6.0 Selections

page three
Item #6 is too easy, but I couldn’t resist using one of the new shapes. This one is found by choosing the custom shape tool. Click on the down arrow next to the shape thumbnail to see the pop-up palette of available shapes. The footprint is one of them.
     To select the footprint, choose the magic wand. Click once on one of the toes. Choose the Add to Selection button in the tool’s options bar, or simply press the Shift key with the New Selection button still selected to add to the existing selection.
     Click on all the other toes, and the main part of the footprint to complete the selection.
magic wand Add to Selection cursor
The marching ants look a little drunk in this one, don’t they. Deselect when you’re finished by choosing Select > Deselect, or by pressing Ctrl-D.
     You might try unchecking the Contiguous box in the magic wand’s options bar to see what happens with that deselected. Click once on one of the toes. Since the blue in item #2 is the same, it will select that as well as the entire footprint. Blue portions of items 3 and 4 may be selected also. 		back
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Displacing Textures 		Item #7 would be tricky to select on a multicolored background. Fortunately, we have solid white.
      With the rectangular marquee tool, drag a selection to completely contain the starburst. Click the Subtract from Selection button in the rectangular marquee tool’s options bar. Drag a marquee around the number 7. That removes the number from the selection.
     Select the magic wand tool. Be sure you have rechecked Contiguous, if you unchecked it, above. Choose the Subtract from Selection button in its options bar. Click once on the white background within the current rectangular selection. This subtracts all the contiguous white areas leaving just the orange and black starburst selected.
     The starburst was drawn with the custom shape tool. It has a style applied that includes a drop shadow. If you wanted the shadow included in the selection, you could try choosing the Add to Selection button in the magic wand’s options bar, and clicking on the various shades of gray. As it is, the selection has included portions of the shadow.
drop shadow selection detail
The illustration above shows the tip of one of the star’s arms. As mentioned earlier, the marching ants only outline pixels that are more than 50 % selected. I suspect that if I filled this selection, it might include all of the drop shadow. The Tolerance setting in the magic wand’s options bar was 32, as was the case throughout this tutorial.
     You are probably thinking you could have used this method for all the preceding shapes. This is true, but you wouldn’t have learned very much. If you have a solid colored background, and a multicolored object, it is much easier to subtract the solid color, than to select the multicolors.
     Furthermore, if you have a multicolored object all alone on a page with a solid colored background, you can simply click once on the background with the magic wand and then choose Select > Inverse. 		 
  Skipping to item #9, the dog’s head, I would use the quick mask if I wanted to select the dog without the background. I think the quick mask is always a good choice for anything in a photograph. The edges in a continuous tone image are too imprecise to be captured by the magic wand. Sometimes the magnetic lasso will work, but only if an object is all alone with a pronounced edge. Take a look at the boundary between the dog’s neck and the background.
magnified detail from dog’s head
To make a quick mask selection, draw a rough outline with the lasso tool. Then click on the quick mask button in the toolbar. It’s the one on the right, below.
quick mask buttons
After you click the button, the nonselected areas of the image will be covered with a reddish semitransparent overlay. You can add to the red, masked area by painting in black. You can subtract from the red areas, and add to the selection by painting with white. Painting with gray creates a partial selection. Magnify the image. Paint, and repaint. Take your time. Get it perfect.
      When you click on the standard selection button, at left, above, the quick mask will be turned into a selection outline. Whatever was not covered with red will be included in the selection outline. Whatever was covered in red is not.
      If you’ve taken a long time to make a perfect selection with the quick mask, it’s always a good idea to save the selection right after you click on the standard selection button. Choose Selection > Save Selection. The selection outline will be saved as an alpha channel in the Channels palette. Any time you want to reactivate the selection outline, you can do so by choosing Select > Load Selection and picking the alpha channel from the drop down menu in the dialog box that appears.
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Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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