**Program Tutorials** : Photoshop : *Technique

On the surface, making selections seems like a very straightforward function and hardly worthy of a separate tutorial, but there are so many ways selections can be made and used that it can really advance your Photoshop skills, such as providing you with the ability to make text on a path in new ways, or text within custom shapes.

First let's talk about what tools are selection tools. The marquee tool, located on the top left in the toolbox is the most commonly used tool. There is the rectangle, the ellipse, the single row and the single column. These tools share the same spot in the toolbox and are accessed by using the tool flyout arrow, or right clicking. The last two are the least commonly used in digi-scrapping but can be very handy in making stripes.

The rectangle and the elliptical are used the most, and by holding down the shift key at the same time you draw your selection you can then make a square or perfect circle. (Be sure to release the left mouse button before the shift key or the selection may jump back to a rectangle or an oval.)

If you discover you didn't start your selection exactly where you wanted, you can then hold down the spacebar (while still holding down the left mouse button) and can move the selection to where you want it to be located, and then release the spacebar and finish drawing the selection. If you have been drawing a square or circle, you must also continue to hold down the shift key. This can be a little tricky, but easier than having to undo and start over again. You can also move the selection after drawing as long as the marquee tool is chosen and the options bar has the new selection as the chosen option.

As you can see in the screenshot, there are also options to add to a selection, subtract from a selection and to have only the intersection of two different selections. After drawing an initial selection, you can choose one of the other options and draw again on your document to add, subtract or intersect.

Before making a selection, you can also set feathering, which will eliminate the hard edges of a selection. Unfortunately, feathering seems to be mostly a guessing game as to what size it should be. Feathering can also be done after selecting: Select>Modify>Feather. Anti-Alias can also be checked, but can only be done before selecting and can't be modified later.

As you can see in the above screenshot, you can also set a style. The below screenshot shows the three styles: normal, fixed aspect ratio, and fixed size. If you haven't played around with those options, you may find them very helpful. The fixed aspect ratio allows you to draw a ratio, but does not limit the size. There are boxes to the right that let you set the ratio. For example, a 1 and 1 ratio would give a square or circle, just as holding the shift key. You could use 6 and 4 for photos or possibly another size for papers if you want to make a border or photo mat. I like using the fixed size though for making borders. I then set one of the sizes to be 12, so it matches the size of my layout. When using the fixed size, you don't need to draw your selection, you just click on the image, and it makes the selection when you click.

Additional selection tools in the toolbox include the Lasso, the Polygonal Lasso, and the Magnetic Lasso tools. These tools share the same spot in the toolbox and are accessed by using the tool flyout arrow, or right clicking. Each of these tools has options that can be set in the options bar, with the Magnetic Lasso tool having some extra options that can help with fine-tuning the selection.

The Magic Wand is another selection tool and the use of this tool seems to require some practice with the options bar settings. The first setting to check though is the Eyedropper tool in the toolbox. The Magic Wand takes its settings from the Eyedropper, so if you have the Eyedropper set to be a 5x5 sampling, your Magic Wand tool will not be as accurate in making a selection as you would want. Set the Eyedropper to be a Point Sample and you'll have better results. The tolerance setting in the Options Bar sets the range of the color you will be selecting. Again, there is not an easy way to tell which tolerance level will work best for you. The Magic Wand works best when you want to select a solid area.

You can also check the option for Contiguous - which means "connecting without a break; within a common boundary" Having this checked means only the like pixels that are touching where you click will be selected. If you want to select all of the color on a layer even if they are not connected or touching where you click, you must remove the checkmark in the Contiguous box. You can also put a check for "sample all layers", however it is an option I have not personally ever used.

There are two additional tips about selections that need to be mentioned. First is to understand that a selection does not mean you are actually selecting an object - it does mean you are selecting an area of your image. And since you are only selecting an area, you can then change layers in your layers palette so that you can then flood fill that area, or apply a stroke, or even make a new layer, and your selection is still visible with those little marching ants, as they are frequently called.

If you have made a selection on a layer that has some content and want to separate out that content, you can make a new layer via the "Layer" menu bar. Layer>New>Layer via copy or cut. I usually use "copy" so that it leaves the original layer intact, but it is a matter of personal preference.

Secondly, you can transform a selection, just as you would an object on a layer. You can change the height or width, make a rotation, or even skew the selection. To get to the transformation options, you can right click on the selection (With the marquee tool as the chosen tool) or on the menu bar go to Select<transform selection

Practical Applications

Below are some samples of how selections can be used in your scrapping layouts.

Our sample image is of three small boys playing on a tractor. I wanted to highlight the middle boy so I made a selection, on a blank layer, then added a stroke using Edit>Stroke, and set what size I wanted, the color, and if I wanted it to appear inside or outside of my selection. Note: If you use a stroke width that is fairly wide, and choose the outside option, you'll get corners that are somewhat rounded, so I usually use the inside choice.

Sample One - using an oval selection and on an empty layer above the photo I added a stroke using Edit>Stroke

Sample Two - same technique, using a rectangle selection, empty layer and Edit>Stroke

Sample Three - using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, Transforming the selection to increase width and height to 110%, and Edit>Stroke on an empty layer.

The last sample is a fun technique that uses the skills talked about in this tutorial, but gives a very interesting effect, and it really is very simple. (Background paper is from the SBB Elements Team CD Eclectic Bytes, Change the World Kit)

Here are the steps used in making the above.

• 1. With the layer of your original image highlighted in the layers palette, make a selection and then make a new layer via copy. (Control-J is the shortcut key)
• 2. Do the first step several times, but selecting different parts of the original image. It shouldn't matter if some of your selections overlap, but if you want to highlight a particular section you will want to drag that layer to the top of the others in the layers palette.
• 3. Last, I made the stroke and a little drop shadow on one layer using the layer styles options rather than the Edit>Stroke method, and duplicated that layer style for all the layers by holding down the ALT key and dragging the effects icon from the layer where the style was added to the next layer and repeating.
• 4. The last step would be to group or link those layers so they can be moved about on your layout as one unit. I also hid the original image to give the appearance of several separate photos in my layout.