Adobe Photoshop Beginners Guide 2: Work with Selection Tools in Photoshop
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Selection tools in Photoshop
Photoshop, like any other editing Software, has a panel of tools you work with. The key to being effective in any programme is to know how the tools work.
Adobe Photoshop, like any other editing software, has a panel of tools you work with. The key to being effective in any programme is to know how the tools work. In this basic tutorial we will look at what are called Selection tools. As the name suggests, these tools pick out your working areas.
The Marquee tool
This tool comes in four options. (In Photoshop you can see all the options by clicking on the black triangle on the corner of the tool, this will reveal the other options) Your Rectangular Marquee tool will give you the rectangle and square format. By selecting the tool (Also make sure your layer is selected- see hints on working basically with layers here) and dragging it around the area you want to select while holding down your mouse button, the area is selected. To create a square, hold down your shift key while dragging over an area. Holding down the shift key and your mouse button ensures that you get a square shape instead of a rectangle.
This also applies to your Elliptical Marquee tool. This tool will give you rounded shapes based on the circle. To create a perfect circle selection, hold down the shift key while you click and drag around your chosen area. The other Marquee tools you have are the Single Row Marquee and the Single Column Marquee. When working with any of these Marquee tools, you may want to change the size of your selection without having to re-select all over again. This can be done by going into your Select-Modify then choosing whether you would like to expand, contract or soften/feather the edges. Please consult the images posted with this tutorial for a clear visual.
The Magic Wand (Quick Selection tool available in Photoshop CS3 and on)This tool makes it possible to select large areas of the same color. You can change its behaviour by tweaking the tolerance (On the top right hand corner of the page under the title "Photoshop") With practice you will find that you can also change edit the selected area before you carry on working with it. On the top of your Photoshop page is a button labeled "refine". This will open a new dialogue box with options. Experiment with the controls until you are familiar with what each one does.
Color Range
Working with this function (Available in your upper menu bar under Select.) enables you to pick out areas with the same color even if they are scattered all over the image. You can also adjust the tolerance to select areas to a more accurate degree.
The Lasso Tool
A rough selection tool. It is fun to create random shapes with but not very good for precise selections. If you are looking to work with very precise selections then the Pen tool will be your best bet. You could watch a tutorial on its use hereThe key to using all these tools is to experiment. Once you are familiar with how they function you can then employ them to suit your needs. Please consult the images to get visual aids to this tutorial. You can also access another tutorial on how to bring in an image into Photoshop here. For a more indepth look at another tool :The Pen Tool and many other tools