Everything you need to know about the selection tool as a beginner Photoshopper
Up your Photoshop game in under 5 minutes
The selection tool is the tool I primarily use for the majority of my Photoshop needs, which is why it is the topic for my first Easy Photoshop Tips series. Having a selection tool, or a cut tool, is what sets apart a real Photoshop software from using whatever comes pre-installed. The tool may be in the form of a scissor or wand, depending on what software you are using, but there is usually a dotted line involved.
As you all know, I use Photoshop elements; its an affordable software and does everything you need it to for beginner Photoshoppers, so long as you are willing to get creative. Elements allows me to make a selection through a variety of options. The main two are the auto select and the manual options (top right and left).
How it works
The auto selection detects lines in the image and selects to them, this obviously works better the better your quality is. This is rarely an exact process and should be refined though adding more selections or removing some of the selection.
Since the magic wand can be a little finicky, its best to use the manual selection tool for exact selections and refinements. Through the manual option, you must actually paint over everything you want to select or don’t want to. There is an option to have what’s not selected represented in a bright colour of your choice, in order to facilitate precise selections.
Once you have your image selected…
A world of possibilities has opened.
What you can do
Firstly, you can move the selected layer, by dragging it to where you want.
You can adjust the elements of only the selected region without affecting the entire image. This helps if faces are over exposed, but you don’t wish to affect your beautiful background.
Furthermore, you can perform simple tasks such as rotating and scaling by simply dragging or turning the outside of the selection.
And lastly you can delete your selection or everything that’s not selected in case you were attempting to delete a background. Just hitting delete would delete the selection, but to delete the background you could save the selection as a mask — a mask is a focal point whereby anything not in the mask is not visible — or you could copy the selection, delete the whole image and then paste it back. This will give you something like this… But, always remember to save as a PNG (portable network graphic) rather than a JPG (standard format). Only the PNG format allows for interlacing so that backgrounds won’t be saved, a JPG would save a blank background as white typically.
(White and grey squares are the standard indication for a blank background)
How you should use it
But, most importantly the selection tool is used for layering. Layering is exactly what the name implies, create different layers in your image. Imagine that a layer is physically cut of the picture and it only looks to be align with the rest of the image when they are lined up parallelly. Layering allows you to do everything previously mentioned, but without having to make the selection over and over again. It is unlikely that you will perfect your adjustments on the first time and reselecting exactly what you originally selected can be a challenge. Layering saves your selection and allows you to return to it whenever you want.
These are my two layers in my image, my background and my masked background (which is the same picture, but where none of the black areas of the picture (shown above) are visible.
Now I can rearrange my layers if I wanted to add an element behind myself in the image, but in front of the background.
Here I added another layered mask of myself and moved it in the middle of the layers. Now I can move it to my liking to add myself into the picture realistically.
This can be used to add family members into pictures that couldn’t make the occasion. As a final note, I added a quick unrealistic shadow into the photo, if this was a real project I would take my time with it. But, the easiest way to add a shadow is to use the black paint brush and contour the body causing the shadow, but having the layer selected for which the shadow would pop up. The opacity depends on the photo, but I like to stay around 75% for the first layer and then I make a second layer with half of that opacity and contour the existing shadow. This makes it look a little bit more realistic. For more realistic shadows, read my next blog post on cloning, which will be posted at the same time as this one. Thanks for reading and make sure to contact me via my website for help with one of your personal projects or advice on what software to purchase if you are looking to buy Photoshop.