In this chapter we will cover what selections are and how to use selections in order to edit certain parts of your images.
Selections are a key to work with images in Pixelmator. Often, you are going to edit only certain parts of an image and don't want your effects to be applied to the entire image. Selecting the part of the image you want to edit might not be an easy task. As with most things in the real world, items aren't going to be a perfectly-shaped rectangle or circle, so making a selection can take a good amount of work and the right tools for the job. There are seven different selection tools and they are all located at the top of the Tools menu. I'll walk you through the advantages of each one of the tools and show you how to select objects quickly but also with precision. Before we talk about selecting, though, we will review a few tools that you will use to move and transform your images.
Before getting into the numerous ways that can be used to make selections, let's talk about a tool you will use alongside the selection tools. This tool is located in the same area as the selection tools and goes hand in hand with them. It's the move tool and is located in the top right of the Tools menu, or can be accessed by the keyboard shortcut V. This tool does just what it says; when you have a layer selected, it will move the layer so you can position the layer into a specific space. There are a few other options that the move tool has that are very useful. These all can be accessed under the gear icon on the top left of the image window when you are in the Move tool. These options include things such as rotating the image or flipping the photo horizontally or vertically.