How to add a selection in Photoshop. Save a selection in another Adobe Photoshop CS5 document

In this tutorial, we'll look at all the ways you can use Photoshop's basic selection tools, such as Marquee and Lasso. If you use them only to make a new selection each time, then you are using only a small part of their capabilities.

We'll look at how you can add a selection to an existing selection, how to exclude an area from your selection, and even how to intersect two selections and leave the common part selected.

Once you understand all the capabilities of the basic selection tools, you will be able to use them to your advantage.

Let's get started by looking at adding a selection to an already selected area

Adding a selection to an already selected area

For clarity, I’ll open a drawing of a fairly simple geometric shape in Photoshop:

Simple geometric figure

I want to select a shape in a drawing using the most commonly used selection tool in Photoshop. "Rectangular area"(Rectangular Marquee Tool). To select a tool, I'll turn to the toolbar:

Select the “Rectangular Marquee” selection tool from the toolbar.

I could also press a key M for quick tool selection.

Let's assume that when working with this tool I can only make a new selection. And how can I select this figure? Hmm...Let's try it! I'll start by selecting the bottom of the shape. It's quite simple:

Select the bottom of the shape using the Rectangular Marquee Tool

So we've done it - the bottom of the shape is selected. But at the same time, the square part at the top right remains unselected, so I’ll now make another selection, this time the top square. Since I'm selecting a square, I'll start from the top left corner while holding down Shift to maintain the proportions of the square when selecting:

Select the top square part of the shape

We have done this - the upper part of the figure is selected. Wait a minute...Where did the previous selection of the lower part of the figure go? It's gone!

Yes, it's gone. I lost the original selection the moment I started making a second selection, and this is a property of all Photoshop selection tools. As soon as you start making another new selection, the existing one disappears. This means that I can't highlight my entire figure. Alas, highlighting complex shapes is beyond the capabilities of Photoshop...Thank you for being with us!

Speaking seriously, then, of course, there is a way to highlight our figure, although not in the same way as we did with you - not by selecting its parts one by one. What we need to do is add a new selection to the already selected area. After studying this action, you will be surprised how you could ever work in Photoshop without it.

Four Basic Settings for the Selection Tool

Four main icons with settings for the selection tool

They may look a little strange, but in fact each of these icons is important because it represents a specific setting for working with our selections. The first icon on the left that I selected in the picture above is called "New highlighted area"(New Selection), and it is this that was initially selected when working in Photoshop. Its purpose is to create a new selection each time. If you never knew about these four settings, you would always use the first icon by default.

The second icon, located directly next to the first, is responsible for settings (Add To Selection). This is exactly what we will study further.

“Add to selection” icon in the tool settings area

By selecting this setting, I will add any subsequent selection to the previous selection I made. Let's see how this adjustment will help us highlight our figure.

First of all, I'll click on the icon "New highlighted area", because I'm going to select the bottom part of the shape again, as I did at the beginning of the lesson:

Select the bottom part of our figure again

Now the bottom of the shape is selected and I'm going to click on the second icon "Add to selection" to select the entire shape. To quickly select an icon, I'll just press and hold the key Shift before starting a new selection without accessing the settings area. As soon as you press the key Shift, you will see a small plus sign in the lower right corner of the cursor, which will mean selecting the second icon:

Hold down the Shift key to quickly navigate to the Add to Selection icon. A small plus sign will appear in the lower right corner of the cursor.

Let's try selecting the top square part again. While holding down the key Shift, I'm going to make another selection of the square part at the top of the shape. This time I will select not only the top square part, but also a little of the bottom rectangular part, so that the second selection partially coincides with the first:

Make a second selection so that it slightly overlaps the first

A quick note...You don't need to hold the key down the entire time. Shift pressed while you make additional selections. All you have to do is press a key Shift and click the mouse to start making a selection. Once you start selecting the area you want, you can safely release the Shift key.

Now that I've made a second selection that should be added to the first, I'll release the mouse button and see what happens:

Thanks to customization "Add to selection", which I applied by simply pressing a key Shift, my second selection was added to the first, and the shape, which at first seemed incredibly difficult to select, was selected entirely.

Let's look at a real life example to understand how useful the setting is "Add to selection".

Using the Add to Selection setting to select eyes

One of the most frequently asked questions I hear is: “How do I highlight both eyes at once? I select one eye using the tool "Lasso", but then when I start highlighting the second eye, the highlighting around the first eye disappears.” Let's look at how setting will help us solve this problem "Add to selection". Here's the photo I'll be working with:

Original image

I'm going to select a tool "Lasso"(Lasso) on the toolbar:

Select the Lasso tool from the toolbar

To select a tool I could also press a key L.

With the Lasso selected, I'm going to select the left eye first:

Select the left eye using the Lasso tool

When using normal instrument settings "Lasso" After selecting the left eye (our left, her right), if I started selecting the right eye, the selection around the left eye would disappear. But not with the setting " Add to selection"! I'm going to press the key again Shift To quickly select a parameter, see a small plus sign in the lower right corner of the cursor, and while holding down the Shift key, begin selecting the second eye. I don't have to hold the key all the time Shift pressed. Once I start making selections, I can let her go. So I go ahead and select the second eye:

Select the other eye using the “Add to Selection” setting. It's simple enough

And so we did it! Both eyes are now highlighted thanks to the setting "Add to selection".

In the first case, when we used the setting "Add to selection" To select the entire shape, I partially overlapped the selections to create one overall selection. In the eyes example, my selections were separated from each other, but ultimately Photoshop merged them into one selection as well. I could select the girl's hair, eyebrows, lips and teeth separately from each other, and since I would use the setting every time "Add to selection" Photoshop would still treat them as one selection.

So we've looked at the setup. "Add to selection". Let's now focus on the setup.

Before we learn how the setting works "Subtract from Selection"(Subtract From Selection), let's look at where we can find it. To do this, let's go back to the settings area and take another look at the four small icons - settings "Subtract from Selection" third from left:

Icon for the “Subtract from selected area” setting in the settings area

Now that we know where the setting is located, let's look at how to apply it.

Sometimes when selecting a complex shape, it is much easier to select it entirely and then exclude unnecessary parts. Let's go back to our figure that we worked with at the beginning of the lesson:

In the first case, when I selected the shape, I selected the bottom part first and then used the "Add to selection" to further highlight the top square part. This time, to show you how the Subtract from Selection option works, I'm going to first select the entire shape. I will use the tool again "Rectangular area", and quickly make a rectangular selection for the entire shape:

Select the entire shape using the Rectangular Marquee Tool

It seemed to work, except for one detail - when selecting the entire shape at once, I also selected the empty area in the upper left corner. Thanks to customization "Subtract from Selection", I can easily fix this mistake.

Same as in the case of setting "Add to selection" to select a setting "Subtract from Selection" no need to access the settings area every time. All you have to do is press and hold the key Alt(Win) / Option (Mac), as a result of which a small minus sign will appear in the lower right corner of the mouse cursor, indicating that the setting has been selected:

Press and hold the Alt/Option key to quickly select the Subtract from Selection option

Using the tool "Rectangular area" and setup "Subtract from Selection", I'm going to select the empty area at the top left and exclude it from the initial selection of the entire shape. Holding down the Alt/Option key, I'll start by selecting the top left corner of the empty area, moving slightly to the side of the original selection, and continue selecting down to the right until the entire empty area I want to exclude is selected:

Select the area you want to exclude from the initial selection of the shape

Same as when working with settings "Add to selection", you don't need to keep the Alt/Option key pressed all the time. All you have to do is press and hold the key until you start selecting with the mouse button. After this, you can safely release the Alt/Option key.

Now, after I have selected the unnecessary area that I want to exclude, I just need to release the mouse button and please:

The empty area at the top of the shape is no longer in the original selection

So, thanks to the setting "Subtract from Selection" the empty area at the top of the shape is no longer in the original selection, and only the shape itself remains selected.

Let's wrap up our tour of the selection tools by learning how to customize "Intersection with the selected area."

“Intersection with Selection” setting

We looked at how to add a selection and how to exclude an unnecessary area from it. Now it's time to study last setting(Intersect With Selection). First, let's go back to the settings area to find the setting "Intersection with selected area", and then we will study its application. Of the four small but important icons, the setting we need is the first one on the right edge:

Icon for the “Intersection with selected area” setting in the settings area

Same as the previous settings, the setting "Intersection with selected area" you can select by clicking on the icon in the settings area or by pressing the key combination Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac). So, let's repeat the key combination again to select our settings:

Shift = "Add to selection"

Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) = "Subtract from selection"

Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) = "Intersect with Selection"

After determining how to select a setting "Intersection with selected area", let's look at what she is responsible for. To do this, we need an image of a figure of this shape:

This figure consists of two red crescents located side by side, with an empty white space between them. Let's imagine that we need to select this empty space. You can try to take the tool "Lasso", provided that you know how to draw perfectly even circles. You can use the tool "Magic wand"(Magic Wand) in this case, since the area we need to select is uniformly white, but what if it were not the same color? What if it was a color photograph and we needed to highlight part of the figure? Tool "Magic wand" then it would hardly have helped us. So what to do?

The program has a tool for selecting round and oval shapes "Oval area"(Elliptical Marquee Tool). Let's try to use it.

First, I'll select this tool from the Tools panel:

Select the “Oval Marquee” tool from the toolbar

Then, selecting the tool "Oval area", I'm going to make a circle-shaped selection around the left crescent moon. As I select, I'll hold down the key Shift, to keep the circle shape:

Select the left crescent using the Oval Marquee Tool. To maintain the circle shape when selecting, press Shift

Having selected the left side of the shape, I also selected the central one. white area, my task is to highlight only the white space inside the figure. You can try using the setting "Add to selection" and make another selection of the right crescent:

Select the right crescent using the “Add to Selection” setting

Did not work out! All we have achieved is to highlight both crescents. Maybe make a selection of the right crescent using the setting "Subtract from Selection":

Select the right crescent using the Subtract from Selection setting.

It didn't work out again! The Subtract from Selection setting helped me get just the left crescent moon selected, but again that's not what I wanted. It's time to use the setting "Intersection with selected area".

Settings "Intersection with selected area" It works like this: it compares the selection you've already made with the selection you're currently making, and selects only the area where the two selections intersect. It turns out that if I first selected the left crescent along with an empty area, and then made a circular selection of the right crescent using the setting "Intersection with selected area", also including the empty space in the center, you would end up with only a selection of the white area in the center of the shape - where the two selections intersect. But this is exactly what I need!

Let's try to select the required area. With the left crescent selected, I'm going to use the tool "Oval area" make a second selection of the crescent on the right, so that the intersection of the selections is the white space in the center. When I do this, I'll press the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac). If you look at the lower right corner of the mouse cursor (circled in red in the picture), you can see a small cross indicating the choice of setting "Intersection with selected area":

Select the right crescent using the “Intersect with Selection” setting

Just like with the previous settings, once you start making a selection, you can stop holding the Shift and Alt/Option keys.

Using the setting "Intersection with selected area", I also selected the right crescent. Now the two selections I made intersect in the central white area, which is what I ultimately want to select. All I have to do is release the mouse button, and the program itself will leave selected only the white area in the center of the shape - the intersection of the selections:

We easily selected the white area between the two crescent moons using the Intersect with Selection setting.

We completed the task. Using settings "Intersection with selected area" It was easy for us to select the white area between the two crescents.

So, we've learned about all the capabilities of Photoshop's basic selection tools. Now we can not only make new selections, but also add selections to an existing selection, exclude an unnecessary area from the selection, and leave selected only the intersection of several selections. We have unleashed our full potential! We can embrace the whole world! The prospects are wonderful! We...Okay, okay, I'm finishing.

Translation: Ksenia Rudenko

Knowing how to properly create and modify selections is an important skill for any Photoshop user. In this tutorial, we'll look at ways to modify selections in Photoshop. Here you can read about the main combinations that will greatly help simplify the process of working with selected areas; we will also look at selection tools, quick mask mode and Selection panel options.

Lesson details:

• Estimated completion time: 23 minutes
• Difficulty level: beginning
• Program: Adobe Photoshop CS6

Final result:

1.Basic combinations:

The following combinations for creating selections are basic:

1. Add a new one to the selected area(by holding Shift and using the selection tools, you can add new areas to an existing area)
2. Subtract from a selection(to do this you need to hold Alt/Option)
3. Intersection area(to create an area where two selections intersect, you need to hold down Alt/Option and Shift at the same time)
4. Select all(using the combination Ctrl/Cmd + A you can select the entire canvas)
5. Deselect(to remove the selected area, you need to press Ctrl / Cmd + D)
6. Revert selection(to return the previous selected area, you need to press the combination Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + D)
7. Invert selection(by pressing the combination Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + I, you can swap the selected and unselected area)
8. Move the selected area can be used using the arrow keys on the keyboard
9. Selected area perfect circle or square can be created using the appropriate selection tools by holding Shift)
10. To create a selection, starting from the center need to hold Alt/Option

2.

The saved selections may be useful later. The selected area can be saved in channels. A selection saved in an alpha channel can be loaded at any time.

3.Transforming a selection

This function will allow you to edit only the selected area, but not the content of the layer. This can be very useful when we need to create a distorted selection. To change the selection, you can hold down the Ctrl/Cmd button and drag anchor points, or use the warp functions.

4.Quick Mask mode

This is a very convenient function for making changes to the selected area. To enter the quick mask mode, you need to click on the button in the lower toolbar, or the Q key. You can exit the mode in a similar way. Once you've entered Quick Mask mode, you'll see that the selected area remains unchanged and the rest of the image is shaded red. You can change the settings by double-clicking on the quick mask icon. To create the desired selections, in this mode you must work with gradients and brushes. Using black as the foreground window color will allow you to remove an area from the selection, using white will help increase the selection.

5. Magic wand, quick selection, adjacent pixels and similar shades

Magic Wand is a classic Photoshop tool. It allows you to create a selection based on the similarity of neighboring pixels. The Quick Selection tool is hidden in the toolbar and is somewhat similar to the Magic Wand. This tool takes the form of brushes and with a simple stroke you can create the selection you want. The name of the tools: adjacent pixels (grow) and similar shades (similar) speaks for itself.

6. Feathering

This function allows you to soften the edges of a selected area. Depending on the desired softening, you need to select the appropriate size of the softened area.

7. Refine Edge

A very powerful tool for creating a selection. Here you will find a lot of useful settings that will come in handy when creating selected areas with fine details. Here you'll find Smart Radius, Clear Color, offset selection edge option, and more.

8. Shrink/Expand

The function allows you to shrink or expand the selected area by a specified number of pixels.

9. Border

One of the least common selection functions. It allows you to create a ring-like frame around your previous selection.

10. Color Range

One of many people's favorite selection tools. It is somewhat similar to a magic wand, but by working with it, you can more precisely control the selected area. The main difference from the magic wand is the ability to immediately see the resulting mask, as well as further adjustment of pixels that did not fall within the set threshold.

Translation – Duty room

Selection areas are used quite often in Photoshop. By selecting an area, you have the opportunity to edit it without fear of affecting everything that is outside its perimeter. To make it easier to select objects in Photoshop, several modifications of selection have been implemented. As you may have guessed: today we will talk about such a useful tool in Photoshop as selection areas in Photoshop.

What is a "Selection Area"?

This is the selection of a rectangular and oval area. The selected segment is highlighted with a moving dotted line. You can find selection areas on the main toolbar or using hotkey « M».

How it works?

To mark an area in the image, you need to press the left mouse button to mark one of the corners (with a rectangular selection - Rectangular Marquee Tool) and, without releasing the button, move the frame to the opposite corner of the area diagonally.

The principle of operation of an oval selection (Elliptical Marquee Tool) is exactly the same.

The selection area looks like this:

Let me give you a practical example of using the selection area.

Cutting a selection

To cut the selected area onto a new layer for later editing, move the cursor inside the area, right-click and select “Cut to new layer.”

We have a new layer with the cut out image.

Hotkeys

The hotkeys that are used with this tool will be useful.

If you hold down the key while selecting Alt– the selected area will be drawn from the center to the edge.

If you need to select a square or round area, hold down the key Shift, the geometric parameters will be connected into a perfect circle or square.

Using a rectangle and an oval, you can form complex shapes.

Draw one arbitrary rectangle, release the mouse button, hold down Shift and draw another rectangle so that they have a common area of ​​contact, release the mouse.

You will get one selected area along the common perimeter of the two rectangles.

This way you can combine rectangular and oval shapes. If, when adding a new form, you hold down Alt, the region formation will subtract the total space from the model, not including in the outline an area that extends beyond the existing one. The selected area can be moved.

Move the mouse cursor to the body of the selected shape, press the left button and, without releasing it, move the outline.

If you need to move not only the outline, but also the drawing inside the outline, hold down the key Ctrl.

After the first displacement, the new figure is moved in the usual way - just with the left mouse button, it is not necessary to hold down Ctrl.

You can remove the selection using a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D.

Highlighting difficult areas

To select a complex shape, use a group of four elements in the top menu.

Element 1. Used to create a new selection.

Element 2. Used to add a selection to a new selection.

You can add areas of any shape. This element is good to use when you need to make a selection with a complex shape. While working with this element, a “+” (plus) sign appears under the cursor.

Element 3. Used to subtract the area being drawn from the area available on the document. While working with this element, a “-” (minus) icon appears.

Element 4. Used to select an area at the intersection of two areas. This element is used extremely rarely.

Let's look at the functionality of the remaining menu items of the selection tool.

To make the edges of the selected area more blurry, feathering is used. This is done so that the cut out picture fits better into another background.

If you need the edges of the image to look less sharp, check the box next to “Smoothing”.

Using the “Style” item we can set the size of the selected area in a certain proportion. When choosing the “normal” option, we can select an arbitrary area.

The “refine edge” button opens a menu with many settings. With its help, you can select complex objects with small details, such as wool, hair, etc.

That's all. Good luck to you and creative success!

In the summer landscape, it remains to highlight the green grass to place it on the pampered pond. This requires that those mask pixels that fall on this object be white.

Let's use the already created mask in the document Winter Forest.jpg. It will need to be subtracted from the mask created in the document Coniferous Forest.jpg.

1. Select the image of fresh grass in the Coniferous Forest.jpg document and save the selection as the Alpha 1 channel (Fig. 7.10).

Rice. 7.10. Alpha channel in the document Coniferous forest.jpg

2. Make sure that the Winter Forest.jpg document is also open at the same time as the document Coniferous Forest.jpg, the snow-covered pond is selected in it, and it should be aive. If you have already closed the last one, then open it and load the mask saved in the channel.

3. Run the command Save Selection(Save Selection) menu Select(Emphasis). The dialog box of the same name that appears (Fig. 7.11) provides additional opportunities for manipulating masks and channels.

4. Listed Document(Document) select the document Coniferous forest.jpg. As you can see, selected areas can be saved in channels of other documents!

Selected areas can indeed be saved in channels of other documents, but only under one condition: the sizes of these documents must be exactly the same.

Rice. 7.11. Dialog window Save Selection

5. Listed Channel(Channel) select the already existing Alpha 1 channel. This channel contains the green grass selection.

6. In the area Operation(Action) set the switch Subtract from Channel(Subtract from channel).

Other operations with channels are often used: addition and intersection. The first adds the current selection to the selection saved in the channel. The second leaves selected only those areas that are selected both in the image and in the channel.

7. Click the button OK.

8. Deselect the Winter Forest.jpg document with the command Deselect(Remove selection) or by pressing keys +.

9. Activate the document Coniferous Forest.jpg, and in it - the Alpha 1 channel.

Rice. 7.12. Dialog window Load Selection

The Photoshop developers tried to ensure that the program does not limit you to one strictly predetermined way to solve a particular problem. As a rule, any of them can be solved in several ways. For example, instead of saving the selected area from the file Winter Forest.jpg into the channel of the document Coniferous Forest.jpg with subtraction, do the opposite: load the alpha channel with the selected area, which has a gradient stretch, in the document Winter Forest.jpg, then command Load Selection(Load Selection) load a mask from the alpha channel of the Coniferous Forest.jpg document with subtraction. The command to load the selected area also provides the ability to perform mathematical operations with masks (Fig. 7.12).

Source: Komolova, N.V., Adobe Photoshop CS5 for everyone / N.V. Komolova, E.S. Yakovleva. - St. Petersburg: BHV-Petersburg, 2011. - 624 p.: ill. + CD-ROM - (In original)

In this beginner's tutorial, we'll look at how to select an area in Photoshop CS5 of a simple geometric shape using the rectangular and oval selection tools.

To quickly work with simple shapes, the editor provides convenient .

Rectangular selection

As already mentioned in, one of the tools for working with rectangular shapes is the “Rectangular Marquee”. In Photoshop CS5 it is located on the left, at the top of the toolbar. To activate the tool, simply click on the icon. An options bar will appear at the top, allowing you to make settings: When the “Style” parameter is set to “Normal”, the selection of the rectangular area will be performed arbitrarily, as you stretch it.

Change the style to “Fixed Ratio” and two windows will appear next to each other.

You can specify the ratio of width to height in them. If you enter the number 3 in the width column and leave the height as 1, then the sides will maintain their proportions: the width will be 3 times the height.

And the next style is “Fixed Size”:

Here the exact dimensions of the selection frame are specified in numbers. Between them is a button with arrows - it swaps the width and height values.

Selection mode buttons

Now let’s “go through” the mode buttons in relation to the existing selection:

The number 1 indicates the “New Selection” button. When it is pressed, with each subsequent selection the previous one, which was made earlier, is removed.

Under the number 2 is “Add to Selection”. Activate it and a new selection will be added to the existing selection. The boundaries of intersection will be erased. The same result is obtained by the button under the number 1 with the Shift key held down:

The number 3 is above the Subtruct from Selection button. If you select it, then each subsequent selection will remove from the existing part the part that falls under the intersection. Button 1 with the Alt key held down will give the same result:

And the last, 4th button is “Intersect with Selection”. In this case, Photoshop CS5 will leave the area where the shapes intersect, automatically removing everything else. Button #1 with the Alt + Shift keys held down will do the same:

I think it’s clear how to select an area in Photoshop CS5. But there is only one button left on the panel - “ ” (Refine Edge). It works with any selection tools, so there is a separate article about it.

Oval Marquee Tool

The Elliptical Marquee selection tool in Photoshop CS5 is identical to its counterpart, the Rectangular Marquee, with the difference that it denotes round shapes rather than rectangular ones. But they work the same way and are in the same group. To activate the Oval area, open the drop-down window of this group and click on the oval icon. You can call the drop-down window by left-clicking on the small black arrow in the lower right corner of the group or by right-clicking on the Rectangular Area icon.

Depending on the installed settings, you can switch between rectangular and oval areas using the M key or the combination Shift+M.

1. As already written, an equilateral square and an even circle are obtained if you hold down the Shift key while working.

2. It is very convenient, especially for round shapes, to create selections from the center. To do this, click on the center of the shape while holding down the Alt key and drag to the desired size. As soon as you hold down Alt, the point indicated by the click turns into the central one, and a selection is created around it. When finished, release the mouse button and then the key.

If you want to select an even square or circle from the center, use the Shift+Alt combination instead of the Alt key.