Selecting Areas Using the Lasso Tools 97
Making Selections by Color 100
Using the Selection Brush Tool 104
Photoshop Elements offers many sophisticated options for enhancing and retouching your image. Those options include colors, filters, resizing tools, vignettes, and all sorts of special effects. But before you can start tinkering, you need to learn how to make selections. Once you select a specific area of an image, you can change its color, copy and paste it into another image, or change its size and rotation.
You can also use selections to create a protective mask for specific portions of an image. It’s easy to select one area of an image, apply a change to the rest, and keep the selected area untouched.
In this chapter, you learn about all of the selection tools and when to choose one tool over another. You also learn how to use these tools in tandem to make the quickest and most accurate selections, depending on your specific needs.
Often, you’ll want to make changes and adjustments to just a portion of an image. For example, you may want to eliminate a distracting element in your photo, change the color of a specific item, or adjust the brightness of the background. Photoshop Elements gives you a wide variety of selection tools from which to choose.
The selection tools are all grouped near one another at the top of the toolbar . You make rectangular and elliptical selections using the marquee tools. When you select one of the marquee tools, the selection area is indicated by a row of moving dots, like the sign outside an old-style movie theater—hence the name .
You select free-form, or irregularly shaped, areas using the lasso tools . These include the regular Lasso tool; the Polygonal Lasso, which is great for selecting areas that include straight sections; and the Magnetic Lasso, which can select the edge of an area based on its color or tonal values.
The Magic Wand lets you select areas with the same (or similar) color or tonal value. This tool is probably the most difficult to master, but with a little practice it allows you to make selections that would be difficult to make with any of the marquee or lasso tools . For example, if your photo displays a field of yellow poppies, you can select them all at once, rather than having to select each flower individually.
The selection tools work well on their own, but often the area you want to edit includes all sorts of angles and edges. In these situations, you can use the tools in combination to expand and change the selection area.
You can also expand or contract a selection area using the same tool with different settings. For example, the Magic Wand allows you to alter the range of your selection by adjusting the tolerance using the options bar before making a selection .
When a photo includes an object surrounded by a large background area, it’s often easier to select the background and then invert the selection to select the object. Once the selection is made, you can copy and paste it into another composition or make any other changes .
With a selection area made, you can add to or subtract from it. Using one tool to make your initial selection and then editing the selection area using another selection tool is often easier than trying to make a perfect selection with a single tool all at once .
The Selection Brush allows you to make selections simply by dragging across any area or object in an image. Like the lasso tools, it works especially well for selecting irregular areas. Unlike the other selection tools, you actually “paint on” the selection using any of the brush shapes available in Elements’ vast collection of brush sets . This method of selection affords you great control and flexibility, although you need quite a bit of dexterity.
The Quick Selection tool works in much the same way as the Magic Wand tool—selecting areas based on similar color and tonal values. What distinguishes the Quick Selection tool from the other selection tools is the method you use to make the selections. By painting a series of scribbles and dots on the image, Photoshop Elements creates a selection area based on the color or tonal values below the painted marks . Selections are additive: As you paint, the selection grows larger; use other selection tools to shrink the area.
The Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools are the easiest and most straightforward selection tools to use. You’ll often want to move a selection area to align the area perfectly, and Photoshop Elements offers a couple of quick and simple ways to make these kinds of adjustments.
To make a rectangular or elliptical selection:
The default setting on the options bar creates a new selection. See “Adjusting Selections,” later in this chapter, for more information on other options when creating selections.
You can create a perfect circle or square selection using the marquee tools by holding down the Shift key as you drag .
To toggle between marquee tools, press the M key. In fact, this works for any tool with hidden tools—simply press the keyboard shortcut key repeatedly to toggle through all of the choices.
To select all pixels on a layer, press Ctrl+A. This creates a selection around the entire image window, and is useful when you want to make universal color corrections or add special effects to your image. (See Chapter 8 for more on working with layers.)
To reposition a selection border:
The pointer becomes an arrow with a small selection icon next to it . Note that if either the Add to, Subtract from, or Intersect with icon is active, the pointer indicates that choice and the selection can’t be moved.
The pointer arrow changes to solid black as you move the selection .
To reposition a selection border while making a selection:
You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move a selection in 1-pixel increments. Holding the Shift key at the same time moves the selection in 10-pixel increments.
Use the lasso tools to select areas with irregular shapes. The standard Lasso tool lets you draw or trace around an object or area freehand, much as you would draw with a pencil. This method takes patience, but with practice you can use the Lasso tool to make accurate selections.
The Polygonal Lasso tool is useful for selecting areas that include straight edges; you can toggle between the freehand and straight-edge modes when your object includes both irregular and straight edges.
As you trace around an area using the Magnetic Lasso tool, it automatically “snaps” the selection border to edges based on differences in color and tonal values in adjoining pixels. For this reason, the tool usually works best on high-contrast images. Experiment with the settings on the options bar to get the best results.
To select with the Lasso tool:
When you release the mouse button, the open ends of the selection automatically join together .
To keep a selection active without keeping the mouse button pressed, hold down the Alt key before releasing the button.
To select with the Polygonal Lasso:
You can also Ctrl-click or double-click anywhere to close the selection.
To select with the Magnetic Lasso:
The Magnetic Lasso tool traces along the selection border to the best of its ability and places additional fastening points along the way .
Be warned: The Polygonal Lasso tool can sometimes slip out of your control, creating line segments where you don’t want them to appear. If you make a mistake or change your mind about a line selection, you can erase line-segment selections as long as you haven’t closed the selection. Just press the Backspace or Delete key, and one by one the segments will be removed, starting with the most recent one.
To set Magnetic Lasso tool options:
• Width sets the size of the area the tool scans as it traces the selection line.
You can set this option to a value from 1 to 40 pixels. Wide widths work well for high-contrast images, and narrow widths work well for images with subtle contrast and small shapes that are close to each other.
• Contrast sets the amount of contrast between shapes required for an edge to be recognized and traced .
This option is indicated by the percentage of contrast (from 1 to 100 percent). Try higher numbers for high-contrast images, and lower numbers for flatter, low-contrast images (just as with the Width option).
• Frequency specifies how close the fastening points are to each other.
For Frequency, enter a number from 1 to 100. In general, you’ll need to use higher frequency values when the edge is very ragged or irregular .
• If you are using a stylus tablet, you can select Stylus Pressure to increase the stylus pressure and so decrease the edge width. That’s right: With the button enabled, pressing harder on the stylus will yield a smaller, more precise edge.
Press Alt and click to use the Polygonal Lasso tool while the Magnetic Lasso tool is selected. Press Alt and drag to use the Lasso tool.
The Magic Wand and Quick Selection tools allow you to make selections based on a selected color or tonal value. These tools can seem truly magical—or wildly unpredictable—at first. When you select an area of an image with either tool, it selects all of the pixels within a color or tonal range close to the pixel you’ve initially selected.
The Magic Wand tool provides options for setting tolerance (the range of color or tonal values included in the selection around the pixel where you’re clicking or dragging), anti-aliasing (smoothing), contiguousness (whether the pixels need to be connected to that first selected pixel), and whether to include all layers in the selection.
The Grow and Similar commands, found in the Select menu, can be used to expand the selection area. The Grow command expands the range of adjacent pixels, and the Similar command expands the selection based on the pixel colors.
Although the Quick Selection tool doesn’t offer the options available with the Magic Wand, it will often make an accurate selection based solely on the areas you mark with the brush.
To use the Magic Wand:
The default setting on the options bar creates a new selection.
The default tolerance level is 32 pixels. To pick colors or tonal values very close to the selected pixel, choose lower numbers. Entering higher numbers results in a wider selection of colors .
When you make your original selection with the Magic Wand, it takes a color “sample” from your image. You can adjust the sample size with the Eyedropper tool. The options bar lets you sample 1 pixel, or the average of a 3-by-3-pixel area (9 pixels total), or a 5-by-5-pixel area (25 pixels total). Whichever option is active determines how the Magic Wand establishes the sample color.
To expand the selection area:
Each time you select Grow, the selection is expanded by the tolerance amount displayed on the Magic Wand options bar .
To include similar colors:
The selection is extended through the image to similar tonal values using the tolerance amount set on the Magic Wand options bar .
You can also access the Grow command by right-clicking after you have made a selection with the Magic Wand. A contextual menu appears in the image window, which includes the Grow and Similar commands plus a number of other useful selection options.
To use the Quick Selection tool:
The Selection Brush tool lets you make a selection by painting over an error; it differs from the Quick Selection tool by selecting only the areas covered by the brush’s “paint,” instead of contiguous areas of similar tonal values.
The Selection Brush tool’s options resemble those offered for the normal Brush tool. You can choose among a wide range of brush styles and sizes.
When you use the Selection Brush tool in the default Selection mode, simply click and drag through an area of your image to create a free-form, brushed selection. Unlike the other selection tools, the Selection Brush offers a Mask mode, which allows you to create a “protected” or unselected area. To work more easily with masked areas, you can control the opacity and color of the mask overlay. The two modes can be used together with great results. It’s easier to make your initial selection in the default mode, and then switch to Mask mode to tune your selection.
To make a selection with the Selection Brush:
You can either enter values for the size and hardness, or drag the sliders until you get the setting you want.
Like other brushes, the Selection Brush tool works well with pressure-sensitive tablets that let you paint more naturally.
A quick way to change the size of the Selection Brush is to press the bracket keys on your keyboard: Press [ to reduce size and ] to increase size.
To make a mask with the Selection Brush:
The default color is red, so if your selection area is also red it may be hard to see. Choose a color that works best for each image.
As soon as you select another tool, the mask overlay area changes to a selection border. The area is protected from any changes you apply to the image . If you want to modify the mask, select the Brush Selection tool again. The mask will automatically appear over the image, and you can continue to paint in additional masked areas.
The mask overlay is a very handy tool for inspecting your selections and can be used with any selection tool. Whenever you have an active selection, just click the Selection Brush tool and select the Mask option to see the masked area. When you’re done viewing it in Mask mode, choose Selection from the Mode drop-down menu.
You can probably tell by now that a little fine-tuning is needed to make selections just the way you want them. For example, imagine you’re using the Magnetic Lasso tool to trace the outline of a face, but then realize you didn’t include the ear in your selection. Rather than start again from scratch, you can add to or subtract from your selection until you’ve included every part of the image you want. Photoshop Elements even lets you select the intersection (or overlapping area) of two independent selections. This feature offers an effective solution for constructing interesting selection areas that would be difficult to create with a single selection tool.
To add to a selection:
• Using the same selection tool or after selecting another one, click the Add to Selection button in the options bar .
If the Add to Selection button is already highlighted, skip to step 3.
• Hold down the Shift key, and, if you want, select a different selection tool.
A plus sign appears, indicating that you are adding to the current selection.
To subtract from a selection:
• Select the Subtract from Selection button on the options bar, optionally choosing a different selection tool.
• Hold down the Alt key.
A minus sign appears, indicating that you are subtracting from the current selection.
The area you defined is removed from the selection .
To select the intersection of two selections:
• Select the Intersect with Selection button on the options bar and create a new selection that overlaps the current selection.
• Hold Alt+Shift and create a new selection that overlaps the current selection. An X appears, indicating that you are selecting an area of intersection.
To deselect the current selection:
From the Select menu, choose Deselect, or press Ctrl+D.
To reselect the last selection:
Choose Select > Reselect, or press Ctrl+Shift+D.
To delete a selection:
Choose one of the following methods:
• From the menu bar, choose Edit > Cut, or press Ctrl+X.
• Press Delete.
When you delete a selection, the portion of the image within your selection disappears entirely, leaving a hole in your image . If you accidentally delete a selection, choose Undo from the Edit menu or press Ctrl+Z.
To hide a selection border:
From the View menu, uncheck Selection, or press Ctrl+H.
Sometimes, after you’ve made a selection, you want to hide the selection marquee while you edit the image; this prevents the selection border from obscuring your view. Be sure to press the same keyboard shortcut to display the selection once you’re done—otherwise, you might lose track of it.
Selections often work best when their edges are smooth, instead of hard. Anti-aliasing adds blended pixels to create a smooth edge instead of a stairstepped or jagged edge . Most selection tools offer an Anti-Alias checkbox in the options bar. That option is usually checked by default, and you almost always want to leave anti-aliasing enabled. When compositing images (combining several pieces into one), anti-aliasing smooths the border between elements.
Feathering blurs the edges of a selection. Set the amount of blurring on the options bar in the Feather box. Unlike anti-aliasing, which affects just the very edge of a selection, feathering creates a more dramatic, soft transition or halo effect around an image. Depending on the image selection, you may want to experiment with different feathering settings, because some detail is usually lost around the edges of a feathered selection.
To smooth jagged edges with anti-aliasing:
The Rectangular Marquee tool’s edges are composed of straight right angles, so no anti-aliasing is necessary. A rectangle selection’s edge can still be softened with the Feather option.
Anti-alias is checked by default on the options bar. If you unchecked the option, check it before making the selection.
The resulting selection edge is automatically smoothed, with no jaggies .
To feather the edge of a selection:
The resulting edge appears blurred, based on the number you entered for the Feather option .
You can apply feathering after you make a selection, unlike anti-aliasing. With your selection active, from the Select menu choose Feather or Refine Edge, and then enter a feather radius.
You can also apply feathering effects to your image by applying the Vignette effect, available in the Effects panel. For more detail, see “Applying Filters and Effects” in Chapter 9.
You can make subtle—or not so subtle—changes to a selection border. The Border feature lets you change the width of the selection border. The Smooth command smooths out a jagged or irregular selection edge. To increase or reduce the size of a selection, use Expand or Contract. (In the Refine Edge dialog box, Expand/Contract is a slider from –100% to 100%.)
To change the width of the border:
The selection border changes based on the number you enter .
To smooth the edge of a selection:
The radius values range from 1 to 100 and define how far away from the current edge the selection will move to create a new, smoother edge.
To expand or contract the selection area:
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