Selection Tool in Photoshop

Selection Tools

Marquee Tool: Allows you to drag basic rectangular and ellipse shaped selections.

Hold down the shift key to "constrain proportions" (keep the height and width the same).


Deselect: Gets rid of any selected areas- Select > Deselect = Apple Key + D

Lasso/Polygonal Lasso/Magnetic Lasso Tools

Lasso: Click and hold to outline a selection- joins the two ends of the line when you let go.

Polygonal Lasso: Click point-to-point to outline a selection with straight edges- double click to join the two ends.

Magnetic Lasso: Works similar way to there polygonal lasso, but Photoshop tries to find or stick to any edges that you move the mouse over between clicks.



Add to/ subtract from selection:

Hold down the shift key when you begin selection a second area to 'add' it to an existing selection.

Hold down the command key (apple key) when you begin selecting a second area to 'subtract' any overlapping areas from an existing selection.

You can change to a different selection tool before adding/subtracting areas to create different selection shapes.

Invert Selection: Switches the selection area (s) to deselected and the deselected area(s) to select.
Select > Inverse = Shift + Apple Key+ i


Anti-Alias/Feather

The anti-alais checkbox allows you to 'smooth' the edges of a selection to avoid a 'pixel-y' edge.

Feather: The amount of feathering (blurring) you add the edge of a selection (measured in pixels) instead of a hard edge. This can be used to make a selections 'fade out'.

The amount of Feathering can be changed between adding/subtracting selections.

 Magic Wand: Click once to select an area that is all the same colour. You can adjust the Tolerance to make it either select just one exact colour (0) or pick a wider range of colours (maximum value is 255). If the Contiguous checkbox (meaning joined or touching) is ticked the area selected will only be one area that colour, is its un-ticked all of those colours throughout the image will be selected.