Make Really Precise Selections?

The king of all selection tools (well, in my mind anyway) is the Pen tool (P), because it makes precise selections, which can be easily adjusted after the fact. Best of all, it makes perfect curves around objects, which is a bigger deal than it sounds. There are actually five Pen tools, but you’ll use the regular Pen tool about 95% of the time. It kind of works like a “connect-the-dots” tool, in that you click once to choose your starting point, then you move your cursor somewhere else and click again, and it draws a straight line between those two points (perfect for selecting a wall or a box or anything with straight lines). If you come to a part of the object you’re selecting that has a curve to it (imagine you’re selecting a camera—parts of it are straight, but the top and the lens are round), just click-hold-and-drag, and as you drag, a perfect curve appears. Two little handles appear that let you adjust the exact amount of curve later (you adjust your curve after you’ve made it all the way around the object). That’s basically how the Pen tool works: Click-click-click makes straight lines; click-hold-and-drag makes a curve. When you get around the object, back to the first point where you started, you’ll see a tiny circle appear in the bottom-right corner of the Pen tool’s cursor. That lets you know you’ve come “full circle.” Click directly on the first point and it connects the last point to it, so the whole thing is connected. However, what you now have isn’t a selection, it’s a path—straight lines and curves that are not flashing (well, not yet anyway). To turn that path into a selection, press Command-Return (PC: Ctrl-Enter). On the next page, we’ll look at how to adjust that path before you turn it into a selection.