Jay Arraich’s Photoshop Tips


	6.0 Selections page two The number three item is multicolored, and so, not a good candidate for the magic wand. First I’ll select it with the rectangular marquee tool. With that tool selected in the toolbox, and the New Selection button chosen, you would place the cursor precisely on the upper left corner of the multicolored rectangle and drag to the lower right corner. Then release the mouse button. The illustration shows the cursor on the red rectangle. If you have difficulty placing the cursor on precisely the point of the corner, you can try magnifying your view by using the zoom tool, the Navigator palette, or by typing in a magnification value on the status bar and pressing Enter. You can also switch to the precise cursor by pressing the Caps Lock key. Just don’t forget to press it again to unlock Caps Lock. While in the process of dragging a selection, you can reposition it by pressing the spacebar. When you have the spacebar down (still holding the left mouse button down, as well), the selection outline can be moved without being reshaped. If, in spite of all this, you end up with a selection that is not quite lined up with the rectangle’s edges, try using the Select > Transform Selection command. Your selection will become a transform outline with handles that can be dragged to resize the selection. Hover your cursor over the edge to see the arrow, shown below, to drag to change the width. The arrow at the corner, shown below, is where you drag for scaling. Or the double headed, curvy arrow for rotating (not shown). Do this with the selection greatly magnified so you can see the edges, clearly. Click the big check box in the transform options bar, or press Enter to accept you changes. Another choice for selecting this rectangle, is the polygonal lasso. Choose it in the toolbox, check its settings in its options bar, and then click once on a corner of the rectangle, and click again on each of the other corners around the object. To complete the selection, click on the starting point. Your cursor will show a little hollow circle when it is positioned precisely over the starting point. Again, if you have trouble seeing where the cursor is clicking, try switching to the precise cursor by pressing the Caps Lock key. This will turn the polygon lasso tool icon shown below, left, to the precise brush cursor, shown at right, unless you have chosen precise in Preferences. You can choose to always use the precise cursor if you like, by going to Edit > Preferences > Dispaly & Cursors. Magnify your image using the zoom tool, or Navigator palette before you select. When your finished with this one, press Ctrl-D to deselect all.	back next start 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	To select the #4 object, above, you would use the same tools as you did for the preceding example. The polygonal lasso would be much better on this one. To use the rectangular marquee tool, you would have to draw a rough guess of the objects size, and then use the Select > Transform Selection command to rotate and resize it. Not a practical choice. If you’re interested, the fill in items #3, #4, #5, and #8 was painted in with the pattern stamp using four of the default patterns in the patterns pop-up palette.
	To select item #5, the mottled half-moon, first choose the elliptical marquee tool, and drag an ellipse that matches the curve on top of the half-dome. Don’t worry about where the bottom of the ellipse is. Again, you can reposition a selection as you are dragging it by pressing the spacebar (while still keeping the left mouse button pressed). As long as the spacebar is down, the selection outline can be moved without being reshaped. When you release the spacebar, you can, once again, continue to drag your selection. Once you have an ellipse that lies snuggly against the top of the shape, release the mouse button. Choose the rectangular marquee tool in the toolbox. Click the Subtract from Selection button, #3, below, in its options bar. Placing the cursor in line with the base of the half moon shape, and outside of the already present elliptical selection, drag a rectangular selection that overlaps all of the elliptical selection that is outside of the shape we’re selecting. Use the spacebar to position the new selection precisely against the base of the shape. Upon release of the mouse button, that part of the initial selection which is covered by the rectangular selection will be removed. Only the top half of the original elliptical selection will remain. When you’re finished, deselect item #5 by pressing Ctrl-D, or choose Select > Deselect. *Continue on page three*
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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