ICT II Lecture on PSD Chapter 3

Lecture # ____

Basic Selection Tools

The Marquee, Lasso, Magic Wand, and Type Mask tools are the essential ingredients in your selection toolkit, and they're the ones you'll be using the most in your everyday work. The Marquee tool is the most basic of all the selection tools, and we'll cover it first.

Rectangular Marquee Tool

The Rectangular Marquee tool is the first choice listed in the Marquee pop-up menu in the Tool palette. It can select only rectangular shapes. With it, you create a rectangle by clicking and dragging across your document. The first click creates one corner, and the point at which you release the mouse button denotes the opposite corner. To start in the center and drag to an outer edge, instead of going corner to corner, press Alt after you have started to drag. If you want to create a square, just hold down the Shift key after you start to drag. You can even combine the Alt and Shift keys to create a square selection by dragging from the center to an outer edge.

If you hold down the spacebar and drag around your screen while you're making a selection with the Marquee tool (but don't release the mouse button), you'll move the selection instead of changing its shape. After you have moved the selection into the correct position, just let go of the spacebar to continue editing the selection. After you've finished making the selection, you no longer need to hold the spacebar to move it. To move a selection after it's created, select the Marquee tool and then click and drag from within the selection outline.

Elliptical Marquee Tool

The second choice under the Marquee pop-up menu is the Elliptical Marquee tool. This tool works in the same way as the rectangular version, except it creates an ellipse. And it's a little bit trickier to define its size because you have to work from the "corner" of the ellipse, which doesn't really exist. Actually, you might find it easier to choose View > Show Rulers and then drag out a few guides (you can get them by dragging from the rulers) and let the "corners" snap to them.
When you click on any of the Marquee tools, their options will automatically be available in the options bar at the top of your screen. The following list describes the options you'll find in this palette:
•Feather: Allows you to fade out the edge between selected and unselected areas. I usually leave this option turned off, because I might forget that a Feather setting had been typed in previously. This one little setting might mess up an otherwise great selection. Instead, I find it much easier to make a selection and then press Alt-Ctrl-D (or just choose Select > Feather).
•Anti-aliased: Determines whether a one-pixel-wide border on the edge of a selection will blend with the image surrounding it. This provides nice, smooth transitions, and helps prevent areas from looking jagged. I recommend that you leave this check box on at all times, unless, of course, you have a great need for jaggies (sometimes they're preferred for multimedia applications).
•Style menu: Controls the shape and size of the next selection made. When the Style pop-up menu is set to Normal, your selections are not restricted in size or shape (other than their having to be rectangles or ellipses). After changing this menu to Fixed Aspect Ratio, you'll be confronted with Width and Height settings. By changing the numbers in these areas, you can constrain the shape of the next selection to the ratio between the Width and Height settings.

Single Row and Single Column Marquee Tools

The third and fourth choices under the Marquee tool pop-up menu are the Single Row and Single Column Marquee tools. These tools are limited in that they select only a one-pixel-tall row or one-pixel-wide column.

Crop Tool

Two spaces below the Marquee tool, you'll find the Crop tool. Although the Crop tool doesn't produce a selection, it does allow you to isolate a certain area of your image. Using this tool, you can crop an image, as well as resize and rotate it at the same time.

When you click and drag over an image with the Crop tool selected, a dashed rectangle appears. When the Shield Cropped Area check box is turned on, the area outside the cropping rectangle will be covered with the color indicated in the options bar and might appear to be partially transparent, depending on the Opacity setting. You can drag any one of the hollow squares on the edge of the rectangle to change its size. Also, you can hold down the Shift key while dragging a corner to maintain the width-to-height proportions of the rectangle. Anything beyond the edge of the rectangle is discarded when the image is cropped (if you haven't turned on the Hide option).

To rotate the image, you can move your cursor just beyond one of the corner points and drag (look for an icon that looks like a curve with arrows on each end). You can also drag the crosshair in the center of the rectangle to change the point from which the rectangle will be rotated. Press Esc to cancel, or Enter (or double-click within the cropping rectangle) to complete the cropping.

When the Perspective choice in the options bar is turned on (it becomes available once you've created a cropping rectangle), you will be able to move each corner of the cropping rectangle independently. This allows you to align the four corners with lines that would be level in real life but may appear in perspective in a photograph. Once you have all four corners in place, you can press Return or Enter to crop the image and correct the perspective of the image in one step.

Crop and Straighten

Even with all of Photoshop's nifty selection, transformation and crop tools, the task of scanning in bunches of photographs has, up until now, required an annoying amount of rotation, cropping, copying, and pasting. Each photo in the scan had to be individually selected, then cropped or copied and pasted to a new document. Despite your best efforts, the photos are rarely perfectly aligned; at least a few usually cant off to one side or the other a few degrees, requiring further rotation and cropping .

Lecture # ____

Lasso Tool

The Lasso tool is the most versatile of the basic selection tools. By holding down the mouse button, you can use the Lasso to trace around the edge of an irregularly shaped object. When you release the button, the area will be selected. Be sure to create a closed shape by finishing the selection exactly where you started it; otherwise, Photoshop will complete the selection for you by adding a straight line between the beginning and end of the selection.

Sometimes you'll need to add a few straight segments in the middle of a freeform shape. You can do this by holding down Alt and then releasing the mouse button (but not the Option or Alt key). Now, each time you click your mouse, Photoshop will connect the clicks with straight lines. To go back to creating a freeform shape, just start dragging and then release the Alt key.

Polygonal Lasso Tool

You can use the Polygonal Lasso tool whenever you need to make a selection that consists mainly of straight lines. Using this tool, you just click multiple areas of the image, and Photoshop connects the dots for you. If you need to create a freeform selection, hold down Alt and drag. To finish a selection, you can either click where the selection began or double-click anywhere, which will create a straight line between where you double-clicked and where the selection started.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

Whereas the Lasso and Polygonal Lasso tools are relatively straightforward, the Magnetic Lasso tool has a bunch of neat tricks up its sleeve. This tool can be a huge timesaver in that it allows you to trace around the edge of an object without having to be overly precise. You don't have to break a sweat making all of those tiny, painstaking movements with your mouse. Instead, you can make big sloppy selections, and the Magnetic Lasso will do the fine-tuning for you (you don't even have to hold down the mouse button). What's more, if it doesn't do a great job in certain areas, you can hold down Alt to temporarily access the freeform Lasso tool. However, before using the Magnetic Lasso tool, you'll want to experiment with its settings in the options bar. If you do nothing else, pay close attention to the Edge Contrast setting.

Edge Contrast

I think this setting is the most important of the bunch. It determines how much contrast there must be between the object and the background for Photoshop to select the object. If the object you're attempting to select has well-defined edges, you should use a high setting. You can also use a large Lasso tool width. On the other hand, if the edges are not well defined, you should use a low setting and try to be very precise when dragging.

If the Magnetic Lasso tool is not behaving itself, you can temporarily switch to the freeform Lasso tool by holding down Alt as you drag (with the mouse button held down). You can also periodically click to manually add anchor points to the selection edge. If you want to use the Polygonal Lasso tool, hold down Alt and click in multiple areas of the image (instead of dragging). If you don't like the shape of the selection, you can press the Delete key to remove the last anchor point. (Pressing Delete multiple times deletes multiple points.) Once you have a satisfactory shape, finish the selection by pressing Return or Enter or by double-clicking. Remember, if you don't create a closed shape, Photoshop will finish it for you with a straight-line segment.

Magic Wand Tool

The Magic Wand tool is great for selecting solid (or almost solid) colored areas, because it selects areas based on color—or shades of gray in grayscale mode. This is helpful when you want to change the color of an area or remove a simple background.
If you hold Shift while clicking with the Magic Wand tool, each click will add to the previous selection instead of completely replacing it.

Lecture # ____

Type Tool

You can use Photoshop's Type tool to create a selection by choosing the Type Mask tool, which is hanging out with the normal Type tool in the Tool palette. When you use that tool, Photoshop will show you a preview of the selection while you are editing the text, and then it will deliver a selection when you press Enter.

Refining a Selection

Selecting complex objects in Photoshop usually requires multiple selection tools. To combine these selection tools, you'll need to either use a few controls in the options bar or learn a few keyboard commands that will allow you to add, subtract, or intersect a selection.

Adding to a Selection

To add to an existing selection, either click on the second icon on the far left of the options bar (it looks like two little boxes overlapping each other) or hold down the Shift key when you start making the new selection. You must press the key before you start the selection; you can release it as soon as you've clicked the mouse button. If you press it too late, the original selection will be lost. Let's say, for example, you would like to select multiple round objects. One way would be to use the Elliptical Marquee tool multiple times while holding down the Shift key. But you might find it easier to use the choice available in the options bar because then you don't have to remember to keep any keys held down.

Removing Part of a Selection

To remove areas from an existing selection, either click on the third icon on the far left of the options bar (it looks like one little box stacked on top of another) or Alt (Windows) when you begin making the selection. If, for example, you want to create a half circle, you could start with an Elliptical Marquee tool selection and then switch over to the Rectangular Marquee tool and drag while holding down Alt to remove half of the circle.

Clicking while holding down the Alt key is particularly helpful when you're using the Magic Wand tool to remove areas of a selection. With each click of the Magic Wand tool, you can use a different Tolerance setting.
Intersecting a Selection

To end up with only the overlapped portions of two selections, click on the fourth icon on the far left of the options bar (it looks like two squares intersecting, with the overlap area colored in), Shift-Alt while editing an existing selection. We sometimes use the Magic Wand tool to select the background of an image and then choose Select > Inverse to get the objects of the selected image. However, when there are multiple objects in the image, as there are in, I often have to restrict the selection to a specific area by dragging with the Lasso tool while holding down Shift-Alt .

The Select Menu

Select menu offers you many choices that supplement the basic selection tools. Learning these features is well worth your time because they'll help you save heaps of it in your everyday work.

Select All

Select > All selects the entire document. This can be useful when you need to trim off any part of an image that extends beyond the edge of the document.
You can crop out those areas by choosing Select > All and then Image > Crop. Also, if you need to copy an entire image, you'll need to select everything, because without a selection, the Copy command will be grayed out.

Deselect/Reselect

If you're done using a selection and would like to work on the entire image, choose Select > Deselect. When you don't have a selection, you can work on the entire image. Now, if you need to use the last active selection (and there isn't a selection on your screen), you can choose Select > Reselect. This is great when you need to use the same selection over and over again.

Inverse

As you might expect, the Inverse command selects the exact opposite of what you originally selected. If, for example, you have the background of an image selected, after choosing Select > Inverse, you'll have the subject of the image selected instead. We use this command constantly, especially with the Magic Wand tool. Sometimes it's just easier to select the areas that you don't want and then choose Select > Inverse to select what you really want to isolate.

Color Range

You can think of the Select > Color Range command as the Magic Wand tool on steroids. With Color Range, you can click multiple areas and then change the Fuzziness setting (how's that for a technical term?) to increase or reduce the range of colors that will be selected.

As you click and play with the Fuzziness control, you'll see a preview of the selection in the middle of the Color Range dialog box. Areas that appear white are the areas that will be selected. The Selection and Image radio buttons allow you to switch between the selection preview and the main image. (I never actually use these two controls because I find it easier to switch to the image view at any time by just holding down Ctrl ) You can also see a preview of the selection within the main image window by changing the Selection Preview pop-up menu to Grayscale, Black Matte, White Matte, or Quick Mask.

The Eyedropper tool on the right side of the dialog box allows you to add and subtract colors from the selection. Using the Eyedropper with the plus symbol next to it is really helpful, because it allows you to click the image multiple times. With each click, you tell Photoshop which colors you want it to search for. A low Fuzziness setting with many clicks usually produces the best results.
The selections you get from the Color Range command are not ordinary selections, in that they usually contain areas that are not completely selected. For instance, if you're trying to select the red areas in an image and there happens to be a flesh tone in the same image, the fleshy areas will most likely become partially selected. If you then adjust the image, the red will be completely adjusted, and the flesh tones will shift only a little bit.

If a selection is already present when you choose Select > Color Range, the command will analyze the colors only within the selected area. This means you can run the command multiple times to isolate smaller and smaller areas. If you want to have the Color Range command added to the current selection, be sure to hold down the Shift key when choosing Select > Color Range.

Feather

Unlike the Feather option in the selection tools, this version affects only the selection that's currently active; it has no effect on future selections. You can't reduce the amount of feathering with this command once it's applied. Therefore, if you apply it once with a setting of 10 and then try it again on the same selection using a setting of 5, it will simply increase the amount again. It's just like blurring an image—each time you blur the image, it becomes more and more blurry.
I prefer using this command instead of entering Feather settings directly into the tool's options bar (where they affect all "new" selections). If you enter these values directly, you might not remember that the setting is turned on days later, when you spend hours trying to select an intricate object. By leaving the tools set at 0, you can quickly press Alt-Ctrl-D to bring up the Feather dialog box and enter a number to feather the selection. Because this affects only the current selection, it can't mess up any future ones.

The problem with the Feather command is that there is no way to tell if a selection is feathered by just looking at the marching ants. Not only that, but most people think the marching ants indicate where the edge of a selection is, and that's simply not the case with a feathered selection.

Modify

The features in this little menu have helped get me out of many sticky situations. At first glance, it might not be obvious why you would ever use these commands, but I guarantee they'll come in very handy as you continue through the book. Here's a list of the commands found under the Select > Modify menu, as well as descriptions of what they do:
•Border: Selects a border of pixels centered on the current selection. If you use a setting of 10, the selection will be 5 pixels inside the selection and 5 pixels outside the selection. You can use this to remove pesky halos that appear when you copy an object from a light background and paste it onto a darker background.
•Smooth: Attempts to round off any sharp corners in a selection. This can be especially useful when you want to create a rounded-corner rectangle. It can also produce an interesting effect after you've used the Type Mask tool.
•Expand: Enlarges the current selection while attempting to maintain its shape . This command works well with smooth, freeform selections, but it's not my first choice for straight-edged selections because it usually slices off the corners.
•Contract: Reduces the size of the current selection while attempting to maintain its shape. The highest setting available is 16. If you need to use a higher setting, just use the command more than once.

Grow

The Select > Grow command will search for colors that are similar to an area that has already been selected. In effect, it will spread your selection in every direction—but only into areas that are similar in color. It will not jump across areas that are not similar to the ones selected. The Grow command uses the Tolerance setting that's specified in the Magic Wand options bar to determine the range of colors for which it will look.

Similar

The Select > Similar command works just like the Grow command except that it looks over the entire document for similar colors. Unlike the Grow command, the colors that Similar selects don't have to touch the previous selection. This can be very useful when you've selected one object out of a group of same-colored objects. For example, if you have a herd of gray elephants standing in front of a lush green jungle, you can select the first elephant and then use Select > Similar to get the rest of the herd (provided, of course, that they're all a similar shade of gray).

Transform Selection

After making a selection, you can scale, rotate, or distort it by choosing Select > Transform Selection. This command places handles around the image. By pulling on the handles and using a series of keyboard commands, you can distort the selection as much as you like. Let's take a look at the neat stuff you can do with Transform Selection:
•Scale: To scale a selection, pull on any of the handles. Pulling on a corner handle will change both the width and height at the same time. (Hold the Shift key to retain the proportions of the original selection.) Pulling on the side handles will change either the width of the selection or its height, but not both. This can be a great help when working with elliptical selections because it lets you pull on the edges of the selection instead of its so-called corners.
•Rotate: To rotate the image, move your cursor a little bit beyond one of the corner points; the cursor should change into an arc with arrows on each end. You can control where the pivot point of the rotation will be by moving the crosshair that appears in the center of the selection.
•Distort: To distort the shape of the selection, hold down the Ctrl key and then drag one of the corner points. Using this technique, you can pull each corner independently.
•You can also distort a selection so that it resembles the shape of a road vanishing into the distance. You do this by dragging one of the corners while holding down Shift-Alt-Ctrl.
•To move two diagonal corners at the same time, hold down Alt-Ctrlwhile dragging one of the corner handles.
•Finalize your distortions by pressing Enter (or by double-clicking inside the selection). Cancel them by pressing Esc.
You can right-click while transforming a selection to choose the type of distortion you want to perform.

Lecture # ____

Quick Mask Mode

Quick Mask mode can show you what a feathered selection really looks like and can also help create basic selections. The quick-mask icon is located directly below the foreground and background colors in your Tools palette. When the left icon is turned on, you are in Standard mode, which means you create selections using the normal selection tools, and they will show up as the familiar marching ants. The right icon enables Quick Mask mode, and that's where selections will show up as a translucent color overlay.

To see how it works, first make a selection using the Marquee tool, and then turn on Quick Mask mode by clicking on the right icon under the foreground and background colors (or just type Q to do the same thing). In Quick Mask mode, the selected area should look normal and all the nonselected areas should be covered with a translucent color.

Now that you're in Quick Mask mode, you no longer need to use selection tools to modify a selection. Instead, you use standard painting tools and paint with black to take away from the selection, or white to add to it. When you're done modifying the selection, switch back to Standard mode and you'll be back to marching ants.
Now let's see what feathered selections look like in Quick Mask mode. Make another selection using the Marquee tool. Next, choose Select > Feather with a setting of 10, and then switch to Quick Mask mode and take a look. Feathered selections appear with blurry edges in Quick Mask mode. This happens because partially transparent areas (that is, ones that are more transparent than the rest of the mask) indicate areas that are partially selected (50% transparent means 50% selected).
The confusing part about this process is that when you look at the marching ants that appear after you switch back to Standard mode, they only show you where the selection is at least 50% selected. That isn't a very accurate picture of what it really looks like. But in Quick Mask mode, you can see exactly what is happening on the image's edge. So, if you want to create a feathered selection in Quick Mask mode, just choose a soft-edged brush to paint with. Or, if you already have a shape defined, choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, which will give you the same result of feathering but will show you a visual preview of the edge.

Shades of Gray

Try this out. Turn on Quick Mask mode—you don't need a selection to begin with. Type D to reset the foreground color to black, and then Alt-Backspace to fill the Quick Mask. Now paint within the Quick Mask with 20% gray (you can use the Color Picker palette to choose grays). Then turn off Quick Mask mode and paint in the selected area with bright red. Now choose Select > Deselect, lower the opacity of the painting tool to 80%, and paint with bright red. Your reds should look exactly the same. That's how Photoshop makes a selection fade out—by simply lowering the opacity of the tool you are using. This can sometimes be confusing, though, because the marching ants show up only where an image is at least 50% selected. So, try this one on for size. Turn on Quick Mask mode and paint with 49% gray, and then paint in another area with 51% gray. Then go back to Standard mode and paint across the area. Only the areas that are at least 50% gray show up as marching ants, but the other areas are still selected, even though the marching ants don't show up in those areas. Now turn on Quick Mask mode, reset the foreground color by typing D, type Alt-Backspace to fill the Quick Mask, and then paint with 55% gray. Now go back to Standard mode, and you'll get a warning message.

We really haven't done anything fancy yet, so let's try something fun. To start with, you have to remember that when you work in Quick Mask mode, Photoshop treats the selection as if it is a grayscale image that you can paint on. That means you can use any tool that is available when working on grayscale images. So select an area using the Marquee tool, turn on Quick Mask mode, choose Filter > Distort > Ripple, and mess with the settings until you've created something that looks a little kooky. Finally, go back to Standard mode and see what you've got. You can create infinite varieties of fascinating selections with this simple technique.
You can also convert a logo or sketch into a selection using Quick Mask mode. All you need to do is copy the image, turn on Quick Mask mode, choose Edit > Paste, and then choose Image > Adjustments > Invert. If the logo was in color, you might end up with shades of gray (which will look like shades of red in Quick Mask mode). In that case, you'll need to choose Image > Adjustments > Levels and pull in the upper-right and upper-left sliders until the image is pure black and pure white. Once everything looks right, turn off Quick Mask mode and you'll have your selection.
Now let's figure out how to "unfeather" a selection using Quick Mask mode. Remember, a feathered edge looks like a blurry edge in Quick Mask mode. All you have to do to remove that blurry look is to then choose Image > Adjustments > Threshold. This will give the mask a very crisp, and therefore unfeathered, edge.

Selections in Quick Mask Mode

You can even use a selection to isolate a particular area of the Quick Mask. A selection in Quick Mask mode can help you create a selection that is only feathered on one side. To accomplish this, turn on Quick Mask mode, type D to reset the foreground color, and then type Alt-Backspace to fill the Quick Mask. Next, choose the Marquee tool and select an area. Now use the Gradient tool set to Black, White (the third choice from the left in the gradient presets drop-down menu) and create a gradient within the selected area. Once you're done, switch off Quick Mask mode. Now, to see exactly how this selection will affect the image, choose Image > Adjustments > Levels and attempt to lighten that area by dragging the lower-left slider.

Color

Photoshop also allows you to switch where the color shows up. You can specify whether you want the selected or unselected areas to show up. To change this setting, double-click on the quick-mask icon and change the Color Indicates setting. Photoshop uses the term Masked Areas to describe areas that are not selected.
You can change the color that is overlaid on your image by clicking the color swatch in the Quick Mask Options dialog box. The Opacity setting determines how much you will be able to see through the Quick Mask.