Adobe Photoshop CS6 Selection, Part 1

Hi everyone, Michael Brown back with you, welcome back to educator.com's Adobe Photoshop CS6 course.0000

We're talking about selections here--the most important technique in Photoshop.0007

In the intro, I showed you how selection can take an image that you've corrected as far as you can get it and improved it overall, and by isolating areas which is what selections do, and performing functions on the isolated areas, you can take that image to a much higher level.0011

They are incredibly value in this valuable.0031

In this lesson, basic selection one, I'm going to show you how to basic correct and modify selections with the basic tools--the tools being the Marquee tools which are up here--the second icon in the Toolbox, both rectangular and oval.0035

The Lasso tools which are right below that, Freehand, Polygonal which makes straight edges, and the Magnetic Lasso tool which doesn't really work very well because it ends up leaving you having to fix too many mistakes.0051

The Quick Selection and Magic Wand tools which are the fourth icon are grouped together, and we're going to take a very brief look at Quick Mask which is this icon second up from the bottom, which makes your selections visible so you can see the selection and the masked area in a visible manner.0066

And I'm going to show you how to add and subtract to a selection while you are making it.0088

There are other ways but I'm just going to show you how to use the tools themselves to add and subtract from in this lesson, so let's get started.0094

In the intro I showed you that the Marquee and Lasso are similar in their options and functionality--they're kind of linked together.0104

Quick Selection and Magic Wand are linked together.0115

The Quick Selection tool looks for edges by using texture and color to define an edge.0118

The Magic Wand selects by using and looking for areas of similar color--it's only looking for color, and a range of color.0124

The Quick Selection tools finds edges by texture and color.0134

Similar but highly different in how they are affecting the selection on different images--one works on one image, it might not another might work.0138

The Quick Mask functions allows you to see the visibility of the selection, and also you can paint to modify the selection--we'll talk about most of that in the next lesson but a little bit right here, so let's get started.0150

OK, here's a blank--actually let's use this image right here--I already have a selection on it--let me...get right here.0167

OK, we have this image, it's uncorrected.0181

The rectangular Marquee, we'll start with that--when you click and drag with the rectangular Marquee--actually it's better to use this for this.0189

Click and drag with the rectangular Marquee, you make rectangles.0198

One you've clicked and dragged and released, you now have a selected area.0203

Everything inside of the bounding little line--the moving dashed line which we call crawling ants, remember the term crawling ants.0209

Everything inside the crawling ants is active, everything outside the crawling ants is masked out, and let me show you that by doing this--let's just go ahead and take a curves, and it should darken things down...there we go.0220

Notice, everything inside of the boundary was affected, nothing outside of the boundary at all.0242

Now, that looks pretty much like a square--you could make rectangles.0251

If you hold down the Shift key, when you click and drag--Shift on either the Mac or the PC, doesn't matter how you drag, it drags squares, and it drags from that point where you started.0257

If you use the elliptical Marquee it does the same thing except it makes ovals.0271

If you hold the Shift key down there, it will pull a circle, and it did not keep the point--basically you saw we started from this point and pulled, if it was a rectangle that would be the corner.0277

It's pulling a circle that would fall within the rectangle, so you can circle if you do that, or oval if you do the other.0292

If you take either tool and hold down your Shift, Option on a Mac, Alt on a PC at the same time, click and pull outwards, the rectangle will draw the square centered at the point that you started the click from--easy to get a square right with a center on it.0299

If you do the same thing with the elliptical; Shift, Option on a Mac, Alt on a PC, click and drag, and it clicks and drags circles, so you can get an actual circle with the center right where you started the pull.0321

Now, with any active selection--active selection meaning that you see crawling ants, doesn't matter what tool it is--you can move that selection as long as it's active and you're in a Selection tool--doesn't matter which of the Selection tools.0334

When your cursor goes inside the active selection watch...it now changes to an arrow so you can click and drag the selection.0349

Let me go to that other selection--we have a rectangle here, once we go inside it (there's the arrow) I can move the selection--not the image, just the selection.0358

So you can adjust it if it's in the wrong place--let's just draw a larger one, oval, inside and move it around.0368

You can also fine tune it with arrow keys; left, right, up and down.0374

That's how you move a selection around.0380

Alright, Command or Control on a PC and the letter D de-selects...select, de-select, notice Command or Control+D.0383

Select All; Command or Control+A will select you entire image in a rectangle or bases--that's good for cutting out an entire layer and pasting it in.0393

You also have the invert to invert a selection, and color range which you're not going to do, refine mask which is going to be a big thing that we'll talk about--modify, grow similar--these are the things that are involved with a selection.0406

Saving a loading selections are important too, everything under the Select menu.0422

Alright, let's go down to the Lasso tool; the Lasso tool allows you to draw freehand selections--let's do over here, just freehand selections, and the second tool...the Polygonal Lasso tool allows you to draw straight edges selections.0426

And the way you do that is click and release either with your mouse or with your (God forbid you use it) touchpad, or hopefully you're going to use a graphics tablet--click and you notice that my pen is now above the tablet, and it's just showing me a line travelling until I reach another spot.0450

Click, another spot--click and move, click and move, click and move, click and move.0473

Now, if I hit Enter right now...it will close off that selection from where the cursor is to the starting point--watch.0478

I'm holding it above, notice I've got my finger underneath the cursor...I accidentally touched it.0491

Now moving--I hit the Enter--it closed it off, if I do the same thing and you just want to close it off in a normal manner, just move to the start point--see the little circle?0500

Once you see that circle it means you're on top of it, click and you have the complete selection.0512

OK, now, the options for the rectangular, elliptical, also for the Lasso tools, you notice, are feather, which we're going to talk about--feather being the thickness and softness of the selection edge.0518

That's why these tools are similar; they only use feather.0538

In the Options bar for both of these tools--you see these four icons, this is new selection--let's go with the Freehand Lasso tool--new selection.0543

So if I have this selection and go over here to make another one it will de-select automatically as I clicked, and now make a new selection.0555

This icon allows you to add to the selection, so if I wanted more selection, I would make more, and notice it added the two together.0564

Same thing if I do another piece, that's add to.0576

Subtract from a selection, now I just encircle and wherever I surround it--even if it's inside, it will subtract those pieces.0579

Alright, so new selection, add to, subtract from--this is intersect selections--I don't use it, it's just something you're never going to deal with, so it's either new, add or subtract for either of those tools, and feather, and refine edge which we'll deal with in a couple of lessons down the line--it allows you to adjust the edge.0591

OK, let's move on to the Magic Wand tool, and I'm going to use a sample...this image right here--let's do the Quick Selection which is on top first.0613

Quick Selection tool looks for edges using color and texture, so if we wanted to select the sky here, and the adjustments you have, here's the new selection, add and subtract, and brush size.0632

So we'll just leave it on a new, and sample all layers or auto-enhance, I don't use those, just leave them alone.0649

So we have a new selection--we want to select the sky.0655

You can adjust your brush size--bracket key up, right bracket up, left down, all you have to do is click and drag and let it go out to find the edge--don't click necessarily on the edge or we'll move further.0658

Notice it didn't do an absolute perfect job here because the color and texture--it could not detect an edge with the difference between the light blue and the white--it went all the way down to Command or Control+H 'til it found a more definite selection, so the Quick Selection tool, in this case didn't work real well.0675

In the Magic Wand which looks for areas of similar color, the tolerance is the range of color--the larger the number, the wider the range of color, the smaller the number, the narrower the range, and if you look at the sky, it's a little darker at the top than it is at the bottom, so if we have a very low tolerance...0699

And you can adjust your sample size--either a single pixel, I usually use 3x3 or 5x5 unless I'm in a really tight area to give me a little bit of range in the sample, with a tolerance of four when I click up in the sky--just click, I got a band, and that's the range of color that where I clicked with that tolerance--that's the entire range.0720

Now, with any tool the Shift key, notice the plus sign, allows you to add to a selection so now I'm going to hold the Shift key, you could also go right to that add icon as well just to have it add all the time, but I'll just leave it there, temporarily go with the Shift key, click up in that area, and notice it added with a tolerance of four.0745

We have a wider band--holding my Shift key--see the plus sign, we'll move down a little further.0772

Notice the tolerance is pulling it downward more...more, I just keep clicking, and if you notice how tightly with that low tolerance and continuing to add to it, look; it did a perfect job of finding the edge that the Quick Selection tool couldn't.0777

Now we have a little part here that's missed so we'll hold the Shift key down, don't want to get too close to the mountain but I'll click right here...and look!0801

It snapped down, and in this case, the Magic Wand tool, perfectly with a couple of clicks and a low tolerance and a sample size of 5x5, did a wonderful job of selecting that sky; really cool, huh?0808

Let me--I want to open one other image right here...just open it up--here's another sky situation, but in this one, we want to get down into the trees a little bit without carrying over.0824

So we're going to go with the Quick Selection tool and just a reasonable sized brush and all you have to do is drag through the sky...and it cooks and it got almost everything perfectly.0843

Notice how easy that was, and we hold Option or Alt--take a smaller brush size--Option or Alt, and drag back across here in the land where it missed...let it cook, it fixed that, and then if we get over here--same thing.0857

Option or Alt, stay below the blue...and right there we got a beautiful selection of the sky area--let's see how the Magic Wand would do for that one.0874

Tolerance click, Shift to add click, click, click, click--just keep clicking down.0888

We had relatively, very small tolerance--I could have gone with a larger tolerance, and it too did a pretty decent job.0895

Sometimes, one works better than the other but both, one with color, the other looking for edges is a good way.0903

Here, we'll try one more with that one--here's this flower image--we'll try the Magic Wand, let's up the tolerance to about 30, and click, and you notice in this case with the different shades of pink, it's having a little trouble and I'm doing a lot of clicks to get the entire image.0910

In this case, if we go with the Quick Selection tool, a little larger brush, and just click and drag, stay away from your edges, let it find the edges.0932

Notice that I'm just dragging through and it's popping out and really having a--missed a little spot--come across the center, but it got almost all of it in one shot, a little smaller brush size; Option or Alt to subtract, and pull back from the greenery now instead of the pink.0945

Don't touch the pink this time, and there you go!0966

We have the selection done.0970

Now, if you want to visualize your selection, you can use the Quick Mask.0972

It's also available with the letter Q; Quick Mask mode, letter Q.0979

If I click this, it will show me the selected area but the masked out blocked out area will come into a colored, semi-transparent overlay, there you go.0984

Now, it's red so we're having trouble seeing it...that's no problem; double click on your icon, up comes the Options.0996

Color in the Quick Masked areas or selected areas--don't play with that--leave it at masked, that way you'll never get confused.1006

Click on the Color Swatch; let's make it blue, and we'll leave the opacity at 47%, and now we'll highlight it, and there we have a transparent overlay in blue, where we can accurately see how well the quick selection tool looking for edges did in selecting this area.1013

I hit Q or click on it again and it goes right back to our crawling ants, so let's go back to the title.1037

We've looked at, in this lesson, the Marquee--let me just add a layer at the top here...1044

We've looked at the Marquee tools; the rectangle and the oval, how to use that, we've looked at the Lasso tool--freehand only, we need to look at a little more.1051

Quick selection, Magic Wand and adding and subtracting--let's go back to the Lasso tool briefly, and I'm going to go back to that mountain range.1061

The third tool--remember the polygonal Lasso tool does straight edges, right?1073

I don't have a straight edged object here right now, but you get that, we'll have some samples in the next lesson.1079

The Magnetic Tool supposedly, you just drag close to the edge and it'll leap out and find it.1086

Well, let's try to do the mountain, and I'll just drag along...and see what it does--see?1094

If you're not perfectly on it...it misses (all the way back to the end, there it is) and so you have these areas that it misses.1103

I would rather go with either the quick selection or Magic Wand.1115

In this case, it was a fairly well defined edge--you might be able to use it, but in most cases it bebop's around and drops points where you have to go back and correct.1124

Alright...I want to...let's go back to there, and we had a very brief look at Quick Mask...1134

The visibility factor of the Quick Mask, and I think we're going to wind that up right now with the understanding of Marquee tools, the Lasso tool's really good for freehand, the quick selection and Magic Wand tool, and a brief look at the Quick Mask function and how to add and subtract.1145

In the next lesson, we'll take this a little further and put it all together.1166

See you in the next lesson.1171