4.1. Selection Basics

What's so great about selections, anyway? Lots. After you make a selection, you can do all kinds of neat things with it, like:

• Fill it with color. Normally, the Edit → Fill command (Section 3.1.7) floods an entire layer with color, but by creating a selection first, you can color only that area. For example, you can use the Fill command in conjunction with the Rectangular Marquee (one of the bread-and-butter selection tools you'll learn about in this chapter) to create a colorful photo border (shown later in this chapter on Section 4.5.8).

• Add an outline. You can add a stroke (Photoshop's term for an outline) to any selection. For example, you can use selections to give your photo a black border (Section 4.5.8) or to circle yourself in a group photo (Section 4.5.8).

• Move it around. To move part of an image, you need to select it first. You can even move selections from one document to another, as discussed on Section 4.5.6. For example, a little head swapping is great fun after family reunions and breakups. If you want to stick your ex's head onto a ballerina's body, hop on over to Section 4.5.7.

• Resize or transform it. Need to change the size or shape of your selection? No problem: Just make a selection and then transform it into whatever size or shape you need (Section 4.5.3). Photoshop won't reshape any pixels that are in your selected area, just the selection itself.

• Use it as a mask. When you create a selection, Photoshop protects the area outside it—anything you do to the image affects only the selected area. For example, if you move the Eraser tool (see Appendix E, online at (http://www.missingmanuals.com/)) across the edge of a selection, it erases only the area inside the selection.

  Likewise, if you create a selection before adding a layer mask (Section 3.4), Photoshop loads the selected area into the mask automatically, letting you adjust only that part of the image. So selections are crucial when you need to correct the lighting in just one area (Chapter 9), or change the color of an object (see the figure on Section 8.2.4).

This chapter discusses all these options and more. But, first, you need to understand how Photoshop marks your selections.

4.1.1. Meet the Marching Ants

When you create a selection, Photoshop calls up a lively army of animated "marching ants" (shown in Figure 4-1). These tiny soldiers dutifully march around the edge of the selected area, awaiting your command. You can select part of an image, everything on a single layer, or a whole document. Whenever you have an active selection (that is, whenever you see marching ants), Photoshop has eyes only for that portion of your document—any tool you use (except the Type and Shape tools) will affect only the area inside the selection.

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Note:

Selections don't hang around forever—when you click somewhere else on your screen with a selection tool, your original selection disappears, forcing you to redraw it. If you want to save a selection to use again later, flip to Section 4.5.7.

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Here are the commands you'll use most often when you make selections:

• Select All. This command selects your whole document and places marching ants around the perimeter, which is helpful when you want to copy and paste an entire image into another program or create a border around a photo (see Section 4.5.8). To run this command, go to Select → All or press ⌘-A (Ctrl+A on a PC).

  Figure 4-1. To let you know an area is selected, Photoshop surrounds it with tiny, moving dashes that look like marching ants. Here you can see the ants running around the armadillo. (FYI, the nine-banded armadillo is the state animal of Texas. Aren't you glad you bought this book?)

  

• Deselect. To get rid of the marching ants after you've finished working with the selection, choose Select → Deselect or press ⌘-D (Ctrl+D). Alternatively, if you've got one of the selection tools activated in the Tools panel, you can click once on another part of the image to get rid of your selection.

• Reselect. To resurrect your last selection, choose Select → Reselect or press ⌘-Shift-D (Ctrl-Shift-D). This command reactivates the last selection you made, even if it was five filters and twenty brushstrokes ago (unless you've used the Crop and Type tools, which render this command powerless). Reselecting is helpful if you accidentally deselect a selection you've been working on for a long time. (The Undo command [⌘-Z or Ctrl+Z] can also help you in that situation.)

• Inverse. This command, which you run by going to Select → Inverse or pressing ⌘-Shift-I (Ctrl-Shift-I), lets you flip-flop your selection to select everything you didn't select before. You'll often find it easier to select what you don't want and then inverse the selection to get what you do want (see the box on Section 4.3.3).

• Load a layer as a selection. When talking to people about Photoshop, you'll often hear the phrase "load as a selection," which is (unavoidable) Photoshop-speak for activating a layer that contains the object you want to work with and then summoning the marching ants so they run around that object; that way, whatever you do next affects only that object. To load everything that lives on a single layer as a selection, mouse over to the Layers panel and ⌘-click (Ctrl+click) the layer's thumbnail (Section 3.1.1); you don't need to have the layer selected. Photoshop responds by putting marching ants around everything on that layer. Alternatively, you can Ctrl-click (right-click on a PC) the layer's thumbnail and then choose Select Pixels from the resulting shortcut menu.

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Tip:

Although you can find most of the commands in this list in the Select menu at the top of your screen (except for loading a layer as a selection), you need to memorize their keyboard shortcuts if you want to be smokin' fast in Photoshop.

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These next three items live in the Select menu, but they don't actually call up marching ants. Instead, they tell Photoshop to select entire layers (for the lowdown on layers, see Chapter 3):

• All Layers. Use this command if you want to select every layer in your document (so you can move several layers at one time, for example). To select all layers, choose Select → All Layers or press ⌘-Option-A (Ctrl+Alt+A).

• Deselect Layers. This command does the exact opposite of the previous one: It deselects all the layers in your Layers panel, leaving nary a layer highlighted. To run it, choose Select → Deselect layers.

• Similar Layers. Choose this command if you want to select all layers of the same kind (Section 3.1 lists the different types of layers). For example, say you want to change the font in all the Type layers in your document. Just select a Type layer and choose Select → Similar. Photoshop selects all your Type layers and highlights them in your Layers panel so you can modify them all at once. (See Chapter 14 for more on Type layers.)

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Tip:

When you move objects around with the Move tool, you can enlist Photoshop's help in selecting individual layers by turning on Auto-Select in the Options bar. As you click an object in your document, Photoshop will try to guess which layer it's on and select that layer for you.

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Now it's time to discuss the tools you can use to make selections. Photoshop has a ton of 'em, so in the next several pages, you'll find them grouped according to which kind of selections they're best at making.