Photoshop’s Tools panel contains three categories of tools that you can use to create a basic selection: Marquee tools, Lasso tools and Wand tools. Although these three are very useful, many users forget that they are only starting points.

The Marquee tools (M) allow you to click and drag to define a selection. To toggle between the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tool, press Shift+M. Descriptions of the Marquee tools follow:

  • Rectangular Marquee tool: Use this tool to make a rectangular selection. Press the Shift key to draw a square.
  • Elliptical Marquee tool: Use this tool to make an elliptical selection. Press the Shift key to draw a circle.
  • Single Row or Single Column Marquee tool: Creates a selection that is 1 pixel wide in the shape of a row or column. These two tools are not used often, which is why Adobe didn’t assign the keyboard shortcut M to trigger them.

Selection options for Marquee tools

When using the Marquee tools, you have several options available in the Options bar. These modifiers can improve or alter your selection.

The first four icons specify the kind of selection:

  • New selection: Creates a new selection.
  • Add to selection: After you create one selection, you can click this button so subsequent selections are combined with the existing selection. You can also hold down the Shift key to add to a selection.
  • Subtract from selection: After you create one selection, you can click this button so subsequent selections are subtracted from the existing selection. You can also hold down the Option (Alt) key to subtract from a selection.
  • Intersect with selection: Requires you to make a first selection. When you draw a second selection, Photoshop creates a new selection where the two selections overlap.

The following options modify the selection tool and must be chosen before making a selection:

  • Feather: A normal selection has a crisp edge. Feathering a selection creates a gradual blend at the selection’s edges. Think of it as the difference between a line drawn with a pencil and one drawn with a felt-tip marker. Feathered selections are useful when you want to extract objects.
  • Anti-alias: When working with the Elliptical Marquee tool, you can select Anti-alias to create a smoother edge for curved lines (especially if your image is at a lowresolution).
  • Style: For the Rectangular Marquee tool and Elliptical Marquee tool, you can choose from three styles in the Options bar:
    • Normal: This is the default option. Click to draw your marquee freehand.
    • Fixed Ratio: You can set a width-to-height ratio. For example, to draw a marquee three times as wide as it is high, enter 3 for the width and 1 for the height.
    • Fixed Size: You can specify an exact size for the mar- quee’s height and width. You can enter the value in pixels (px), inches (in), or centimeters (cm).
  • Refine edge: This button refines any selection based on several criteria. You’ll explore this functionality later in this chapter.

Moving a selection

There are a few ways to reposition a selection:

  • While drawing a selection (with the mouse button still depressed) you can hold down the spacebar and move the selection.
  • With an active selection, move the tool’s cursor inside the selection border (marching ants). The icon changes to a triangle with a marquee border. You can then click inside and drag the selection to move it.
  • To modify a selection using controls similar to the Free Transform command, choose Select > Transform Selection. All the options available to the Free Transform command can be applied to the selection border.