Teach Yourself Adobe Photoshop CS2.pdf - Online Public Access ...

This document was created by an unregistered ChmMagic, please go to http://www.bisenter.com to register it. Thanksoriginal selection and your new selection.The thin, horizontal (Single Row) and vertical (Single Column) marquees select a single row of pixels, either horizontally or vertically.They are often useful for cleaning up the edges of an object.When you are dealing with selections, it is important to remember that, for good or bad, only the area within the confines of the marqueecan be edited. It is the only active area of the canvas. Thus, after a selection is made, you can perform whatever action you want, butbefore you move on, the selection must be turned off, or deselected, by clicking outside the selected area with one of the Marquee toolsor by pressing Command+D (Mac) or Control+D (Windows). Until you do so, you can only edit within the selection's boundaries. On theother hand, this restriction on editing can be extremely helpful if you need to draw a complex filled shape. Assemble the shape frommultiple selections, as I have in Figure 3.2. Then you can pour paint into it, apply a gradient to it, or use the paintbrush with no fear ofcoloring outside the lines. You can even use the selection to erase a piece of the picture. If I filled the page with color or with an imageand selected a shape from within it, I could easily remove the active selected piece by pressing the Backspace/Delete key.Layer PitfallsIf you copy or paste something onto your canvas, and then try to selecta different part of the picture, you might find that the Marquee tooldoesn't work. You might also get a message saying "Could notcomplete your request because the selected area is empty." This isPhotoshop's way of reminding you that you have added another layerto your picture by pasting into it, and the part you're trying to copy isn'ton that layer. Look at the Layers palette, and click the layer on whichyou want to work. Clicking its icon will make it the active layer. You willlearn all about working with layers in Hour 11, "Layers."LassoAs useful as the Marquee tools and their modifier keys are, there will come times when you have to select irregular shapes. Perhaps youmight need to select a single flower from a bunch or, as in Figure 3.3, remove the kitten from the table.Figure 3.3. Selecting an object with the Lasso.