Once you’ve made a selection that you no longer want, use the Deselect command from the Select menu. You will now be able to work with the entire image. If you Deselect an area but then realize you want the selection back again, you can use the Reselect command to restore it.

Should you need to select the entire image, use the All command on the Select menu. (You shouldn’t need to use this command often, since most of Photoshop’s commands apply to the entire image if nothing’s selected.)

While making a selection with the Marquee tools, hold down the <Spacebar> to reposition the point of origin for your selection. Release the key and continue dragging to complete the selection. After using the Marquee Tools and the Lasso Tools, you can move a selection area (that is, the selection lines themselves) once you’ve made it by simply clicking and dragging on the selection lines when your cursor looks like an arrowhead above a selection rectangle.

This technique is useful particularly when working with the Marquee tools, since you can’t resize a selection once you’ve made it without starting over.

Moving a selection means that you are moving the area contained within the selection lines. Normally, you use the Move tool to move a selection once you’ve made it, which cuts the selection from its original location and pastes the selection into a new location.

Here are some more advanced tricks for moving selections:

Hold down <Ctrl> to temporarily change the selection cursor to the Move cursor. You will now cut the selection from its original location.

To select everything but the selected area, use the Inverse command from the Select menu. This command is quite useful when you can select the background easily but you want to select the objects in the foreground.

If you need to alter an existing selection, you can use the buttons in the Options bar while a selection tool is chosen in the toolbox. The first button, which is “pushed-in” by default, sets a new selection. If this button is selected while you create a selection, you’ll automatically overwrite your previous selection. To add to the existing selection, use the second button; then use any selection tool to add more areas to your selection. Your cursor will have a small plus sign next to it to indicate that you’re adding to a selection. The third button subtracts areas from your current selection, and your cursor will have a small minus sign. With the final button selected, you can draw a selection area that overlaps your original selection, and Photoshop will create a new selection based on that intersection. This cursor displays a small “X”.

Once you have an initial selection, you may need to expand its area. For example, you may have selected one section of the ocean in an image, but you need to pick up lighter blues of other areas. The Grow command, available from the Select menu, expands your selection based on the Tolerance setting for the Magic Wand tool (set in the Options bar). Repeat the command to expand your selection further; adjust the Tolerance setting to fine-tune the expansion.

If you need to expand your selection to include pixels that are noncontiguous to your original selection, the Similar command from the Select menu will cause the selection to jump over areas that do not fit the tolerance in order to select more areas that do. For example, if you are trying to select a river with a bridge over it, select one side of the river and then choose Similar to get Photoshop to jump over the bridge and select the rest of the river. Note that you can use the Grow and Similar commands to modify any selection, not just those made with the magic wand, but the rate of growth will always be determined by the magic wand’s tolerance setting.

To resize, rotate, or distort a selection, choose Transform Selection from the Select menu. A rectangular box will appear with handles at each corner and on each side, and the Options bar will display information about your transformation. You can now edit your selection in several ways:

To commit to your changes, press the check-mark in the Options bar. To cancel, click the slashed-circle button.

The Border command allows you to select an area around your initial selection. Choose Modify and then Border from the Select menu to set the area to be affected. Type in the width of the border in pixels, and click OK . A second set of selection lines will appear, centered that distance around your initial selection. You can now apply a filter or fill, and it will affect only the area between the two selection lines.

To smooth out the edges of a selected area, go to the Select menu and choose Modify and then Smooth . Type in a number from 1-16; the greater the number, the smoother your selection will be. Click OK .

The Expand command will enlarge your selection based upon the proximity to your initial selection. Go to the Select menu, and choose Modify and then Expand . Type in a number from 1-16; the selection will expand by that number of pixels in all directions. Click OK .

The Contract command does just the opposite of the Expand command. From the Select menu, choose Modify and then Contract . Type in a number from 1-16; the selection will contract by that number of pixels in all directions.

You can change the entire selection to the foreground or background color (or to black, white, gray, a pattern or a step in the History palette) by selecting Fill from the Edit menu.

To draw an outline around a selection, choose Stroke from the Edit menu. The outline will appear in the foreground color. In the stroke dialog box, you can set the width of the outline in pixels, its opacity, the mode in which it interacts with the pixels below it, and its location.

Filters can retouch and apply special effects to a selection rather than an entire image. With an active selection, choose a filter from the Filter menu to apply a filter to only a selected area. For more information on filters, see [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=3464 ] Image Correction.

With a selection active, choose the New command from the Layer menu, then either Layer via Copy or Layer via Cut , to create a new layer consisting of that selection. See the [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=3719 ] Layers handout for more details.

After manipulating a selection, you may find it useful to view the results of that manipulation before you deselect the area and the change becomes irreversible. You can turn off the selection lines temporarily by choosing View, Show , and deselecting the option for Selection Edges . You will need to remember that you have hidden a selection; otherwise, you may forget that an area is selected and find yourself wondering why some of Photoshop's operations are not working. To turn the selection lines back on, retrace your steps and reactivate Selection Edges .

The Quick Mask mode lets you use the brush tools to refine a selection. To use the quick mask, first make a preliminary selection. Then press <Q> , or select the Quick Mask editing mode from the toolbox. A colored film will cover all but the selected area, and the foreground and background colors will change to black and white. You can then use the paint tools to add and remove areas from the selection. Remove areas from the mask and add them to the selection by painting them white. Add areas to the mask and remove them from the selection by painting them black. (Remember that you can toggle the foreground and background colors by pressing <X> or by clicking the double arrow over the colors in the toolbox.) To create a feathered edge to your selection, paint the edges with gray. All tools used while in quick mask mode affect only the shape of the mask. Once you finish making your selection, press <Q> to return to normal mode.

To see the quick mask options, bring forward the Channels palette on the bottom floating palette. Double-click on the Quick Mask channel to bring up the Quick Mask Options. You can then change the Opacity of the mask and make the mask color something other than red (this is useful if your image already contains a lot of red). To change the mask color, click on the Color box, and the color picker will appear. You can also choose to mask your selection rather than the area that’s not selected.

Rather than creating text that’s automatically filled with a solid color, you can create masked type with the Type mask tools . Select either the horizontal or vertical Type mask tool from the toolbox by clicking and holding down on the Type tool space. You can use a type mask for two purposes: (1) To create text you can fill with an unusual technique, like a gradient, or (2) to select a text-shaped area from an image (for example, you might create the masked text “rainbow” from a picture of a rainbow for a special effect). You can use the Type mask tool much as you did the Type tool (covered in [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=3548 ] Intermediate Editing). Create a mask of the appropriate shape (with the font, font size, anti-aliasing options, etc.), then reposition your cursor outside the selection lines until it turns into a Move cursor to position the mask precisely. Then click on the check mark in the Options bar to commit to your mask. (You cannot reposition the mask with the Move tool once you’ve committed to your changes.)

You will now see selection lines in the shape of your text on the image. Once you’ve positioned the text over an area of the image, you can use the Move tool to move the selection to a different location (or different document window), use the Edit, Fill command to fill the selection area with whatever Contents you like, Stroke the edges of the text, or use the gradient tool to fill the selection with a gradient.

Note: Once you deselect your masked type, the type-shaped object will become a permanent part of the current layer. You will not be able to move it independently from other objects or layers in your image, as you can with non-masked type. If you want to be able to move text you’ve created using masked type, you should create a new layer before using the masked type tool. For details, see the Layers handout.

Photoshop stores your image in two types of channels: color channels and alpha channels. The color channels (RGB, CMYK, or whatever color space you are using) store the actual image data, since the combination of these three or four colors produces all the other colors in the spectrum, much the way primary colors worked when you were in elementary school. Alpha channels, on the other hand, store selections.

To save your selection, first make a selection. Then from the Select menu, choose Save Selection . Type in a Name and click OK . Alternatively, you can click on the Save Selection icon in the channels palette (second from the left at the bottom of the palette), which will name your selection “Alpha 1.”

You can add and remove areas from a saved selection, allowing you to refine your second selection area without losing the first area. Make your first selection and save it to a new channel as described above. Then select the area that you wish to add or remove. Again, go to the Select menu and choose Save Selection . In the Channel drop-down menu, choose the alpha channel that contains your first selection. In the Operation part of the dialog box, you can choose to Add to , Subtract from , or Intersect with the previously saved channel. Replace Channel replaces the old selection with the new one.

To use a saved selection, choose Load Selection from the Select menu. Choose the selection you want from the Channel drop-down menu. Check the Invert box to select everything except the saved selection. In the Operation section of the dialog box, you can choose to add to, subtract from, or intersect with the selection. Finally, you can simply load the saved selection as if it were new. You can also use the Channels Palette to load a selection. First click on the alpha channel you want to load. Then click the Load Channel as Selection icon at the bottom far left of the palette. Click on RGB (or whatever color mode you are using) in the palette to see your entire image again, this time with the selection.

When selections are saved in channels, each saved selection takes up file space. (You should be aware that many file formats will not let you save your selection, although .psd does.) For these reasons, you should not save any more selections than you need. To delete an alpha channel, simply select it in the channels palette and drag it into the trash can at the bottom of the palette. Alternatively, use the Delete Channel command from the palette drop-down menu.

The pen tools work much the same way as the lasso tools, but you can edit the points along the path. Use one of the first two tools to draw a path, then use the following three tools to make changes to your path. Before you begin, make sure that you have selected the option to Create new work path in the Options bar.

One of the big advantages to using the pen tools to build selections is that you can go back and edit the selection after the fact. You may find it useful to use other selection tools initially and then change the selection into a path for editing and saving. To change a selection into a path, click on the Makes Work Path from Selection button at the bottom of the paths palette (third from right), or choose it from the Paths palette drop-down menu.

 The Pen Tool

The Pen tool works like the Polygonal Lasso tool. To create straight lines, first click to establish a starting point. Then move the mouse to another position and click again to establish the end point, and the pen tool will connect the two points. Each time you click with the mouse, the pen tool creates an anchor point, which can be moved later. To create curved lines, click and drag when you set the anchor point. You will see three points. The anchor point will appear in the center; it is the actual point that is placed by the Pen tool. Direction handles are the control points at the opposite ends of the direction line, and these control the angle of the curve. If you make a mistake while drawing a path, press <Delete> once to erase the last path segment. Be careful not to press <Delete> twice; if you do, you will erase the entire path.

 The Freeform Pen Tool

The Freeform Pen Tool works like a real pen (or like the freehand Lasso). You can select the Freeform Pen Tool either from the toolbox or from the Options bar. Just click and drag to create a path. As it draws, the freeform pen tool drops anchor points along the outline, which you can move later to edit the path. This tool is useful to create a quick outline on screen, but unless you have a very steady hand, you will then need to edit these points using the paths tools, as described below. If you click on the drop-down triangle to the left of the Magnetic check-box, you can access Geometry options for the Freeform Pen tool. The Curve Fit option works much like the Smooth command on selections—once you’re finished with your path, it will smooth your edges based on your setting (a higher number will make your path smoother).

For additional flexibility, you can check the Magnetic option for the Freeform Pen tool to activate the Magnetic Pen. It works very much like the Magnetic Lasso (as described in [ http://help.unc.edu/?id=3273 ] Introduction); again, you can set the options for the tool using the drop-down triangle for Geometry options. The Magnetic Pen will try to find the edges of your selection area for you, making it easier to create a path that won’t need as much editing.

 Using Shapes to Create Paths

If the area you need to select is close to a standard shape (such as a rectangle, for example), you may want to use one of the shapes available from the Options bar to create your initial path, then use the Add and Delete Anchor Point and Convert Point tools to edit it.

First, select the appropriate shape from the Options bar, then use the drop-down menu to the right of the list of shapes in the Options bar to make access the options available for that shape.

If you’re using a Custom Shape, select a shape from the drop-down menu on the Options bar as well. Finally, be sure you’ve selected the option to Create new work path before you begin.

Once you’ve created a path with a Shape tool, use one of the tools listed below to make the shape conform to your selection area. You may notice that the shape options in the Pen tool options bar are actually a kind of shortcut to the Shape tools (U) in the toolbox; that space will appear selected as you use shapes to create a work path.

Your path may be made up of one component or several. It is possible to work with multiple components within the same work path. In the duck image below, for example, the eyes and the bill are selected using three components within the same work path. In order to work with these individual components, Photoshop provides you with some specialized tools.

 Path Component Selection Tool

If you need to reposition one component of your path, you’ll need a tool to be able to work with that component only. That’s where the Path Component Selection Tool comes in handy. If you need to move only one component at a time, you can use this tool; to move multiple components, hold down the <Shift> key after you select the first component, then use the tool to move the necessary components.

 Direct Selection Tool

The Direct Selection tool is used to reposition points on the path. You may have noticed that if you clicked and dragged a point on the path with one of the tools in the Pen group—for example, the Add Anchor Point tool—this tool automatically became active. You can also select it from the toolbox.

The Paths Palette lists all available paths. The icon bar along the bottom of the palette lets you manipulate existing paths quickly. Click on the palette drop-down menu to see additional commands.

To work on a path, select it from the list in the Paths palette. To hide all your paths, click in the blank area below the paths list. You can also hide the paths by selecting Turn Off Path from the Paths palette menu.

To convert an active path into a selection, click on the Load Path as Selection icon in the Paths palette (the third button from the left). Hold down the <Alt> button as you press the icon to bring up a dialog box that will let you feather or anti-alias the selection, as well as choose an operation. You can also add to the current selection by holding down the <Shift> key as you drag a path from the list onto the icon.

You can save a work path by selecting it from the list of paths in the paths palette and dragging it onto the New Path icon (second button from the right). If you drag an already saved path to the icon, you will duplicate it. Saved paths will receive a default name unless you press the <Alt> button as you drag it onto the icon. To delete a path, drag it onto the trashcan icon at the far right.

Since adding a path increases file size less than adding a channel does, you may want to turn a current selection into a path and then save it. After making the selection, click on the Selection into Path icon (fourth from the left). If you hold down the <Alt> button as you press the icon, you can set the tolerance. The tolerance setting (0.5 to 10) refers to how closely the path hugs the actual pixels in the selection. A low number will hug the pixels exactly, resulting in a jagged selection. A high number will be smoother but less accurate.