Chapter 7: Making Selections

Overview

In This Chapter

• Picking the right selection tool

• Roping pixels with the Lasso tools

• Drawing straight-sided selections

• Selecting rectangular and oval areas

• Using the Magic Wand tool

• Using the Color Range command

• Deleting and moving selections

• Intersecting and feathering selections

• Smoothing and transforming selections

• Saving a selection

If you’re an old ranch hand, you may find it helpful to think of the pixels in your image as a bunch of cows. A pixel may not have any horns and it rarely moos, but it’s a cow all the same. Consider these amazing similarities: Both pixels and cows travel in herds. (When’s the last time you saw one pixel out on its own?) They’re also dumb as dirt and obstinate, to boot. And — here’s the absolute clincher — you round them both up by using a lasso.

The only difference between pixels and cows is in the vernacular. When you lasso a cow or two on the lone prairie, it’s called ropin’. When you lasso a mess of pixels, it’s called selectin’.

After you select the desired pixels, you can do things to them. You can move them, duplicate them, and apply all kinds of alterations that I describe in upcoming chapters. Selecting lets you grab hold of some detail or other and edit it independently of other portions of your image. It’s a way of isolating pixels to manipulate them.

This chapter discusses methods for selecting portions of an image. With a little practice, you can rustle pixels better than most hands rope doggies, and that’s no bull.

Remember

If you are working with an image that contains more than one layer, and you create a selection, the layer that is currently active is the only one that will be affected by the selection and any editing you do. So before you edit an area that’s selected, make sure the correct layer is selected. (To learn more about layers, turn to Chapter 8.)

Tip

The Pen tool, Freeform Pen tool, and shape tools can be used to create complex paths and shapes. A path is a temporary outline that you can convert into a selection. So, if you need to make a complex, exact selection, keep these tools (and especially the Pen tool) in mind. To find out how to create paths and convert paths to selections, turn to Chapter 16.