Harnessing the Power of Photoshop Selections
- Basic Selections 101 with Lab
- Introducing the Marquee Tools
- Rounding Up the Lasso Tools
- Getting the Best Selections (in the Least Amount of Time)
- Let's Lasso Somebody
- Saving and Loading Selections
- Magic Wand Tool Magic
- The Layer Mask
- Replacing an Overcast Sky
- Making a Quick Panorama Using Selections
- Summary
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
All photo-editing work can be lumped into two general categories: You are working on the entire image (removing a color cast, cropping, rotating, and so on) or you are working on a portion of an image, perhaps removing backgrounds from people or objects, creating special effects like a soft focus background, or doing any of a host of other common tasks. Photoshop provides an assortment of tools for selecting the portion of the image with which you want to work.
Basic Selections 101 with Lab
The selection tools in Photoshop have the unique purpose of defining the part of the image you want to use. The area you define is called a selection, and all the tools you use to make the selections are known as selection tools. Simple enough, eh? The number of selection tools may not seem so simple at first, however; in fact, if you are new to Photoshop, the choices may seem overwhelming. This chapter will help you get a handle on which tool to use in different circumstances and show you basically how the tools work.
The concept of selection is something we work with all the time—perhaps without knowing it. If you have ever used a stencil in Photoshop, you have used a selection. The stencil allows you to apply paint to one part of the material while protecting the rest. Another example of a selection that is closer to home (literally) is using masking tape to mask off the parts of a room where you don't want to paint (which for me would be the whole room). Selections in Photoshop act just like a stencil or masking tape when it comes to applying an effect to a selected part of an image. Now that you've got the concept, let's look at the most basic of the selection tools—the Marquee tools.