Lessons

Lesson Info

Selections

We need to just learn how do we isolated area so we don't have to work on the entire picture and there's a bunch of different ways we can do that let's just take a basic look and so I'm just going to open any old image hand we'll see about isolating areas within it um in general there are selections and there are masks and they mean the same thing in general it's just how the information is presented to you a selection looks like what some people call marching hands which means you make a selection in the edge of that selection is moving and if you look at it on my screen this edge I will refer to is the marching dance that's just how I was introduced to them twenty years ago and if you ever see that on your screen it means that you've isolated something within your screen and that only that area will change if you make an adjustment or you apply a filter or if you grab your paintbrush tool and you try to paint you'll only be able to paint within the area that has that edge around it s...

o if ever refer to the marching ants this is what it looks like the other thing is that could be saved and applied other things in a way where it's not going to look like a marching and instead it's going to look like a black and white image and one of those things we've already looked at, which is with an adjustment layer remember with adjustment later there was a mask attached to it, a little thumbnail image that I could put black or white into if I have a selection like this one and I create an adjustment layer which I'll do right now let's say I do he would saturation watch what happens to the selection remember it's general location in the image and you see how it just went away. It just got converted into a mask that's a mask, a mask does the same thing as the selection. It just looks different instead of seeing the edges is marching ants is represented as a black and white thing it's a thing the same size as your document where the area that's white indicates the area that has been isolated the area that black is area that you can't change. So if you're doing an adjustment and I glance at this, I know that this area that's white up here is the area of my picture that will change due to this adjustment. The area that's black will not change, so any time you view it like that and it could be viewed like that in many different areas of federal shop it's known as a mask any time, instead it looks like this thing that's a selection, but then general, they mean the same thing you could think of a selection is being temporary, something where if you save and close the document, open it again the selections not going to be there anymore a mask is something that is stored in your picture, so if you say that in a file format that is compatible with masks and you open your image six months later, you'll still have that they're to be used then it's not just in the layers panel here attached to an adjustment layer. There are many other areas and father shop where it can show up, but if it ever looks like a black and white image, then it's a mask if it ever looks like marching ants it's a selection, but in general they do similar things they isolated area, but we'll get used don't just take a little while do tio experiment with so let's look at a few ways of making a selection, knowing that once you have a selection, whatever you do to your picture, khun usually only happen to that particular area for as long as the selection is active painting, running, filter making an adjustment, whatever it isthe is only going to affect that area and that's why would make a selection? So I'm gonna try to select this woman that's on the left let's, see how we can do that? I'll zoom in on the image, I'll just type command plus to zoom in and space bartosz girl around if you remember that from earlier command plus and command minus control plus in control minus and win now I want to select her in one of the tools that I can use. The tool that I'd love to use for all the selections I ever need to make is one in my tool panel appear. It looks like a brush with a little dashed all behind it that is the quick selection tool. I don't remember what version of photo shop it was added in, but it was in the more recent versions of photo shop, so if you own like photoshopped five or something, you wouldn't have it c s five, you'd have it, but not if you go back, maybe four versions or so it's, a relatively new tool with that tool, I have a brush, um and I can change the size of that brush the same way you change the size of any brush ever work within photo shop there a couple different ways one is up here is a preview of my brush, it tells me it's thirty pixels line and against me a preview of what kind of edge it has of its soft edged or hard edged little down pointing arrow there I could click on in here, I can choose the size and how hard the edges I never use this thing, and I only see when I'm teaching and that clique there to say that it's there but some people hate keyboard shortcuts, and if so, they are limited to using this to change the size and how hard the edges should change the size there with your keyboard, all you need to do is press the square bracket keys. They look like two halves of a square and I don't have to hold on any other keys it's, not command and that our control or anything else and that is just all by themselves. So if I press the right bracket key usually right above the returner in turkey and your keyboard, I'll be making my brush larger with each press of that key. If I press the left bracket key, I'll make it smaller that's how I usually change brush size with that. I want to get a brush that is okay sized, but not so big that I wouldn't be able to paint across small areas of this layer without getting over spray on the background, what I mean by that is looking her hat. The rim of the hat words sticks out on the right and left, you know, I'll zoom up a little bit, I don't want to brush that is like this brush right here is a little big because I wouldn't be able to paint across this part that I want without getting over spray in the background. Do you see that it's hard for me to get into this area without touching the blue sky? So I want to brush the about this big where I'll be able to get into this limited area here in pain, across it without bumping into the blue sky just in general, I want to be able to do that for the smaller portions of the object I want to select, so I just look at it and say, I want to get his biggest of brushes I can use without so big that I would get over spray on the background when I tried to get into the important elements like that. So now what I'm going to dio is I'm just going to click on my image and start to paint across this object. When I do that wherever I first click photo shop will look at what's inside that circle and it'll select that area, then it's going to spread out and make the selection larger to cover things that looks similar to what's inside the circle. It's going to stop making this election larger once it notices a big jump in either the brightness, the color or the texture of the image, wherever it notices those things changing abruptly it's going to think that that's the edge of this object and it shouldn't go beyond so when I click right here, I'm just going to click I just let just click and have him up must but held down, I got a selection a little bit larger than where I clicked and then I'm going to drag to show it what else I want to select, and I'm just going to be very careful to never, ever, ever touch the sky because I don't want the sky selected, so I'm just going to go over any part it has not yet select did and see if I can get it to expand out in select this object so you see that part of the left of her scarf that it didn't get yet? I'm just going to get that circle to touch that part don't have to overlap it very much just touch it. But you notice it's brighter than the area that my mouse is on now that's why it didn't select it is that hey that's different? I don't know if you want it or not, so I just go over there enough to touch it. And hopefully that's enough to get it to expand out. And so I'm just painted across the areas that have has yet to select, and I wanted to and then I'm looking at the very top of her hat I think it might have missed a little area of move up there and just barely touched that top edge. Just try not to touch the sky. I could let go it any point, and if I click again, it will simply add mohr to my selection. The default setting is to add and if you look at my mouth, it tells you that because there's a plus sign in the middle, that means ad s o then I could move member space bargains either hand tool to temporarily move around your image, and I could continue maybe click over here and drag down her arm and it's going to mess up in some point at some point, it's going to think the sky is a marvelous thing and it's similar to whatever you dragged across and is going to start selecting it and that's, ok, because there are ways we can add two and take away from this don't think it's going to be perfect on first try. Right now, on the left side of my screen, where the edge of her arm is, I don't think it's lining up very well, so I'm going to go over there, click right about here just don't let it touch the sky because whatever's inside that circle, you're telling it to select if you get any of the sky inside that circle, like right there, I bumped the sky and that's, why it's nice to these small sections at a time when you're adding so like, don't fix the entire thing, fix a little bit, let go fix a little bit, let go so if you mess up and bump into the sky, you don't have to start over. You only have to start over that one little the last mess up. So I'm gonna type commands e, which is a standard keyboard shortcut for undo controls the in windows to cite oops, I didn't mean to bump the sky there, and then I'll try to redo this. I could maybe just click and let go there, come down here, click and let go now a little closer here. It might be more useful if I was zoomed in a little bit closer, but you get the idea the tool assume out of my picture. And I see him getting that selected, I'm going to go down here, maybe work on her skirt now, when I get down here, I can use a larger brush because I've already gotten this area by her hat where it was more limited, it was more constrained in size and shape. When I come down here, the skinniest part I'm going to get to is like her ankle where I might have to paint over it and knock it over spray and the surroundings I could if I wanted to get a larger brush, I just wanted to be big enough where I can still go across her ankle without touching whatever is beyond it. You don't have to get a larger brush them, and I'll just come down here and paint like this let go and I might zoom up, look up on this thing, get a smaller brush because that's amore constrain area in fact, that's going to be a very difficult selection to make at all because you see the tree behind this and that tree behind is really similar in color, so I might not be able to get that completely selected with this tool, so I'll get a smaller brush because we're in a more constrained area and I'm gonna come in here to try to paint you see, I'll grab the tree. All right, well, one made my selection at the very top of my screen on the left side and the options bar are three choices right here. They determine what's going to happen the next time I click my mouse. If it's set over here, it means create a brand new selection, replacing the one that's not right now, the middle one is a default that means add to selection. I have and then the one on the right is take away from the selection I have, so if I choose that one, the one with the minus sign on it now it could come over here and I can click on the tree that I didn't want selected and I can say get that out of my selection and it will try to do it not always perfect. Sometimes we're going to need to switch to other selection tools to get what we need. But this is where I might want to start just because it could do most of the work and on lee where it messes up might need to switch to something else. Ok, so if I needed to get this little bitty, uh strand that's here, I would need a small brush because I need to brush where I could paint on it without getting over spray onto the sky so I could get a smaller brush something like that may be a zoom upon my picture command plus, and I need to tell it to add number in the upper left with the plus and a minus like, say, ad, and now it could come in here, maybe need even a smaller brush, and I could say, give me this, let go come up, peter, maybe a smaller brush, but I don't know if this is going to be the most effective tool for things like that. When you get into overly constricted areas, then this is not as elegant of a tool to use it could still sometimes work, but you're going to be spending more time than it might be worth. I could go to the one with the minus sign on it and say, hey, I didn't want that sky paint there to say get rid of the sky and so it's not being quite as effective in the constrained area small part, but overall in the picture, it didn't do too bad of isolating that woman right later on, we'll show about how to refine that to make sure the edges a little more accurate and in all but now, if I were to make a selection, I'm not a selection making adjustment, it would only affect that area that I currently have selected, so I can come in here and do something like an adjustment layer of brightness and contrast of black and white anything I'd like and if I have a selection it will be converted into the man ask right there so it says, hey, we're only going toe change those areas that you had selected but with an adjustment layer it has to show it this way can't have just the margin and sit in there so it automatically converted it but now if I make an adjustment here to brightness you see her changing only or to contrast I'm gonna choose undo a few times to get back to when we had it as a selection because I didn't need to make an adjustment I don't know if you remember there's a keyboard shortcut for undue which is commands the controls ian's that windows most people remember that if you add the option key on a mac ultimate does let's go back multiple steps so I need to go back kind of two steps and sided option commands ian now if you have a selection and you're not sure if it's good enough you might want to work on it later but you're about to get a lunch or it's the end of the day you want to come back tomorrow and work on it you could go to the select menu in there you'll find a choice of saving that selection I just went to the selectmen you choose save selection and given a name I can't spell here click ok and that saves it within your file it's not saving on your hard drive usually when you think of save you think and while making a file on my hard drive no it's saved it right within this file itself um it's saved it into an area that you don't usually need to look at, but it's called the channel's panel that just happens to be where it stores it needed to store it somewhere. So if I go to the selectmen you and choose save selection then if somehow that selection goes away, then I ever need it back and go the select menu and choose load selection and as long as I could remember the name of it which would be right here uh I could get it back so let's try to begin I'm going to try to select the second woman I'll zoom up here, grab my quick selection tool again that's the one that looks like a brush with a little kind of dashed uh over behind it and I'm going to get my brush to be, you know, okay sized now let's look at the smallest area the most constrained area is probably down by her wrist do you think so? I'm going to get a brush that isas bigas I can get where I could pass by her wrist without hitting the surroundings that's how I'm picking the size? I'm probably out of size where I could do that, but just for safety sake I'll go one smaller so I don't have to be quite as precise when I go in there ok that I'm going to just start wherever I feel like starting right now though do you see a minus sign inside of my mouth? U c minus that's because up here it's saying hey take away from this election that's currently there thie default settings in the middle that's usually where I'm at cannes going to click up here on I'll just start dragging across her making sure I don't ever get over spray on the background if I just bumped the background the little ist bit with my brush it will start selecting it areas from the background so I need to be very careful, especially down here by your legs. It might be useful for me to zoom up command plus is one way of zooming up space bar t get the hand tool where you could move around and now in expected to mess up don't expect it to be perfect you don't curse it too bad when it messes up it's you know it's doing a pretty cool thing and just know that if you need to take away you go to the top of your screen upper left that's where I had those three icons he's I choose the want the minus sign on it and now I can come in here and I think about this constrained area and here I might need to get up his tight is in there, but I don't want over spray, so I need a brush small enough where I could get into that area without getting over spring in the legs and that should be close enough I hope now you see how it got rid of that whole one leg well don't get too riled up about it and just go back to the one of the plus sign and just paint over it again and usually after giving it a few hints it will hopefully do a little better not always perfect though out here messed up again so you go to the minus sign one and they get rid of that but it down there it's not easy to tell where the foot ends and where the mud began, so you know it's not always going to do a great job didn't want the plus sign again had a little bit there. I got a little bit right in here that doesn't need to be selected goto the part with the minus sign on it get a brush small enough where you're not going to get over spray onto the skin and then gets to a little paint like that see if you can get it when you let go, it will change the shape a little bit because it's showing you what I would call a low resolution or an approximate result to try to make it fast the moment you let go it refines that edge to make it more precise so I'm just zooming out okay, we got most of our selected I think part of her shoulder on the side isn't selected. Saul, zoom up. Yeah, you see how are missing that whole shoulder? What was in the sun? I'll go to the icon with a plus sign and larger brush I never took I might touch the sky never touched the sky all right, let's say I got her selected maybe one other little touch up right? Grab the minus sign and get rid of some green grass over here. Then I could go to the select menu again and she's safe selection give it a name and I could continue doing that for the other um areas if I needed to select them. Now when you do this with any selection tool not just this one which is called the quick selection tool any time I show you the icons they're in the upper left these guys here I never actually click on these there's a keyboard shortcut this which is between them and I use it so frequently that it's one that's worth knowing because it's not just for this tool it's for darn near any tool that can work on mohr of something or less than something and so should at least write it down if you until the time when you remember it, go ahead and use the icons after that switch so let's take a look if you want to add to a selection usually hold the shift key in general the shift key usually lets you work on more of something if you want to work on more than one layer you hold shift you click on the other layer suddenly you're working on to if you want to work on more than one file enbridge click on one, hold the shift key and click on another suddenly you're working on more in general the shift key means work on mohr of something that's one of its functions so if I ever see something other than the plus sign inside of my little brush I would hold shift and suddenly the plus sign would show up because it means work on more of something the opposite of that is working less of something and to do that you hold on the option key all time windows option is going to work unless so let's see if I can do this more effectively on the next victim here I'll get a brush large enough uh we're just large enough to get around their wrists without getting the background I'm going to click up here um select this see some of the background got selected and I didn't want it to not gonna worry about it some of the tree got selected as well I'm going to now hold on the option key option means take away and if he actually watched those icons in the upper left when I hold on option one of the right is highlighted but for on lee how long I hold on option when I let go it goes back to whatever is studying it was at previous to that so I'm just gonna hold on my option key now and I want to click and drag on the the tree that's there to say get rid of that out of my selection then down and here there's another area where I got some background on hold option and I'll drag across it to get rid of it and then I'll let go of options so now I'm adding again and I'll just see what is it missing it's missing some of their outfits and here and so I might come in in clicking additional areas it's missing I think part of the look a bandanna or something right here in order to get that though I need a smaller brush donor so I get my smaller brush kid in here and when it accidentally gets some of the background I don't worry about it it has all the stuff I need added and that I hold down the key that takes away, which is option and I just paint across the area I didn't need and I can get selected uh I don't know if that's one hundred percent accurate and didn't get all their legs and all that but I'm just giving him the idea of how to think about it I'll go here and save that selection just in case I need it back so that's one tool we can use for making selections but there are some others that it's essential to know about so let's take a look at a few more first the most basic selection tool would be the marquee tool marquis tool is this one right here? Marquis tool was just going to select a rectangular area and all I do is I click and I drag to create a marquee tool it it's called a marquee tool because that's what they call the theater marquee which is like where the name of the movie is about to see and that's what is called the marquis and do you remember in an old time theaters not modern ones they used to have a tiny little light bulbs all the way around in those light bulbs would cycle and it looked like the light was actually kind of moving around well that's looking like this edge that's right here moving around like that marquis totally get it so that's what it was think that um but with this tool you just click and drag like that it's very useful for making basics elections you might not think you need a selection like that but oftentimes you do if I want to put some text on top of this picture and let's say I want the text to show up right here I could click and drag like this to make a area where I want my text to appear and then maybe I do an adjustment layer let's say I do levels and in levels there was a slider in levels that um would take things that used to be black to make them lighter and that's the slider in the lower left I could bring that in and say take the areas that used to be black and here and lightening up to what I point this at and now wouldn't that be a nice backdrop for some text make it easy to read the text that you might put on top of this picture so I could pull in the opposite side as well and make the lighter areas darken up a little so you could still see the picture in there but it's got a lot less contrast much easier to see text you put on top so that kind of thing I'm gonna drag that to the trash because we don't really want that adjustment but when I use any selection toe holding down shift means add to what's currently there if I don't have shift held down and I click again, it replaces the selection I had. If I hold shift, we can add to it then the the key used to take away his option alton windows I'm holding it down right now I can then take away and so I could create a much more complex election then you might think this tool is initially capable of by just adding to or taking away from it and you can switch to other tools to do the adding or the taking away I want to take away her head from it will go to the quick selection tool the quick selection to would be pretty good at selecting her head when that we'll get a brush of appropriate size and then just hold down the key that takes away from things photoshopped doesn't care what tool made the first selection doesn't care at all, hold on the option key to take away and actually grabbed the wrong tool there's another tool looks somewhat like it. Okay, now I'm in the quick selection tool hold on the option key to take away and paint over her head and now her head has been removed from that um so just keep in mind that any selection tool can be used to modify any selection hold shift to add to option which is all time windows and take away one of the other selection tools that's overly useful would be the lasso tool this guy right here the lasso tools what used to manually select something where you're going perfectly trace it it's just like if you had a magazine and you want to cut something out and you grabbed an exacto knife you know sharp blade and you traced around it to cut it out? Well, that's the concept here s o I might zoom in on this picture and I'm going to select this woman's head in hat using the lasso tool. All I would do is take a lasso tool in the tip is that it is where the tip of that little black triangle is that's where the selection starts coming out so I need to get the tip right on the edge of this object click and then start dragging around it. I'm not going to be overly precise here because the quick selection to it would do this so much faster, but imagine I traced this really precisely like this going all the way around and let go I'd end up with a selection I don't enjoy using the lasso tool to select things all that much, but what I really do enjoy is let's say I loaded one of the selections we made earlier you remember where here I have one called woman on left we made that with a quick selection tool here's the selection well what if it messed up somewhere and I only needed touch it up in tiny little areas well I'll zoom up here and look it did mess up right there it forgot this little part to get in there it didn't include these little pieces well I could just come in with my marquis not marking my lasso tool I hold down the option key to take away and say I want to remove this portion from the selection and then I want to remove this portion well I want to add this I hold shift shift means ad I still have shift held down but you know how I could touch up one of the more automated tools so wherever I just couldn't get it to work maybe over and here where it's where we had these little reads and thinks well it just didn't do a good job there so final do it manually there I'll hold on the shift key and it forgot one little spot right there I'm still got the shift key held down and I just add whatever it couldn't do automatically just be careful that you create a clone in general created close shape because if I do this on hold shift and I draw only part way around something when I let go it's going to connect the dots from where I started and where it ended and draw a straight line across it so be careful if I'm coming down here and I want to add this piece I hold shift and I trace this right edge of it don't stop appearing leko because it's going to draw a straight line to where you started and that might not be what you needed instead loop around and end where you started so that you get a more predictable and result try toe loop back around where you started or just know it's going to make a straight line and plan on that that might help you or might not I'm not going to be absolutely precise here right now the main thing is the lasso tool is not what you want to do to make an entire selection for most images you want to use something that helps you more like the quick selection tool and then use lasso tool to find tune it where the quick selection tool could not handle whatever task it issue were trying tio to get to all right then there's a different way of looking at a selection different way of creating a selection that doesn't involve these little marching ants aiken take the selection and converted into a temporary mask a mask that's going to be over laid right on my picture and I do that one of two ways at the very bottom of my tool panel is an icon this guy right here? That one if I click on that, it sends me into quick mask mode if I click on the icon again, it gets me out of quick mask mode in quick mask mode is just another way to make a selection or to modify one I kind of the bottom quick mask quick mask I never click that icon because I'm used to photo shop and used to using the keyboard the letter q all by itself sends you into her out of quick mask mode so pugh quick mask q when you're in quick mask mode, it shows your selection as a red overlay where the areas that are not selected are covered with red the areas that are selected look normal and now you can modify this by using painting tools so if I grab my paintbrush tool, usually you're painting with your foreground color your foreground color is this right here if that's black it's goingto take away from your selection so if I paint more of the red stuff shows up red indicates where it's not selected will choose undo if on the other hand I click little double arrow here to switch over to paint with white, then it takes away from that red stuff see it taking away the red stuff indicates words not selected, so when I paint out here I'm making those areas selected if I press cue to turn off quick mask just watched that area see how just changed, but I'm going to choose undo it few times because that's not where I needed to paint instead, I'm going to zoom up on areas where it messed up when I used the quick selection tool, I think right down here you see a little spot there. Well, I can grab my paintbrush tool, get a small brush, you change the size of your brush member with the square bracket keys and I'm just going to sit here and as long as I got black to paint with, I can paint there space bargains with hand tools so I could move up and say I messed up here too but it's easier to see where it messed up because quick mass mode the red overland it is not as distracting as the marching ants they're marching answer hard to look at their constantly moving, but this red overlay makes it so it's much easier to see how your image in the selection relate like right there I could see that that's a mess up can you see that there's no red over the that part of the background and I could just go through this whole thing in any area where it messed up? I just get the right size brush and I could come in there and painted in if I paint over too large of an area like great right there's too big just switching paint with white instead of black and you can get rid of that red stuff is just another way of changing this election sometimes it's more useful than the other selection tools sometimes it's not that it's a matter of trying to figure out when is this useful and when is it not that a lot comes from experience but what I'm using quick mask mode constantly I'm changing between painting with black in paying with white and so far I've mentioned doing that by clicking on this little arrow right here to switch them well there is a keyboard shortcut for switching that you press the letter x x to exchange so if you're ever coming in here and you need to paint with black go ahead and paint it in wherever you need it and then if I need to paint with white I just hit the letter x and I paint with white fedex again paint with black just remember access to exchange those colors and when I've done with quick mask boat I get into it the same way we got get out of it the same way I got in which is he there clicking the icon near the bottom of your tool panel or just typing letter q and you're back to having a selection again it's just another way of modifying your viewing a selection and I find quick mask mode to be overly useful. Um especially to double check my selections I think I have the selection. Just write a typed letter q and I just glanced around the edge to make sure it all matches up. Looks good if it's great hit you again turned off if it's not I grab a paintbrush uh or other tool and, uh, get in there and start working on it. So before I move on, anything else, what questions do we have about the tools that have used thus far? The quick selection tool, the marquis tool in the lasso tool I've questioned about quick mask wissman? Yeah, if the image has a lot of that, maybe that kind of rose color in it. Is it possible to change the color of the overlay? Yeah, and then I would follow up to that too. Okay, if this was a picture of a fire truck in most u s cities, fire drugs are red red overlay on a red fire truck is not easy to see. So if you go to the quick mask icon that's the bottom your tool pound double click on it. Yeah, this will come up. I just click twice on that icon in right here is the color that's being used and this is how much you can see through it if you click on that little square of color, it'll bring you into a standard color picker wherein this vertical bar you could choose the color that you wanted and now if I click ok if I type cue to go two quick mask now it's a blue overlay but I got to that by double clicking on the quick mask icon that's near the bottom of your tool panel and that's where I can choose it if you want to be able to see through it a little less sometimes it's useful to get this more upto eighty percent watch the area that's over late in blue now see how now it's so covering up more it might be a little easier to see but just double click on the quick mask I'm gonna bring mine back to default settings though so it acts more like it would uh when you use it if you're using defaults and then the follow up was whether you could exchange whether the mask is showing you what's being selected or what's being hidden and like it was a panel it was in the same panel doubleclick and here it says color indicates masked areas or selected areas areas that are not selected are considered to be masked that's just terminology wass but if I were to change this now instead of the red indicating the area that's not selected now when I click ok read in general means areas that are selected it's just depends a personal preference and you double click on the quick mask to tell you that thank you sure, thank you for heading straight into something I should show but didn't get a chance to. Can you change the quick mask directly into a mosque? Yes, you can any time you have a layer and you'd like to add a layer mask first off, you can't add a layer master the background it's just limitation you can always double click on the name of the background and change it to anything and as long as it's, not the background layer. Then if you added a layer mask while its selection is active, it'll automatically think that that's the only part of the image that you wanted to have visible and it'll automatically fill in the layer mask. Watch what happens, though, when it whatever selection you have. Yeah, I see this election have right now a woman on the left I'm gonna zoom up here so you can see my layers and watch what happens when I click right here that's one way of having a layer mask, you see how it automatically filled it in the selection goes away and it says, ok, now you wanted to use that selection to create a layer mask and it automatically filled it in for you we're going to talk about later mass later on when we talk about layers, so if there's anybody out there that has never used them before, they know what we're talking about. We'll discuss it tomorrow. Okay, uh, but, yeah, just add the mask while the selection is active. So ben sees reflecting starlight from hawaii again, how do you adjust your selection techniques to select an object with a shallow depth of field? Were parts of it are not in focus? Thank you for asking, uh, let's, see if I can find one that might have a shallow depth of field, because it's something I wanted to talk s o the problem with just making general selections is if you use a generic selection to elect let's, say, allow so, or even the quick selection tool, you will get a hard edged selection so that it acts much like an exacto knife for a pair of scissors would act in that it's like you're cutting out an object with a very crisp edge and that's, not always, which need so let's say, I tried to use an automated selection technique, like possibly the quick selection tool to select part of this image, this is my wife karen's image, by the way, she was nice enough to pick out a few images to use, and I'm just pain over this with a quick selection tool trying not to get overspent brand the background I let go once they get down to here because that's where I expected to screw up a green object on a green background so I just want to make sure I didn't have to completely redo the top click down here and see if I could get that added and then if you have a selection and you needed to have a soft edge so that it matches thie edge quality of the object that you have in a couple of choices one choice is if you go to the select menu there's a choice called modify in there you have the choice called feather now remember usually these menus are much longer than what you're seeing on my screen I remember remember I showed you how I like to simplify things when I'm not used to him so if I show all men you just let me show you what this would look like and show all the menus over here okay so usually this menu looks cluttered you go over here and you get another cluttered menu but if you hide all the stuff you don't know how to use the hide all the stuff you're not going to need to use this in the fundamentals then things look much simpler and I could get to feather much easier but feather means soften the edge of my selection the problem is when I choose feather it doesn't give me a preview I just have to give it a number the higher the number the softer the edge becomes and so before I further the selection let me show you what quick mask mode looks like if I just turn it on type q do you see that the selection I have has a crisp edge looks like a pair of scissors made this red overlay if I go up to the select menu and feather it what's sad type in fifteen now I'm gonna type q and you'll see that the edge looks different can you see it looks a little bit softer I'll see if I could choose undo a few times I don't know if I can do okay here's quick mask before the feathering here's after you see the difference on the edge so feather means soften the edge the problem here is that I don't need the feathering around the entire object because the area there's close to us the area right over here on the left side eyes chris patched it's in focus the area out there in the far distance is where it's out of focus that's where I need the soft edge so feathering is not going to help me here so much in that it does the whole thing I needed toe on ly be the areas of this photograph there out of focus does that make sense so here's how I'm going to do it? I type a letter cue to go two quick mask and then I could either grab my paintbrush tool intel it to give me a soft edge of my brush we're bringing down a setting called hardness so that when I paint I don't have a completely art hard brush and therefore I could come in here I'll get a larger brush and I could paint up here saying all right, give me a soft edge when I paint here I just need to be more careful with where I'm painting, but I get a soft edge or instead there's a tool that I could use it looks like a drop of water that one that's the blur tool it would usually blur photographs if you click and drag on a photo with that you get a blurry photo wherever you painted but we're in quick mask mode and so what happens in quick mask mode is whatever tool use aside to use it doesn't affect the picture infects the quick mask so imagine the pictures not even there. The only thing you're working on is the red overlay so when I grabbed this tool is designed for blurring things what it's going to blur is not the picture but the red overlay it's going to make it so where the edges where looks crisp is going to suddenly start looking softer so I could come over here in pain, so I have to paint back and forth quite a few times to start getting that soft enough. There is a choice called strength, which is how aggressive is it I might need to bring that out will bring up to one hundred and now if I paint on these things, I can start getting them to have a soft edge that might more closely match the edge quality of the photo in that area it's just a matter how many times he paint across it on if you can tell that that's becoming softer but it isthe um so either use a paint brush and use a soft edged brush as you paint or grab the blur tool in paint across the area to get it to be soft. There are other ways and things we can do that I would usually get into here, but I don't want to make it too complicated yet trying to keep it relatively simple in concept um but that's how you end up dealing with it. So let's say another question from is if you add to a saved selection, can you save it with the changes or do you have to save it as a new selection? In general, you have to say that is a new selection and then you can always delete the one that was there they're saved into an area called the channel's panel, and so if you go to the window menu and choose channels, you just see him sitting there, they look just like the mass that might be attached to an adjustment layer. You know where it shows what the black in the white areas where it was selected. If you don't mind going to your channels panel, you could make that channel active and just paint on it to change it, you know that kind of stuff, but in general, usually you re save it is a brand new selection, and then you could delete the old one. Can you? If you've got two different saved selections, like when you were working with the farmers, the women, the woman on the far left, you say that is one selection of the next to you at a different can you combine those selections into a new selection or yes, you can have them both at same time you go to the select menu and if you choose load selection because I say for the other one, right, and one of the ones that I select saved was second woman or two women, um, down here, it says, what would you like a new selection you want to add to what you currently have take away from it? In intersect means give me on lee, where the two overlap if they over that s o I can click ok now I'm saying add to the selection and currently half and it just out of the other two I think I have the second woman selected in another selection I could go over here and say load selection and say second woman subtract from this election, get her out of there shoes undo or if I didn't have her in a separate selection, I described the lasso tool right now and I could say, well, if I don't want one of these women selected, I hold on the key that takes away rumor shift ads too option takes away haltom windows so I could just hold down the key that takes away right now I don't have to be precise at all. I just needed a circle around here where I don't touch the other parts that are selected and as long as I have the key held down that takes away from things, it means anything in this area that I just threw this around that selected make it so it's no longer selected so all sorts of things you can do there um, yeah, I want to take a final question then, sure, okay, this is from camera guy who's joining us from dallas, texas camera guy says as you stated, the easy way to create a layer mass based on a selection is to make this election first then add the layer mask the mask is created using the selection but sometimes you already have a blank layer mask like a small are smart filter mask and you want to use an active selection to create the mask how do you do this? Okay, so let's say I had in adjustment in here already. Maybe I did a black and white adjustment just so it's easy to see that the image has changed and then I made a selection either by using one of my selection tools or by going over here and choosing load to get one that I made previously now I have a selection I haven't existing mask how doe I get that selection now in that mask? Because before it goes in there automatically if you're creating the mask at that moment but if the mask already exists, how the heck do you do it? Well, you have a couple different options first remember how we were painting on a mask and wherever we painted it put it in the mask? Well, I could just paint right now in that selection is the only part of my image I can change whenever there's a selection active daily part where you can paint so even if I paint out here, nothing happen it's only when I get over there and I could just paint over that selection and when I let go it's in the mask because the mask is what's active, you can tell it's active because this layer is highlighted in this kind of bluish gray color that means layers active. And then what part of the layer is active? Is the mask because it has its little corners highlighted so that's where wherever it I do to this image is going toe be deposited and that's one method I'll choose undo it might be more effective, though, to do the crawl into this. Go to the edit menu there's a choice called phil and just tell it to fill with black. So if you have a selection, usually phil would fill your entire document, but when you have a selection, it means that you only can change that area the part that selected. So when I go to the edit menu, choose phil talked to fill with black, it says, I usually I would fill your whole screen, but you have a selection, so I'm only going to fill that part, and then it looks that well, hey what's active is that the picture itself? If so, that's where the black would go, but no, if you look in the layers panel what's active what has the little brackets around it? The mask that's, where that's going to go? So when I click, ok, boom. There it is, in the mask, and there are keyboard shortcuts for filling with foreground and background colors once you get used to them, and so usually that's what I do, there's, a keyboard shortcut that means fill with foreground color. Um, but it's, something that's in the should be in the handbook thing that mentioned that I don't want to clutter your brain with too many of them. Uh, but there is one.