Now that you have learned how easy it is to move images into and out of Photoshop, we need to begin to learn how to edit them. This is accomplished in large degree with selections.
Selections are just what they seem to be--portions of the image that you have selected. There are several ways of making selections. You can use the Marquee tools, the Lasso tools, and the Magic Wand. By using the Marquee tools, you can create selections as seen in Figure 2.1. These selections then can be cut out of images, copied, moved, rotated, and much more.
NOTE: You also can create selections with Paths, but that discussion has been reserved for Day 8, "Layers."
It is important to remember that when you are dealing with selections, for better or for worse, only the area within the confines of the marquee may be edited. It is, in a sense, the only active area of the canvas. Thus, after a selection is made, you can perform whatever action you desire, but before you move on, the selection must be turned off, or deselected, by clicking outside of your selection with the Marquee tool. Until you do so, you can only edit within the selection's boundaries.
Figure 2.1
A marquee selection.
NOTE: Deselection is easy to forget. You make a selection, modify it, and then expect to be able to move on to another part of the image, but you can't--not until you deselect the selected area. You can save yourself a trip to the Toolbox by just typing "M." This will activate the Marquee tool. Click once and you are ready to move onto your next task. Consult Appendix A for a full list of Toolbox shortcuts.
For the next few pages, let's turn our attention to the powerful Marquee tools.
The Marquee tools, Elliptical and Rectangular, are found in the upper left corner of the Toolbox (see Figures 2.2 and 2.3). These tools are so important to most Photoshop users that they are, at least the Rectangular one, selected by default when the application is opened.
Figure 2.2
The Rectangular Marquee tool.
Figure 2.3
The Elliptical Marquee tool.
You also can, given that the Rectangular marquee is the currently selected tool, type "M" to switch back and forth between the two. The Elliptical Marquee tool works the same way that the Rectangular Marquee tool does (see Figure 2.4).
Figure 2.4
An elliptical shaped marquee.
To experiment with its many uses, first create a new file (see Day 1 if you can't remember how). Again, give yourself some room to work. Set the dimensions at five inches square.
Selections are set up to be moved where ever you want to put them. Move your cursor into the boundaries of the selection. A small box will appear next to the cursor. This indicates that you may move your selection. Click and hold inside of the selection. While still holding, move the mouse. The selection can be moved where ever you desire.
Now that you have learned the basics of selections, we will discuss other ways of manipulating them. These are accomplished by pressing certain keys while you click and move the mouse. These are called modifier keys, which will be discussed in the next section.
Modifier keys are time-savers and then some. By simply pressing a key, you can modify the behavior of your tool. You can, for example, cut, subtract from, and add to marquees. These keys will save you time, as well as provide advanced control over how you use marquees--they can be a lot more than just squares and circles.
Modifier keys will work with either of the Marquee tools as well as both Lasso tools, which we will discuss in just a few pages.
First, notice that as you move the marquee cursor outside of a selected area it appears as a crosshair ready to make another selection. If, however, you click to make another selection, the original selection disappears, but this is easily avoided. Just as in other applications, to make multiple selections you must hold Shift while you drag (see Figure 2.5). Observe that as you press the Shift key a small (+) sign appears in your cursor. This is what I call an additive marquee. It enables you to add multiple marquees.
Figure 2.5
Making multiple selections.
Photoshop also provides the capability to subtract from marquees. Drag out a marquee and then press the Alt key. Notice that a small (-) sign appears in your cursor. Drag, while still holding Alt, into the space occupied by the first selection (see Figures 2.6 and 2.7).
NOTE: This is as good a time as any to remind you of the power and well-designed interface of Photoshop. If you can do something, such as make a selection, for instance, you can not only undo it, but you can also do the opposite--that is, what you can't do with Photoshop probably isn't worth doing. There is just not enough space in one book to cover all of the workings of this robust software, but use your imagination. Don't be afraid to try a logical modifier key. Check the help system under the Help menu.
If you can imagine it, there is a very good chance that Photoshop can do it.
Figure 2.6
First selection.
Figure 2.7
Subtracting from a marquee.
There are two ways that you can cut selections. You can use the Edit+Cut command or you can press Ctrl (Option for Macs). Note the appearance of tiny scissors in your cursor.
Figure 2.8
Before cutting.
Figure 2.9
Dragging the cut selection. Note the dark background revealed by moving the selection.
Remember to hold the Ctrl key during the whole operation. If you had any trouble, open 02file02 from the CD-ROM to see the finished image.
By now, you'll notice that the marquee drags out in the direction you pull the mouse. If you move to the right and down, the marquee follows suit. There is another option, however. By holding Alt (Option on Macintosh), the marquee pulls away from the direction you drag. Therefore, if you drag to the right and down, the marquee expands with an equivalent move to the left and up (see Figure 2.10).
Figure 2.10
Dragging a selection while holding Alt or Option.
For more advanced control over the Marquee tools, double-click the marquee tool button in the Toolbox or select Window+Show Options (see Figure 2.11).
Figure 2.11
The Marquee tool options.
In the Shape drop-down menu, you can select Elliptical or Rectangular, the same as from the Toolbox, but there are two other available options: Single Row and Single Column. These options enable you to select a single row or column of pixels. Other than that, they cannot be taller or wider, respectively, than a single pixel; they behave just as the other marquee options. They can be stroked, filled, and so on. (Stroking, filling, and many other options will be discussed in just a few pages.)
In the Styles drop-down menu, there are two options. Simply put, the Constrained Aspect Ratio means that you define, by entering height and width values, how the marquee will appear. If you enter 10 for height and 1 as width, as I have done in Figure 2.12, you will end up with a marquee that is 10 times taller than it is wide--1 width to 10 height.
Figure 2.12
Note the consistency in the width to height ratio of 1:10.
The Fixed Size option enables you to define a size for the marquee. Enter 72 by 72 and you will have the exact size for selecting one square inch of monitor real estate.
Feathering is a term that indicates a slight blurring. It is a great technique to use when you want to avoid sharp edges or abrupt color changes.
You can feather selections by specifying a desired amount in the Marquee options palette. Figure 2.13 demonstrates a feather of 5, 10, and 15 from left to right.
You won't see any evidence of feathering in the marquee itself beyond a rounding of the corners. The higher the number you enter as the feather radius, the more rounded the corners become. Feathering only takes place after you fill the selected area, because it is a gradual lightening of pixels. For a deeper look at feathering, read on. It is covered in the following section, "The Lasso Tools."
If you prefer not to specify a general feather size in the Marquee tool options palette, you can feather individual selections differently by selecting Select+Feather. In this dialog box, you can set the feather size up to 250 pixels (see Figure 2.14).
As useful as the Marquee tools and their modifier keys are, there will come times when you will have to select irregular shapes. Perhaps you might need to select a person out of a crowd, or as in this example, a flower, with all of its irregularly shaped petals (see Figure 2.15).
You can go about this in two ways. The first is more difficult up front. You can either painstakingly follow the outline of the flower with the Lasso tool (which is difficult, but if you can do it, that's great). The other option is for those of us with unsteady hands or impatient brains. Photoshop has taken us into consideration also. Go ahead and make a less precise selection. We'll learn how to fix that later today in a special section devoted to the Magic Wand tool.
NOTE: I've found that when I am trying to make a very careful selection with the Lasso tool, and when I am using Photoshop in general, it helps to slow my mouse down. You can adjust this in the mouse section of your machine's Control Panels.
In the following tutorial, you will learn you to cut the flower out of its original image and place it into a new image with feathering (or softening) of the edges:
Figure 2.16
The flower.
Figure 2.17
The flower magnified; Lasso tool selected.
Figure 2.18
The flower selected.
If you want to have a look at the actual finished file as depicted in Figure 2.19, open file 02file04 from the CD-ROM.
Figure 2.19
Flower cut and pasted in new document.
Now, try the same technique, only this time let's feather the Lasso tool.
Figure 2.20
The Lasso tool options palette.
Figure 2.21
The feathered selection.
Notice the softly feathered edges of your selection. It adds a nice touch, and really
isn't difficult at all. Try other settings for the Feather radius. Try unchecking
the anti-alias box. (See the following note for more information on anti-aliasing.)
Open 02file04 to see the actual result. Remember this feathering technique, we'll
use it again later when we work with collages on Day 8.
NOTE: Anti-aliasing creates smooth edges or transitions in images by interpolating pixels. If you recall the images back in the Introduction that depicted singular pixels, you'll remember that pixels are square, which makes for jagged edges on any curved edge. Anti-aliasing smoothes these "jaggies" by calculating median pixel percentages and median colors and applying these to the edges.Don't take my word for it. Zoom in close to the edge of a flower petal. Notice how, up close, there are no sharp edges. The pixels blend, over an extremely small space, the color of the flower and the color of the background. This is anti-aliasing, and at normal magnification, contributes to more realistic-looking images.
The Polygon Lasso tool behaves in much the same way as the regular Lasso tool (see Figure 2.22). The difference is, as its name implies, it makes irregular geometric selections. For rough cuts, this is the tool to consider.
Figure 2.22
The Polygon Lasso tool.
Figure 2.23
Creating a selection with the Polygon Lasso tool.
Before you click anywhere else, wait. We will use this selection you have created in the following tutorials, which will demonstrate how to fill selections with color, stroke the out perimeters, and alter them using the Transformation commands.
So far, we have only dealt with creating selections, which is indeed an important part of understanding Photoshop, but now we will explore some of the ways you can really put selections to work.
Selections can be filled with color as well as other images, their outlines can be stroked, and they can be twisted into new shapes with the Transformation commands. Let's start by filling your selections.
An active selection can be filled with color or another image or texture. First, let's try filling with a color:
Figure 2.24
The Fill dialog box.
Figure 2.25
Options in the Fill dialog box.
Figure 2.26
Background and foreground colors in the toolbox.
Your selection should fill with whatever foreground color (probably black) is specified in the toolbox. (We'll cover selecting colors tomorrow when we enter the discussion of painting and drawing. For now, it is OK to just use the defaults--but you are always welcome to skip ahead.)
A number of different options are available to you in the Fill dialog box. Obviously, you can also can fill a selection with the background color or fill selections with percentages of color. Let's experiment with this and some of the techniques you learned earlier today.
NOTE: Press Ctrl/Delete to fill a selection with the background color.Alt/Delete fills a selection with the foreground color (see Figure 2.27).
Figure 2.27
A selection filled with the foreground color.
Figure 2.28
The Fill dialog box.
Figure 2.29
A circular selection filled with 50% opacity of white--gray.
Setting the opacity to 50% enables 50% of the black background to show through the
white. You should end up with a gray circle.
Keep the circle selected and we will try another technique. This one involves using a subtractive marquee.
Figure 2.30
Making a subtractive selection by pressing Ctrl.
Figure 2.31
The Fill dialog box with Background Color at 100% opacity.
Figure 2.32
Filling the subtractive selection.
As you can see, filling a subtractive selection ends up filling whatever selection you have "cut into," so to speak. Thus, if you created a circle, and then created a subtractive selection within the circle, when you filled the subtractive circle you would actually be filling the area between the two circles (see Figure 2.33 and 2.34).
Figure 2.33
How the circle appears at first (a 50% background).
Figure 2.34
Filling the subtractive selection.
Selections, however, can be filled with more than just background and foreground colors. They can be filled with images, too.
In this exercise, we will create a selection in the velvet image where we can paste the glass image (see Figure 2.35).
Figure 2.35
Glass and Velvet.
Figure 2.36
The velvet pasted into the glass image.
The Paste Into with a selection is a great way to add textures to objects. This image,
however, lacks a smooth transition between the glass and the velvet. The feather
helps, but it doesn't quite do the trick. We will take a look at making images look
realistic on Day 6, "Moving Pixel Paint."
NOTE: For those of you who might be curious, note the Layer options palette Window+Show Layers. In the thumbnail image, you can see that the original image and the image we added occupy different layers. These layers, as we will explore on Day 8, are enormously beneficial for compositing and combining images. They enable you to keep each image you add on its own, separately editable, layer.Therefore, if you make a mistake, you can simply throw that layer away without interfering with the rest of your project.
Now that you know how to fill selections, stroking selections will seem easy, and it is. Stroking a selection merely means outlining it. If you want to create the outline of a circle of square or crescent moon (using the subtractive marquee we discussed in the last section), all you have to do is select Edit+Stroke (see Figure 2.37).
Figure 2.37
The Stroke dialog box.
If your marquee has rounded edges, it is because you haven't reset the Feathering radius from the last tutorial. I suggest you return the value to 0.
You can select the width of the outline, whether you want it to fall inside, directly on, or outside of the marquee, as well as the blending mode and opacity (see Figure 2.38).
NOTE: Remember, the stroke will always appear as whatever color you have selected as your foreground color. (See Day 3, "Painting and Drawing Tools" for more information on selecting color.)
Figure 2.38
Stroked marquees.
This is the final section on selections. We won't see them again until they pop back up on Day 8 when we will discuss how to save and load them to various effects.
For the moment, however, we are going to deal with transforming selections with the commands found under the Layer menu--Free Transform and Transform. First, let's take a look at the Free Transform command.
Free Transform, found under the Layer menu, is the workhorse of the transform commands--at least as they apply to two-dimensional transformations. It adds control points to the marquee, which can be manipulated by clicking and dragging (see Figures 2.39 and 2.40).
Figure 2.39
Notice the control points.
Figure 2.40
An image rotated with the Free Transform command. You can see the background color
peeking through.
NOTE: The images used in this tutorial can be found on the CD-ROM--02file07, 02file08, and 02file09.
Marquees, and whatever image is contained within their boundaries, can be squeezed, stretched, and rotated into an infinite number of positions.
To make your transformations stick, click the toolbox. You will be prompted with the following dialog box as to whether you want apply the transformation. When you are satisfied, click Apply.
NOTE: If you Apply the transformation only to discover it is not what you wanted after all, click Edit+Undo before you take another step. After that, it is permanent--unless you choose File+Revert, which takes you back to the last saved version.
Most of the Layer+Transform commands are easily accessible and intuitive. If you want to scale your image, up or down, select the Scale command. To rotate the image, you can select the Rotate command or you can rotate by a numeric value--Rotate 180 degrees or 90 degrees CW or CCW (clockwise or counter-clockwise).
There are, however, several transformation commands that aren't as obvious. The first I would like to discuss is the Skew command.
Skewing Selections
The Skew command found under Layer+Transform+Skew enables you to twist your selection in a number of ways (see Figure 2.41 and 2.42). Just click the control points and manipulate the selection. Click in the toolbox to apply the setting.
Figure 2.41
Skewing a selection.
Figure 2.42
Another option for skewing.
Distorting Selections All the transformation tools operate very similarly. They possess subtle differences in how they can move the selection. The Distort command, Layer+Transform+Distort, moves something like the Scale command, but instead of changing the size of the image, it crushes of stretches the image (see Figures 2.43 and 2.44).
Figure 2.43
Distorting a selection.
sFigure 2.44
Another option for distorting.
Changing the Perspective of a Selection This is one of my favorite tools in the Photoshop arsenal. When you want to create an image that appears to diminish in the distance, the Perspective command can't be beat. Its movement is completely intuitive. The opposite corner of the one you drag becomes a mirror image--when you pull away, it moves away. When you move in, it, too, follows suit (see Figures 2.45 and 2.46). We'll see this tool again on Day 11, "Actions," when we work on creating 3-D images.
Figure 2.45
Using the Perspective command.
Figure 2.46
Another use of the Perspective command (with 02file05 from the CD).
Numeric Transformations This is probably the least intuitive of all the transformation tools, because instead of handles appearing on your selection which you can then drag, this offers a dialog box in which you can enter numeric values for the position, the scale, the skew, and rotation (see Figure 2.47).
Figure 2.47
The Numeric Transformations dialog box.
This is a great option for those of you lucky enough to be able to see numbers in your mind's eye. For the rest of us, we'll have to muddle along with the other tools, grateful once again that Adobe hasn't left anyone out.
The software designers at Adobe Systems must not have been able to come up with a more descriptive name for this fantastic tool, choosing instead to let it, perhaps, speak for itself--the Magic Wand. Maybe it's better that way.
Figure 2.48
The Magic Wand.
The Magic Wand is another variety of selection tool. So far we've looked at tools that select pixels based on their placement in the bitmap (the picture). The Magic Wand selects pixels somewhat differently; it selects them based on values. This enables you to cut foreground objects, such as the flower you see in Figure 2.49, out of its background.
Figure 2.49
A flower.
Because the background is all relatively the same color, the Magic Wand tool can work wonders. For an image with a more involved background, you would be better off using the Lasso tools, and then going to work with the Magic Wand.
The Wand is capable of selecting adjacent pixels based on color similarities. Its sensitivity or tolerance to color differences can be set in the options palette, shown in Figure 2.50. To open the Magic Wand options palette, either double-click the Magic Wand in the Toolbox or simply select it and then choose Window+Show Options.
Figure 2.50
The Magic Wand options palette.
The rule is easy to remember: the lower the Tolerance, the less tolerance the Magic Wand has for color differences. Thus, for example, if you set the Tolerance higher (and it ranges from 0 to 255), it will select all varieties of the color upon which you initially select.
The Magic Wand is great for removing skies and such, or focusing on central foci that sharply stand out from their backgrounds, but for selecting a face in the crowd it is terrible.
Figure 2.51
Background selections made with the Magic Wand.
Let's use the Magic Wand tool to select the flower and remove it from its background:
This should remove most of the background, but as you can see in Figure 2.52, a few pixels are left behind. Repeat the process described in the preceding steps, and then use the Eraser tool to clean up what is left behind (see files 02file11 and 02file12 on the CD-ROM for the uncleaned and cleaned up versions of the flower).
To use the Eraser tool, simply select it from the toolbox (the icon looks like an artgum eraser), and drag it over the unwanted artifacts, or junk, leftover in your image.
NOTE: Artifacts is a groovy term used to describe junk that is found in scanned images (dust and stuff on the scanner) or stuff that is left over from selections that don't get everything.
Figure 2.52
Cleaning up with the Eraser tool.
To work with the Eraser tool, you might want to increase the magnification of the image. This enables you to erase with greater precision.
NOTE: You can adjust the size of the Eraser tool by selecting Window+Show Brushes (with the Eraser tool selected in the Toolbox). The Brushes palette services the size needs of not only the Paint Brushes, but of all the tools in the second segment in the Toolbox (see Appendix B). If you need a smaller eraser, just click a smaller brush. An outline will appear around the selected brush. For more information on brushes, see Day 3.
Another way to address the situation of extracting the flower from its background involves selecting the flower with the Magic Wand tool.
Figure 2.53
Inverted Selection.
Figure 2.54
The flower removed from the background.
It looks pretty good but could use some cleaning with the Eraser tool, which will be discussed tomorrow. If you want, you can save your file with another name or simply close it, and you are done for the day.
Some of the most powerful tools in Photoshop are the selection tools. They enable you to edit selectively as well as create interesting effects with the Transformation tools.
Today you learned how to make selections, feather selections, and cut and paste selections. We reviewed the tools you will need, and learned some of the most basic, and most important, skills in Photoshop.
Try to develop a feel for when you can use selections. They can save you a great deal of time when you need to fill a space with color or image, when you need to manipulate just a piece of an image, or when you need to extract a piece of an image from a larger work.
We will refer to selections throughout the remainder of the book, so it you need to, bend a page back. See you tomorrow.
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