Selections, Selections, Selections! (Part 4)

Don't worry there is not a great deal more you need to know about selections. Most of these extras you will probably have guessed how to use by now so hopefully I will not need to go into too much detail for you to understand them.

MODIFYING SELECTIONS

Whenever you make a selection, Photoshop will also allow you to make some modifications to that selection via the selection drop down menu. Let's see a common example of this. I have selected Mr. Duck once again. I used the magic wand tool to select around the edge of the duck this time. We have already learnt how to easily do this. Just select the white background behind him and then go to Select > Inverse.

Anyway selecting the outside of the duck is not the trick. The trick is, once you have selected the duck, you can go to Select > Modify > and choose one of four options below, namely: Border, Smooth, Expand or Contract.

In this case I decided to modify my duck selection by using the contract option on a setting of 5 pixels. Notice what has happened in the picture below? Yep, the selection has contracted by five pixels and is now smaller than the duck but still the same shape!

The Expand option does exactly the opposite to the contract option and you will find that the selection will enlarge bigger than the original image. Usually you will find that expanding or contracting only one or two pixel will be most useful for editing pictures and getting rid of white edges etc., which often prove an annoying problem.

The smooth option simplifies a selection. For example, the left picture below is a quick n jagged lasso selection I made. After going to Select > Modify > Smooth and again selecting 5 pixels as the amount, you will get the more rounded selection on the right.

Rounding selections is useful for smoothing out the kinks in complex selections or creating interesting effects like rounding fonts.

The Border selection option turns your single selection into a double selection. It can be useful for creating quick boarders around images which I suppose is why its called border :o).

TRANSFORMING SELECTIONS

Okay, this is the last bit on modifying selections I promise. Transforming a selection basically means you can rotate, enlarge, distort or shrink your selection. Don't confuse this with rotating your picture, we are not rotating the picture, we are rotating the selection we have already chosen. Do do this we select our duck again:

Then go to Select > Transform Selection

The picture will suddenly get this weird box around it which allows us to rotate, resize and so on. It works in exactly the same way as the image transform tool which I will explain how to use in a bit more detail in another short article, although its pretty self evident anyway.

To summarize how to use it: to rotate the selection, move your mouse to the corner of the box until the mouse pointer turns into a curved double-headded arrow. Then hold down the mouse pointer and rotate. To resize, move the mouse to the corner until it turns into a straight double-headded arrow, then drag the image to the size you need.

If you want to keep the aspect ratio, which makes sure the image is not distorted when it is resized, then you should hold down the shift key while you are resizing. If you wish to distort and shear the image too just choose any one of the square boxes and hold down the ctrl key on your keyboard. For more details on using transform you'll need to see my transform guide.

COLOUR SELECTIONS

There is one final, final, final thing to learn now and then you will become the ultimate selections guru. I have saved it until last because it works a little differently from the other selection stuff although the idea is exactly the same. This option is Color Range and it allows us to select a range of colours from a picture as a selection. To use this option we do not need to select anything first, we go to Select > Color Range...

Up will pop the following dialogue box.

Cool huh! You will probably be presented with a black picture. Don't worry this is needed to see better what you are selecting. Notice also that your mouse pointer has turned into a ink dropper icon. To select a colour is really simple just click on the colour you'd like to select on your colour picture. In this case I have clicked on the ducks head to select all yellow.

If you look up you will also notice a fuzziness slider bar. This works exactly like the tolerance option on the magic wand tool. The higher the fuzziness the less picky it is about what shade of yellow it selects and vice versa.

Okay, click on the yellow of the duck; move the fuzziness halfway up and press the OK button. You should then see something like this:

As you can see it selects the yellow in much the same way the magic wand tool does. The only real difference between the two is the colour range chooses all colours on the screen while the magic wand only chooses colours in a small area. Selecting all colours can be very useful. For example, it could allow us to easily change the colour of the ducks beak from red to blue. It could also allow us to change all colour of lots of repetitive stuff like text that would normally take ages to change with the magic wand tool.

Going back to our Color Range dialogue box there are a couple of other options you may want to know. First is the 'Invert' check box. When this is checked it will select all of the picture except the colour you select; its a bit like choosing Select > Inverse but its easier and faster to use this way.

Notice also the three ink droppers (eye droppers) on the right of the dialogue box. A normal one, one with a plus sign (+) and one with a minus sign (-). It may be that you wish to choose more than one shade of yellow or even a couple of colours to select at once. In this case choose the eye dropper with the plus sign by it (+). If you need to take out a certain colour you can use the minus eye dropper - you get the idea.

Finally, the load and save options speak for themselves, you load and save your colour selections with them.

Phew! Rest assured that all you need to know to become an expert with selections has now been explained to you in these guides. I do my best to make my guides very comprehensive so the reader doesn't think perhaps there is still hard stuff to learn, there isn't, it's all as easy as it looks!