The diversity of the Selection Tool
| Genre: Photoshop |
Skill level: Easy Total views: 7454 |
Maybe it's the most powerful and handiest tool of Photoshop, but it's
for sure a tool that we all, Photoshop users, use regurly.
In this tutorial I'll show some handy things about this tool.
 Just to drag rectangles which you can fill, move etc. This can be done precise or just by dragging somewhere on the canvas. When pressing the the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), you can choose three options in your top bar.  Normal: with this you can just drag around from point to point. Fixed Aspect Ratio: This means that when applying the width value of 100 and height op 20, that when dragging a rectangle there will always be a connection between the values. So for example with filling in a width of 200 the height will be 40. Fixed Size: This tool is for precise purposes. Just put a value in the boxes and click somewhere in the canvas to get the fixed size. What is the relationship with the selection tool and a layer? MUCH! You can activate the selection of a layer, do it minus layer 2 and plus layer 3! It's all possible. It is possible with your left mouse button and CTRL, ALT and SHIFT. Let's have an overview. Go with your mouse over the small thumbnail on the left of a layer and then: Click, CTRL+LEFT MOUSE, and you'll see that the layers boundary's are selected.  Then do for example the same on the layer underneath it, but than click, CTRL+ALT+LEFT MOUSE, you'll see a little minus in the hand  Or maybe you want to add that layer to the selection of the first layer, do this. Click, CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE  You see how nice this works? Also a nice feature is this one: CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+LEFT MOUSE, just try it...  Now you only have the part selected where both layers are covering each other. With this knowledge we can go through Now we'll browse through the pull down menu "Select"  - All: This means select the complete canvas. You can only modify on the layer you are on, on that moment. - Deselect: An easy tool to, how is it possible, deselect. - Reselect: You deselect your selection by mistake? Press reselect to get the previous selection. - Inverse: Very handy tool... try this one yourself: Let's go on. You want to delete all the brown, except the brown which covers the grey. Press CTRL+SHIFT+I, make sure you now are on the brown layer and press delete.  All layers: This will hightlight all the layers on your layers table. Deselect layers: This will get the contrary result of ''All layers''. Select Similar layers: This is useful when, for example, you want to select all the type layers in your entire document and change dissimilar fonts to the same font. To select similar layer types, select the kind of layer you want to find. Color range  With this function you can make a selection of a certain layer by color range. By dragging on the Fuzziness bar, you'll see which parts of the canvas will be selected. Feather: This option is to 'feather' your selection. Just try this one by filling ur selection after you gave up a feather radius. Modify > Border: After you made a selection you can apply a border on it. Modify > Smooth: This will make the corners of your selection smooth. You can configure the outcome by modifying the radius. Modify > Expand: In here you can expand the selection from it'suttings. It will start expanding from the boundary's of the previous selection. Modify > Contract: This is the opposite of Exapand, just try and learn. Grow: This has basicly the same outcome as with the CTRL+LELT MOUSE function.  Similar: Using similar, the selection expands to include both layers. Transform selection:  Now you can transform the selection, duh :).  Save selection: Maybe you made a very difficult selection, and you want to save it, connect it on a file, and use it again after rebooting for example.  Load selection: With this you can open a saved selection anytime, just try it.  We are now at the end of the tutorial. This tutorial was about the basics of Photoshop using the Selection Tool generally. Hopefully you've learned something, but the most important thing is that you can SEE what you can DO with this powerful tool, and I know for sure that there will be a time that you'll use one of the functions mentioned above! |
| This tutorial is written by: rakker |
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