Modifying Selection Borders

You can make subtleor not so subtlechanges to a selection border with four options found on the Select > Modify menu (Figure 4.65). The Border command lets you change the width of the selection border. The Smooth command smoothes out a jagged or irregular selection edge. To increase the size of a selection, use the Expand command. To reduce the size of a selection, use the Contract command.

Figure 4.65. Choose Select > Modify to use the Border, Smooth, Expand, and Contract tools.

To change the width of the border

1.	Make a selection in your image with any of the selection tools.
2.	From the Select menu, choose Modify > Border.
3.	Enter a value for the border width. The selection border changes based on the number you enter (Figure 4.66). Figure 4.66. The Border command lets you control the width of a selection border. In this example, I applied a white fill to a 10-pixel border (left) and a 30-pixel border (right).

To smooth the edge of a selection

1.	From the Select menu, choose Modify > Smooth.
2.	Enter a value for the radius of the smoothing effect. 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

1.	From the Select menu, choose Modify; then choose Expand or Contract.
2.	Enter a value for the number of pixels you would like the selection to either grow (expand) or shrink (contract) (Figure 4.67). Figure 4.67. You can expand or contract the size of a selection border from the Modify menu.