Jay Arraich’s Photoshop Tips


	6.0 Selections page one Selecting is the most basic technique you’ll use when working with Photoshop. Different shapes, objects, and image types require different tools and methods. Below is a collection of odd items intended to show off the talents of the various selection tools, the marquee tools, the lassos, the magic wand, and, from the Select menu, Color Range. When you choose a selection tool in the toolbox, the first thing you should do is check its options bar. The settings you used last will still be active. At the left end of the bar are buttons which will determine how the new selection will interact with any currently active selection. The buttons are: New Selection Add to Existing Selection Subtract from Existing Selection Intersect Existing Selection If there is no other selection active, it doesn’t matter which of the buttons is selected; a new selection will be drawn. If you want to move a selection outline without its contents, place the cursor within the selection outline and drag. You can also use the arrow keys to move a selection outline in one pixel increments. Pressing Shift with an arrow key moves the outline ten pixels. Be sure the #1 button, above, is selected when you go to move a selection outline. If it’s not, you will drag a new plus, minus, or intersect selection when you try and drag the outline. Any time you want to deselect, press Ctrl plus the letter D, or choose Select > Deselect.	next Tips 7 Tools 7 Palettes
Tutorials Brushes in 7 Using PS7 Brushes 7 Basics 7 Reference: Tools 7 Reference: Palettes Reference: Filters Reference: Effects Selections Channels Basic Layers Basic Pen How Much? Color Management Color Correction Curves, Levels, or Brightness/Contrast? Combining Images Combining Images II Combining Images III Compositing in Photoshop Perfect Blend Multicolor Fill Dodge and Burn Duotones Styles On Masks Organic Textures Abstract Background Make a Frame 3D Wire Text Doodling
Older Tutorials Quick Mask Rubberstamping More Adjustments Sharpening Filters Color Elements Tutorials Elements Basics Reference: Elements Tools Reference: Elements Palettes How Do I...? Gotcha Pre-Beginner Pre-Beginner II Why Layers? Holes Fade In Playing With Styles Learning Effects Redeye Removal Artistic Filtering Symmetrical Flowers Simulated Alpha Channels Layer Masks Multilayer Masks Displacing Textures	In this tutorial, unless stated otherwise, the anti-alias check box will be left selected in each tool’s options bar, and Feather will be set to zero. Style will be Normal. The magic wand’s Tolerance was set to the default setting of 32. For more information on each of these options, please see the individual tool’s pages, referenced throughout the tutorial. The first item in the illustration above is a basic rectangular marquee selection that has been filled with red. To make it, I simply dragged on a white background with the rectangular marquee tool to create the outline. I set the foreground color to the red I wanted, and then pressed Alt plus the Backspace key to fill the selection with the foreground color. You can also choose Edit > Fill and pick foreground color from the menu in the dialog box. Click OK to fill the selection with the foreground color. To reselect the red rectangle, you would choose the Magic Wand from the toolbox. Leave its options bar with the default settings of Tolerance 32, anti-alias checked, and contiguous checked. Click once on the red rectangle. You can uncheck anti-alias for a shape which has only vertical and horizontal lines like this, if you like. You may have noticed that the rectangular marquee tool is the only one that does not offer anti-aliasing on its options bar. Anti-aliasing is not necessary on perfectly horizontal or vertical lines.
	The next shape, #2, which is a series of nested circles, can be selected by dragging with the elliptical marquee tool while pressing the Shift key. Holding down the Shift key makes the tool draw a perfect circle. Press Shift after you begin dragging, and don’t release until you have finished creating the circle and released the mouse button. However, it is easier to use the magic wand again to select this shape. Click once on the green inner circle. Then choose the Add to Selection button, #2 in the illustration at the top of this page, and click on each of the other circles or rings. You can select any combination of the circles in this way. Since I created the circle illustration by filling an anti-aliased elliptical marquee selection with color, the edges of the circles are somewhat blended, instead of being pure colors. When anti-alias is checked in the magic wand’s options bar it will appear to select some of the intermediate colors, and not select others. This is because the ‘marching ants’ selection outline only includes pixels that are more than 50 % selected. Many of the other shades are selected, as can be seen when the selection shown above was filled with green, shown below. On the other hand, if anti-alias is unchecked in the magic wand’s options bar, the selection will look like this: And, if that selection is filled, it will only fill that exact outline, as you can see, below. No pixels were partially selected. With this in mind, it’s worth taking a magnified look at your object’s edges before deciding what settings you want to use in a selection tool’s options bar. The red rectangle would not require any anti-aliasing. *Continue on page two*
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6.0 Selections

Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich. All rights reserved. All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich jay@arraich.com

Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com