OER Faculty Development Workshop:

PHOTOSHOP® II: Selections

presented by Computer Based Education Department

Director: Christopher Cimino

Instructors: Peter Schmidt

Adam Hochman
Julianna Nova
Xiaoen Peter Shen
Selections
What is a selection?
The active area of an image.

Inside this area you can: cut, copy, paste, paint, erase,use a filter, adjust the color/contrast and much
more.

How to use a Selection:

Select a selection tool from the toolbar, Click and drag anywhere. A marquee will be created. The area enclosed
is the selected area. With the selection you can do many things, such as copy, cut, transform, move, change
colors.

Can move selection by remaining with the selected tool and clicking INSIDE the selection area.

Class Exercise:
go to FILE>NEW

and create a blank file (make it at least 600x400

pixels, or 4” wide), make the background white.
ip

Take the first selection tool, which is a rect-

angle.

Click on the new documents background, and

drag while depressing the mouse key.

Let go. That is a selection area.

Go back to the tool bar, click and hold down the

mouse key. The Elliptical Marquee tool should
appear. Move the mouse over that symbol and
let go.

Now click and drag on the image. A marquee

should appear when you let go.

Try moving the selections around.

PHOTOSHOP® Elements Interface on an Apple Computer.

 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
 In this handout we also include notes for Photoshop CS.

This is because many participants in class already own a

copy of Photoshop.

The working methods and tools for PHOTOSHOP® Elements

and PHOTOSHOP® CS are very similiar.

Where there are differences, we will point them out. Otherwise

we will use the phrase PHOTOSHOP®.

Also please note that older versions of either program will still
have similiarities to what we are talking about here,but the in-
terface will be different.

Developing skill with the Selection Tools and Methods are nec-
essary to take advantage of the image editing power of PHOTO-
SHOP®.

There is a lot of material to cover however we will go over in

class any basics.

This class is intended to introduce to you the various selection

tools and methods available in PHOTOSHOP®.

Another consideration if you plan on spending significant time using PHOTOSHOP® is to invest in a good mouse or
tablet/stylus. The average mouse attached with a cable will quickly frustrate most users trying to “draw” a line.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 
Selection Tools: KEY COMMANDs

OPTION=MAC
Rectangle Marquee: ALT=Windows

The Rectangle Tool selected on the Rectangle / Ellipse Options

tool bar, and the option bar indicat-
ing that selection. Option/Alt center start of shape.

SHIFT
Create Square/Circle

SHIFT+ OPTION/ALT
SpaceBar: While holding mouse key
down can move selection around.
To make a Square
(hold SHIFT and drag)

Ellipitcal Marquee: Ellipse Hint:

Creates Circle shapes. Perfect for
creating a round selection.
Drag Guides (using VIEW>RULERS)
And create a box in area you want
to position a circle. Note that the
option bar is functionally the same.

TOOL OPTION BAR:

This is where you check and adjust your current tool’s settings.

Marquee Options:
When the a selection tool is the current tool, the option bar displays its settings.
First the bar shows you the symbol of the current tool. [a]
Then the type of selection: [b] [New selection, Addition, Subtraction, Intersect].

a b

 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
Feather:
Setting for transparency of edge while creating a selection (can feather after a selection). The Marquee with a
feathered selection does not represent the edge, Feathering works on both sides of the marquee, so the mar-
quee shown is in the middle of the edge.

Anti Alased:
If not checked you will have jagged edges.
It’s a one pixel border that will blend with surroundings.

Style Menu:
Normal: Shape drawn without restraints

Aspect Ratio:
ie 2:1 If you want to create a shape with a fixed ratio between Height and Width.

Fixed Size:
ie 40 pixels. Note with fixed size, once let go of mouse, you can move selection around.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 
 Remember to Press the Mouse button
down, and wait for the dialog box to
appear, then while still holding the
mouse key down, move over to the
tool symbol you want to select and
let go. The column should now show
your selected symbol, and it will be
the current tool.

***NOTE: Only tools with the small

arrow in the lower right corner have
other tools to select in that box slot.

In PHOTOSHOP® CS hold mouse down over the Rectangle and you

will see the shape selection tools available.

In Elements you do not have the row shapes

The option bar is functionally the same in both Elements and CS.

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LASSO TOOL
Drawing marque around irregular
shapes.
It is more forgiving in connecting
to the starting point, always draw-
ing a straight line to it if you do
not close the selection yourself.
LASSO-
Straight lines can be made by
holding down the (OPTION/ALT)
while the key is pressed each
mouse click creates (connects) a
straight line.
You will see the tool symbol
change from LASSO to Polygonal
Tool.

POLYGONAL LASSO TOOL

With this tool you can create lines that follow the contours of what you
are tracing.
HINT: With the Polygonal tool,
You can switch to freehand form by (OPTION/ALT). Note that the sym-
bol changes to the Lasso Tool.
Holding down the shift key restrains the tool to create right angles only.

MAGNETIC LASSO TOOL

Polygonal & Magnetic Lasso

Options Settings:

Width: Distance from edge to

make path(marque)

Edge Contrast – use a high num-

ber for high contrast edges (well
defined).
Feather – softens edge of selection
double clicking anywhere closes
the selection immediately. (you’ll
see a straight line to the origin of
the selection if you are not nearby.

Frequency – the frequency with

which points are added to selection
path.
Drawing the Selection -
You can change the tool while the Magnetic Lasso is the selected tool
from the tool bar.

Hold down the (OPTION/ALT) and click to use the polygon tool.
(SHIFT+OPTION/ALT) contrains the lines to 45,90 and straight.
(OPTION/ALT) and drag the mouse with the mouse down, changes the
tool to a lasso

Press & release the command key, PS will close the selection for you.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 
MAGIC WAND TOOL

Selections based on pixel color.

Excellent for picking solid colors from an image.

Tolerance; How close to the selected pixel color to select.

Color: Unless you are doing work for color separation, make sure you are in RGB mode not CMYK mode.
PHOTOSHOP® uses channels- Red, Green and Blue to make all the colors you see in an image.

“RGB”. Each color in a channel can be seen as a gray scale of 0-255.

ie; In Grayscale there are only 256 grays, numbered 0-255. If the wand is used to
select a gray color, and its tolerance was set to 0, it would only select that color

If the tolerance was set to 10, it would select all the colors 10 down and 10 up from
that number

So if clicked on a color that has an index number of 100 with a tolerance of 10, you would get all grays num-
bered
90 – 110

If you set the tolerance to 255, you get everything in the image.

You can restrict the selection by picking thecontiguous option.

So I could click on an image with the magic wand and

the selected pixel may be 122 – red, 185- green, 220-
blue.
With a tolerance of 10 , your selection range will be:
111 – 132 Red, 175-195 Green, 210 – 230 Blue.

Here is a selection made by clicking in the middle

orange ( 253 - red, 180 - green, 4 - blue) area with a
tolerance of 5 and contiguous.

 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
Here is a selection made by clicking in the white area, Tolerance set to 5 and NOT contiguous.

If it were contiguous the numbers would not be selected.

With the Tolerance set to 100 the edge marquee is now closer.
If the tolerance were set to 255 the entire image would be selected.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 
PHOTOSHOP® Elements Only Selection Tool:
Selection Brush Tool;
It acts like a paint brush, creating a closed selection as you drag it
across an image.

On the option bar you can change it to a

MASK.
A mask protects the image area under
the mask, it is also naturally the inverse
of the selected areas of the image.

PHOTOSHOP® CS Only Selection Tool:

Single Row Marquee Tool.
Single Column Marquee Tool.

These tools select a single pix width row or column across the image.

This is a single column row that was then filled with gray using the paint bucket.

10 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
SELECTION REFINEMENT
Keyboard commands:
Selection type OPTIONs:
To select everything:
Mac:COMMAND-A
New Selection (default) Win: CTRL-A
It’s the first option on the 4 symbols.
To deselect everything:
Mac:COMMAND-D
Add to Selection - Win: CTRL-D
Click on 2nd from right in options box, and all your selections will be in
addtion to each other.
OR
Hold down the shift key while you create your additional selections.
Keyboard Mouse Commands:
Subtract from Selection –
Click on the 3rd box to chose the remove selection option. Then your Add to Selection (SHIFT) +
next selections will remove parts of the original selection. CLICK and drag
OR
Hold OPTION/ALT while using your selection tool. It will have a minus Subtract from Selection (hold down
sign on it and you can remove parts of your original selection. OPTION/ALT) + CLICK and drag
Intersect with Selection –
Gives you only the OVERLAPPING parts of the selections you made.
It is the last option on the right of the small options bar with union
symbols.

OR
SHIFT-OPTION/ALT to change your current selection tool.

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SELECTION MENU
ALL
SELECT>ALL selects the entire document.
Useful if you pasted a larger image into an existing document and want to trim it. Or you want to
copy or cut it out for pasting.
COMMAND/CTRL-A is the keyboard equivalent.

DESELECT
Whenever you want to turn off a selection.
The keyboard command is more useful;
COMMAND/CTRL-D.

RESELECT
SHIFT-COMMAND/CTRL-D to reselect a selection (previous one).

INVERSE
Useful command. Especially useful for isolating desired areas in an image by selecting what you don’t want
than SELECT>INVERSE to create the desired selection.
In this image the magic wand was used to select the white background, when the inverse command was execut-
ed the boxes in the image were selected.

FEATHER
This sets the feathering for the current selection only.
Its safer than using the options setting for a selection tool. It is recommended that you leave the feather rate set
to 0 on the options bar, and when you want to feather a selection, use the SELECT>FEATHER option.
OPTION-COMMAND-D on MAC brings the Dialog Box, ALT-CTRL-D on Windows.

MODIFY
SELECT>MODIFY brings up a dialog box with the following choices:

Border-
Useful for removing “Halos” on an image. The marquee will be the halfway mark within the border.

Smooth-
Will round off sharp corners.

Expand-
Enlarges current selection, but may try to cut corners in straight edged selections. This produces rounded cor-
ners on rectangular shapes.

Contract-
Reduces size of selection. PS will try to maintain selections shape.

12 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
GROW
This command is dependent on the options setting of the magic wand tool. It operates in a similar way. It will
expand a selection only for colors similar to the ones in the current selection. But its restrained similar to having
contiguous selected.

SIMILAR
Same as GROW but it will expand a selection across an entire image.
Selection area before command.

The command.

The result.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 13
LOAD SELECTION

You can save selections to reuse, and SELECT>LOAD SELECTION brings up the menu where you can pick
what saved selections you want to load.

SAVE SELECTION

When you spend a lot of time making a selection, you may not want to have to do it again, so saving the selec-
tion becomes an option. Your project might also benefit from using the same selection again for different opera-
tions. So Saving the selection can be a useful thing. The saved selections stay with the document. And the docu-
ment will be a PHOTOSHOP® format document. If you do a save as JPEG PHOTOSHOP® won’t like that and
give you an error message, saying file must be saved as a copy and the filename field in the save dialog box will
have your filename with “copy” stuck in.

Note that the SAVED selections stay with your document, and only then when it is saved in the PSD format.

PHOTOSHOP® Elements Only:

DELETE SELECTION
Removes selections from the Document. In CS you need to only look in your channels, and trash any selections
you do not want.

In PHOTOSHOP® CS
The Select Menu has “TRANSFORM SELECTION” & “COLOR RANGE”.

In PHOTOSHOP® Elements The Select Menu has “DELETE SELECTION”

14 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
PHOTOSHOP® CS only: Version Update;
PHOTOSHOP® CS2 has
changed the wording “bound-
TRANSFORM SELECTION – ing box” to
Allows you to modify your selection. Skew, Rotate, Resize. “Show Transform Controls” on
Here is a sample exercise to see for yourself; the options bar for the MOVE
tool.
ABC Block.

If I want to rotate the B to line up with A & C. I want to

use the rectangle marquee to select the B box.

Since it is on an angle I can create a standard box and use the SELECT>TRANSFORM command to modify the
selection to fit over the B box.

The marquee will become a bounding box that can rotate, resize and reshape.

I will need to turn off the

bounding box after refining
the selection, clicking on the
tool again.

Now I can reposition the Letter by selecting and rotating with the MOVE tool.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 15
PHOTOSHOP® CS only:
COLOR RANGE:

Essentially acts like the magic wand, but more powerful.

With its dialog box you can increase or decrease the selection based on “fuzziness” Eyedropper tools are avail-
able to add to or decrease to the selection.

The preview is great for seeing the selection in either a Grayscale, Black / White Matte, or a MASK.

After clicking OK this is the selection marquee

16 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
Alternate Selection Methods

Crop Tool:

Allows selection. For resizing and rotating.

Options same in PS –CS & PSE except presets are found by mousedown on CROP symbol in the option bar. –

Only PHOTOSHOP® CS has the “Perspective” option when the Crop tool is selected.
NOTE: Crop & Straighten
Tools work best on images
scanned over 150dpi

CROP & STRAIGTEN (CS)

DIVIDE SCANNED PHOTOS (E)
This automated feature will take an image from your scanner, comprising of distinct separate pictures, and di-
vide the scanned image into individual image files.

Do Not Overlap images for this to work.

In CS FILE>AUTOMATE>Crop&Straighen Photos
In Elements: IMAGE>Divide Scanned Photos

Type Tool:
Can use the Type Tool as a Mask.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 17
PHOTOSHOP® CS Only:
Quick Mask:
You can create selections with eraser and paint brush tools using quick mask. Quick Mask has more power than
the selection brush in Elements.

The red is the masked area, which

IS NOT selected.

The paint brush was used to

smooth the selection edges, and
here an eraser is removing some
mask, expanding the selection
area.

18 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
Exercises

Lemons.
Open colors.jpg

Use the magic wand to select the white background.

Set Tolerance to 28 and check off contigous

Everything but the Lemons will be selected.

We will now isolate the colorless lemon in the middle.

Go to SELECT>INVERSE.

Now all the Lemons are selected.

Change your tool to the LASSO tool.

In the selections box [ picture ] options pick the rightmost symbol to do an INTERSECT
Now draw around the gray lemon. You only need to draw a loose ellipse around that one Lemon.

Let up the mouse, only the Gray Lemon should be selected.

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 19
 Scanner Automation
Open scannerbreakdown.jpg

Go to Image>Divide Scanned Photos

Sit back and watch Elements break the one image into multiple.

It works by looking for defined edges, and rectangle shapes. If you ran the process on the lemon image, you will
see each lemon as a new image, but poorly selected, with edges cropped off and pieces of the other lemons ap-
pearing in the image.

Mr Potato Head
Using the various selection tools, make a Potato Head (melon head).

20 OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP®
An Online version (in color) is available at:

http://cobweb.aecom.yu.edu/workshops/photoelements/OER_CBE_PS2.pdf

Other Workshops listed on our calendar at http://cobweb.aecom.yu.edu/cbe/

Contact info: Office of Computer Based Education 718-430-2870

Email us: cbe@aecom.yu.edu

Peter Schmidt : schmidt@aecom.yu.edu

Julianna Nova: nova@aecom.yu.edu
Adam Hochman: ahochman@aecom.yu.edu
Xiaoen Peter Shen: pshen@aecom.yu.edu>

OER/CBE PHOTOSHOP® 21