The Tool Bar — Photoshop’s most handy bag of goodies. With the effective use of each tool, one can almost fully manipulate any photo or design to their heart’s desire. Let’s begin with the selection tools.
The Move Tool
Just as the name implies, this
tool allows you to move or position your selected work. You may find yourself
going back to this tool a majority of the time, so you’ll definitely want to
keep this one on standby.
The Marquee Tool
With this tool, you will have
the ability to select either your complete design or even a mere portion to
perform any task you may need. Whether you need to cut out a piece of your
design or change its color, the marquee tool is fairly simple to use. As an
added bonus, it also comes with several different ways to make your selection
needs a bit more convenient. You can access these extras by simply clicking and
holding down the marquee tool icon.
Rectangular Marquee Tool
This tool will allow a “rectangular”
selection to any portion of your design. You may also hold shift while
expanding your selection, if you wish to keep it proportioned.
Elliptical Marquee Tool
This will select any portion
of your design in an “elliptical” shape. By holding shift, you can achieve a
true circular selection.
Single Row Marquee Tool
This will select any number of
rows of pixels within your image.
Single Column Marquee Tool
This will select any number of
columns of pixels within your image.
Lasso Tool
This is yet another (more
efficient) selection tool. With this, you may select any organic shapes within
your image. For example, say you would like to select the outline of your body.
However, you find that your marquee tool seems to only select basic shapes
(squares, circles, etc.) and you desperately need to make an outline of
yourself. What do you do? You use the Lasso Tool.
Using it like a pencil, you
will make your selection by holding down your left mouse key and outline your
desired image. Although, if you find that you don’t have a steady hand, you can
find other options that may suit you.
Magnetic Lasso Tool
This is similar to the
original Lasso Tool, only a bit easier. Instead of worrying about whether or
not you followed the outline of your image, it will draw a selection that
magnetizes to the nearest outline.
Polygonal Lasso Tool
Essentially the same as the
original Lasso Tool, except instead of holding down your left mouse key, it
only requires a few clicks around your image to obtain nice straight edges.
The Magic Wand Tool
As one of my favorite selection
tools, it is among the easiest to use. By clicking on any part of your image,
it will select the entirety of the area. However, the Magic Wand Tool isn’t
always the most accurate. If you find that your selection hasn’t been completed,
holding shift and clicking on the rest of your desired selection may fix that
problem.
The Quick Selection Tool
This is by far my absolute
favorite selection tool to use. With the Quick Selection Tool, you can select
any basic or organic shape within your image by simply holding down your left
mouse key and dragging your tool around your desired image to make your
selection. However, you want to be sure you’re under the proper settings. As a
feature of the Quick Selection Tool, you’ll find several modes on your Options
Bar. They are the New Selection mode,
Add to Selection mode, and Subtract from Selection mode.
New Selection Mode
This is your basic mode to
create a selection.
Add to Selection Mode
This will be your default when
choosing the Quick Selection Tool. This feature will allow you to add any area to your selection as you
drag across your image.
Subtract from Selection Mode
This feature
will remove or subtract any of your
selection from an image. The same rules apply—drag over your image if you would
like to remove some of your selection.
This concludes our Photoshop
lesson on selection tools. Next week we’ll be discussing Shape Tools and the
Pen Tool. See ya then!
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