Lessons
Lesson Info
Class Introduction
We're gonna to head into Selection Essentials. Selections will allow you to isolate part of your picture so whatever it is you're doing, will not affect the whole image. And so they're kind of essential to really be an effective in Photoshop. There's a variety of tools that can be used for creating them and there's a lot of new additions, in the newer versions of Photoshop. So let's jump in and take a look at, what is possible. Now, this image already has a selection within it just so I can show you what it looks like in case you're new to Photoshop. If I look at this image, you'll see that a particular area has its edge highlighted, and that's known as a selection. If you were to actually look close at it, you'd see that this edge is actually kind of moving along clockwise and it almost looks like a little bitty ants walking around and therefore, a lot of people refer to that, as the marching ants. But it needs to have you hear somebody say that, they mean that edge, which indicates t...
here is an area selected. I'll show you the tool you use to create them but before we do, let's look at, why do I need a selection? What's it going to do for me? Well, whenever you have a selection active then if you go to the image menu and you choose any one of these adjustments. Let's say in this case, I chose the one called black and white. Well usually it would affect your entire picture unless you had a selection. With that selection active when I choose black and white it's only the area that was selected that is affected. And therefore, whatever I do here is only going to affect the selected area. I'll click cancel. That is also true, if I were to go to the filter menu and apply a filter. In this case, I'm going to use blurring, Gaussian blur is the adjustable blur filter and if I bring up the setting high enough so it becomes obvious, you'll see that it's only blurring the area that was selected. Also, if you were to grab a painting tool and decide you wanted to paint across your image. Well, that paint would not apply outside of that selection and it's only when you extend into the area that's selected that you would see the change happening. And so selections are essential anytime we want to work on only a small portion of the picture. In selections also, are related to other features in Photoshop if you ever hear of somebody saying they need to mask something. They really mean they need to select something. Selections and masks, go together. A mask is just when you would see this selection as something other than marching ants. Instead you would see it as a black and white image, where the area that is white would be selected and the area that is black would indicate what's not selected. If you want to see an example of that I'll take the selection that's on my screen right now. I'll go to the Select menu and there's a choice here called Save Selection. And I'm saving this, when I do, (hand typing) I can't type. So, it puts it somewhere in the place that happens to put it is in a panel called the channels panel but, here it is do you see that shape? Well anytime you see something that looks like this, ,where an area that's white indicates where something was selected in an area that's black indicates something that's not that can be described as a mask it's just to say I isolated in the area somehow in Photoshop and it doesn't look like the marching ants. Instead it looks like a black and white representation. That's usually the same size as the document you're working on and that's a mask, but the two are synonymous where you can have a mask attached to something like an adjustment, and then it's the equivalent to having a selection attached to something so it limits where ever that thing can affect the image. But masters are the subject of a different class I'll have a class on advanced masking that really means advanced selections. Alright let's take a look at the tools we use for making selections I'm going to get rid of this selection and I can do that by going to the Select menu and choosing deselect. When you don't have a selection active on your screen, it's the same thing as having everything selected. When you don't have a selection it means I didn't try to isolate an area and therefore I'm gonna affect everything. That means any adjustments that I make like that one I used called black and white will affect the entire picture and if I were to do a filter, like the blurring that I attempted earlier, again it's going to affect everything. And you could just as easily have gone to the Select menu, there's a choice called all and that would make it so your entire image is selected and you'd see the marching ants all the way out on the edge of the picture. Where if i zoom out so you can see the entire picture you see the marching ants out there. So select all and nothing selected or in general the same concept it means I'm working on everything. I'm gonna choose deselect to get rid of that. There is an occasion when you do need to choose select all one of those is if I go to the Edit menu and tell it I want to copy something well, when you don't have a selection it means it doesn't know how much of the image you'd like to copy, which portion of the image and so if you wanted to copy the entire thing you'd have to select all first, then it would let you copy so but in general select all and deselect means work on the whole thing. I'm going to use deselect a lot and whenever I do I use the keyboard shortcut it's command+D on a Mac, ctrl+D in Windows for deselect and I'll use that without thinking like right now I wanted to get rid of the selection and I almost typed it without mentioning
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-9c856e
This class is exactly what I needed. Up to this point I have used the tutorials provided with Photoshop to learn and they are excellent, but as I am using PS more and more I need in depth learning. Example: I have been working with a photo for two weeks using what I knew about selections and masking. I have been so frustrated. I decided to dedicate time every day to learning PS and the other apps I have with my CC subscription. I was able to edit the photo and get all of the tiny details I wanted after taking this class. This is the second of Ben's classes I've taken and he is an excellent teacher. Thank you!
LeCompte
The Master once again has presented a clear concise easy to learn and follow class.
a Creativelive Student
Ben is always very thorough and informative.
Student Work
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