
selection after it has been drawn.
-
Anti-aliasing smoothes out the edges of the selection. You'll
rarely, if ever, need to deactivate this. It will be unavailable for the
rectangle selection tool because rectangles always have hard edges.
- The style menu
lets you make more precise selections.
- When
constrained aspect ratio is chosen you can choose the ratio of width
to height. With both values set to 1 you would only be able to draw a
perfect square or circle. With a width of 1 and a height of 2 you would
create a selection that is two times higher than the width, and so on.
- When fixed
width is chosen you can enter a width and height in pixels and just
click once to make a selection of that exact size.
Take some time now to try
all these options using the marquee selection tools. When you're ready, continue
on to the next lesson on the lasso tools.
|
