Selecting Things
Mark Wallace
Lesson Info
8. Selecting Things
Lessons
How To Open Files
01:10 2Using The Home Screen
01:49 3Exploring The Interface
02:36 4Understanding Workspaces
03:04 5Tools and The Options Bar
01:56 6Finding Hidden Tools
02:31 7How to See What You’re Working On
06:19 8Selecting Things
07:06More Selection Tools
10:34 10Testing the Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tools
03:55 11The History Palette – Undoing Things
02:47 12Menu and Item Shortcut Keys
02:28 13Non-Destructive Editing
02:14 14Working with Layers
09:11 15Groovy 3 Exercise
10:38 16Layer Effects and Styles
04:25 17Layer Masks – Karen on Beans
06:41 18Using Adjustment Layers
04:36 19Using Filters
03:06 20Advanced Compositing Using Layers
07:42 21Non-Destructive Editing Techniques
03:17 22Understanding Smart Objects
05:16 23Smart Sharpen
04:36 24Understanding Histogram
04:08 25Adjusting Curves
03:46 26The Healing Brush Tools
07:28 27The Clone Stamp Tool
05:24 28The Burn and Dodge Tools
03:41 29Neural Filters
07:52Lesson Info
Selecting Things
For this session, make sure you have Juanna.jpeg open. So let's hop over into Photoshop. I'm gonna make sure that I just click right here on the home screen, Juanna.jpeg to open that image. And then I'm going to double click the hand so that she is filling this screen here. Now, what we want to do is we want to select areas of this image to do some retouching or copying or doing whatever. So we need to select areas of an image all the time. So right now let's learn how to do basic selection level zero, level one of selecting. And so we need to do that using this little tool up here it's called the marquee tool and we're gonna use the rectangular marquee tool. So I'm gonna select that. And then I'm gonna now go to my pin tool here. Instead of my mouse all I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna click and drag over Juanna's face. Now this square here, it's the, the boundary there we call that marching ants, cuz it looks like a bunch of little ants marching around. So if you hear the term marching...
ants, that's what it is. It's this little line here. So we've selected an area. If you wanna deselect an area, you hit Command or Ctrl+D. That deselects the area, Command or Ctrl+D. So we select an area to get rid of that, Command, Ctrl+D and that deselects. So we have a little selection here and up here in the options bar, I can click different things. So the first one here is add to selection. So if I click and add a little area right there now this whole area is the selection. I can maybe do this. So we have, we're just adding more and more to our selection. If I wanna subtract from the selection up here on the Options bar I have the Select, uh, the Subtract From selection. So then I can go here and select the stuff I don't want in this selection. Maybe I don't want the middle of that. So you're adding and subtracting from the selection. And then the other one is this little interface this little intersection here, sort of like a venn diagrams wherever the selections overlap. That's what you want. So we have this little overlap here and that's just that. So we have that and you can see wherever those selections overlap. That's what is selected. So I'm gonna go back to the normal selection here and then I wanna show you the modifier keys. Cause I almost never use the Option bar. Almost always use the modifier keys. So let's say I select this area and want add to that selection. I can hit the Shift key. So the Shift is the modifier key. And now I can add to that. If I hit the Option key, I am subtracting from this selection so I can add, I can do a selection hit the Shift key, add to that selection hit the Alter option key to subtract from that selection. Ctrl or Command+D to de-select an image. Now in the marquee, you can see that we have rectangular and we have elliptical and single row marquee tools. The elliptical is the same kind of thing, except for it's an ellipse. Now, once we have something selected, what do we do with it? So let's talk about what we can do with the selection. So the selection itself right now, notice my cursor changes. So do this at home. It's hard to see on the video and I can't zoom in on this, but outside of the selection I have a little crosshair that allows me to select or add to or subtract from the selection. But as soon as I go inside the selection notice that my cursor changes, so outside and inside. So if I'm inside the selection, I click and drag. I'm moving my selection around. And you're probably seeing little purple bars show up. Those are guides that we'll talk to you about later. Don't worry about it right now. I can change where this selection is and once I get it to the place that I want it to be, I can do stuff there. Now that I have that I can, if I'm doing something like painting or cropping or whatever, I'm gonna say I only wanna do this inside the selection. So we're gonna try this. Over on the right hand side on this image, there is a panel here called layers. We're gonna talk a lot about layers later, for right now all you have to understand is this layer that says background on the right hand side, it's got a little lock. We need to click that lock to unlock that layer so we can do stuff to it. And now it changes its name to layer zero. And then down at the lower part of your screen here you'll see that there's a little black and white. So make sure that you have white in the front and black in the back. If you don't see that just click this little icon right here and then this little arrow right there that will change the background of foreground colors. So we want this to be a white square. So now, I can get this brush. I'm gonna make it a little bit bigger by hitting my right bracket where we can go up here to the size and make it, I don't know, 194 is good or something like that. And then I can just paint and notice when I paint it's only painting inside the area that I've selected. So it's not painting anywhere else. So I'm saying this area, it's where I want to do this stuff that I'm doing. So that's what that does. I'm gonna hit Command or Ctrl+Z to undo that, get rid of that painting that I just did. So now also notice that once we started working inside that selection, we don't have the little move around tool that we used to. And so we lose that option. And so we wanna get rid of this selection by hitting Ctrl+D. Now we're gonna do a different thing with our selection. So again, hit Ctrl+D to get rid of that selection, get an elliptical marquee tool, drag, doesn't matter, around. So where Juanna's face is, now what we're getting to do is we're going to use a different modifier key. So I'm gonna hit the Command key or Ctrl key on PC and notice that my cursor changes into little scissors. So outside, it's just a move, uh it moves everything around. That's pretty weird and inside, ah taking Juanna's face away. So I can move that around. Okay. So I'm saying I'm selecting this. I wanna cut and move that away. I can also, I'm gonna hit Ctrl+Z to undo that. So my selection is still there. I can hit the Option or ALT and Command or Ctrl. I can hit those two things, Option, Command, and notice now my little cursor are two little triangles. One is black. One is white. That's saying that I'm going to make a duplicate of this. So now if I drag that out, I've duplicated Juanna's face. And so now I'm moving that around. So these are very basic things. I hit Ctrl+D to deselect that. And so selections are just areas of the image that you want to do something to. You maybe want to paint on it. You might wanna retouch it. You might wanna copy it. You might wanna cut it. There's all kinds of things that we do with selections. The important thing is to know how to create a selection.