How to Select Image Areas in Phoshop CS3

How to Select Image Areas

Course of Action: Create a New Document

To create a New document;

1. Choose File and click New

2. In the New dialog box, specify the desired settings

3. The click OK.

Course of Action: Make a Selection

To make a selection using Rectangular Marquee tool

1. Open the document where you want to create a selection.

2. On the Tools palette, select the Rectangular Marquee tool.

3. Position the cross hair cursor at the location where you would like to short the selection and drag to make a rectangular marquee selection.

4. If necessary, continue hold down the mouse button and the spacebar to move a selection as you draw it.

Make a Selection using Elliptical Marquee tool

1. Click and hold the Rectangular Marquee tool without releasing the mouse click and, from the flyout, select the Elliptical Marquee tool.

2. Position the cross hair cursor at the location where you would like to start the selection and drag to make an elliptical marquee selection

3. If necessary, you can hold down the mouse button and the spacebar to move a selection as you draw it.

How to make a freehand selection using Lasso tool

1. Select a lasso tool

2.  a) Click at the outer edge of the object or on the portion of the image to be selected and drag to make a freehand selection; or

     b) Hold the Alt key and click at the outer edges of the object to create a selection.

3. Release the mouse button to end the selection at the same location you began.

Make a selection based on a color using Quick Selection tool

1. Click and hold the Magic Wand tool and, from the flyout, select the Quick Selection tool.

2. Position the cross hair cursor at the location where you would like to start the selection and drag to make selection. You can also click it once if the background is a solid color, like (black, white, red etc).

3. If necessary, choose Select and click Deselect, or choose keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D to remove the selection.

Hint:

Deselection in Photoshop

Whenever you want to remove a selection, you should always choose the Deselect command in the Select menu. Unlike with other graphic application, you should not simply click in a blank space to deselect when using Photoshop. Since the entire image is made up of individual pixels, there is no empty or transparent space in a Photoshop image unless you add layers. White space is a single-layer image is simply a large area of white pixels.

Confine Selections

Sometimes it is vital that the selection area you create with the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee tools be a perfect square or circle. You can confine the marquee tools to create squares or circles by holding down Shift while using the marquee tools.

Inverse Selection

When you make selection using the selection tools, you can inverse the selection if necessary. To inverse, click Select in the menu bar and click Inverse.  For keyboard shortcut key; press and hold Shift+Ctrl+I.

Tips:

Perhaps you are not familiar with the Photoshop tools, but you want to try your hands to learn Photoshop by yourself. To know the tools and their names, point the mouse pointer on the tool in the Tools Palette, and it will display the name of that tool.