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Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers Tutorials
Basic Selection Tools / Selection Tool Basics
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers / Basic Selection Tools / Selection Tool Basics)
With the addition of the Adjustment Brush with its Auto Masking Feature in Camera Raw, some Photoshop users may find that they're making selection less frequently than in the past. Nonetheless, there are some tasks that require you to make a selection; for example, when you want to create a composite of an item from one image with another image or to replace a sky or other background. And although many adjustments may be made in Camera Raw, there will still be times when you opt to use the adjustments in Photoshop but want them to affect only a portion of your image. That means understanding how to make and use selections. Photoshop has a variety of selection tools including the Marquee Tools; Rectangular, Elliptical, we won't worry about the single-row ones; the Lasso Tools, Quick Selection Tool and Magic Wand Tool and the Color Range Selection Tool that's available from the Select Menu. You can begin making a selection with any of the tools and add to or subtract from it using a different tool. I'll go into depth about how to use each tool in other movies, but for now, I want to demonstrate beginning a selection with one tool and then modifying it with another. Let me select the Magic Wand Tool and I'll begin on New Selection and I'll click and it's selected part of my bird. I'm thinking that maybe I would really rather use the Quick Selection Tool so I'll come over to the Quick Selection Tool but I'm going to choose Add to Selection. Each tool has Add to Selection or Subtract from Selection as well as the New Selection options. So when I've come over to my Quick Selection Tool and chosen Add to Selection, now when I come over other parts of the bird, I'm selecting it pretty easily. On the Toolbar with each of your selection tools, there will be the Add to and Subtract from options. In some of the tools they may look a little bit different. For example, in the Lasso Tools, this is the New Selection, that's Add to Selection, Subtract from Selection and it has another option, the Intersect with Selection but that's not very helpful for photographers. It's worth keeping the different options to begin a selection, add to and subtract from it in mind. Once you've created a selection, especially if it was time consuming, it's a good idea to save it. That way if you ever want to use it again, you won't have to take the time to recreate it. To save a selection, come up to Select, Save Selection. In the dialog that appears, give your selection a name that you're going to recognize. For example, in this one I'll call it Albatross and click OK. Leave everything else at its default setting. Just for information sake, your selection is stored in channels. See? We come down here, here's the selection. The thing is that you must save your image file in order for the saved selection to actually be saved. So if you just close the file but don't save it, the selection won't be available the next time. So let's go right now to File and you would go to Save the File. That way my selection is saved with it. I'm going to deselect my selection, which I can do by going to Select Deselect, or the shortcut is Control or Command D; Control D on a PC, Command D on a Mac. If I come back up here to Select, Load Selection, we'll see the option to load Albatross, which is stored in the channels and click OK and my selection immediately appears. To place a selection that you've just made on its own layer, let me make the Layers Panel visible, come up here to Layer, New, Layer Via Copy. And now we have a new layer that just has a selection. If I turn off the visibility of the other layer, you'll see my selection. You can also do that with the shortcut on a PC of pressing Control J and on a Mac, Command J. There are many times that placing a selection on its own layer will come in handy. For example, if you want to sharpen just the eyes of your subject or sharpen them more than the rest of your image or in this case, to sharpen the bird but not the background or make a selection and then make an adjustment and the adjustment will affect only the area that is selected. For example, if I come over here and choose Curves, I'm going to make an extreme adjustment to show you that only the selected area, my Albatross bird is being affected whether I make it lighter or darker. Now, in reality I would probably want to make a far more subtle adjustment, not such a dramatic one but the point is that you can affect just the selected area and that gives you a lot of power and control when you're working in Photoshop. These are some of the basics of using Selection Tools. Now we'll go into specifics in other movies about using each of the different selection tools and what they're best suited for.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Photographers |
| Author: | Ellen Anon |
| SKU: | 34036 |
| ISBN: | 1-935320-74-2 |
| Release Date: | 2009-09-23 |
| Duration: | 8.5 hrs / 112 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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