Part III Selections, Layers, and Channels IN THIS PART Chapter 9 Creating Selections Chapter 10 All about Layers Chapter 11 Channels 14_584743-pp03.indd 25714_584743-pp03.indd 257 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM 14_584743-pp03.indd 25814_584743-pp03.indd 258 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM 259 CHAPTER Creating Selections IN THIS CHAPTER The secrets of the Select menu How to use the selection tools Making your selection perfect E ventually, you’ll want to make changes to just a part of your photo. Whitening teeth, swapping backgrounds, or targeting areas of a photo to leave in color even as you turn the rest to black and white are just a few examples of things you can do by selecting a portion of your photo. Knowing the different selection tools that are available to you in Photoshop and how and when to use each is integral to making these types of changes effectively. When you create a selection in a photo, it allows you to change the area inside the selection without affecting any other part of the photo. You’ll sometimes hear selections called selection masks, because they effectively mask the unselected portions of a photo from the changes being made. You also can use selections to create masks and paths, enhancing your selective creativity even more. Before I show you how each selection tool works, I cover the basics, includ- ing the Select menu and the options available. After I show you the ins and outs of all the selection tools, I show you how to put the finishing touches on your selection and finally how to output your selections as masks. The Select Menu The Select menu, as shown in Figure 9.1, has several options that help you create and use a selection. Some of these options are holdovers from before the powerful selection tools like the Quick Selection tool and Refine Edge dialog box were available. These are options that you won’t use very often, if at all. Other options are indispensable, and being familiar with these options gives you more power in utilizing the selections you create. 15_584743-ch09.indd 25915_584743-ch09.indd 259 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Part III: Selections, Layers, and Channels 260 FIGURE 9.1 The Select menu l Select All: Would you like to select everything? This could be a selection around your entire image, or a selection around everything in a selected layer. Ctrl/Ô+A is the hotkey for selecting all, and it’s a handy one to memorize, because this is a hotkey that is univer- sal, working in many applications as well as Photoshop. l Deselect: If you are not familiar with the Deselect option, you have probably been really frustrated more than once at those marching ants that just don’t seem to go away. Ctrl/Ô+D is another useful hotkey to know, immediately deselecting everything. l Reselect: Whoops! Did you use the Deselect option too soon? Choose the Reselect option to bring your selection back. Although you can use the Undo option to bring your selec- tion back immediately, you can use the Reselect option even after you’ve made other changes to your image in the interim. Although this option brings back the latest selection as long as your document is open, it’s certainly not the best option for preserving your selection—make another selection, and the one you want is gone. If you want to preserve a selection for later use, Save Selection is a much better option. l Inverse: Sometimes using the selection tools to select what you don’t want selected is much easier than selecting what you do want selected. Blurring the background behind a person in an image is a good example of this; it’s much easier to select the person than the entire background. When this is the case, select what you don’t want selected; the inverse option reverses the areas that are selected in your image. l All Layers: If you have two or more layers in the Layers panel, click this option to select all of them at once. 15_584743-ch09.indd 26015_584743-ch09.indd 260 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Chapter 9: Creating Selections 261 l Deselect Layers: This deselects any layers that are selected. l Similar Layers: Use this option to select layers that are similar to one another—all text layers or all fill layers, for instance. l Color Range…: This option is similar to the Magic Wand tool, both of which I cover later in this chapter. l Refine Mask…: If a selection is active in your image, this option is actually Refine Edge in the menu. Refining the edges of either a selection or a mask uses the same dialog box and is a similar process for each. It is covered later in this chapter. l Modify: You can modify your selection in several different ways, most of which are simi- lar to using the Refine Edge dialog box: l Border: This is the only Modify option that isn’t also found in the Refine Edge dialog box. It allows you to select, rather than entire objects, just the border of that object. After making a selection, click Select ➪ Modify ➪ Border, and the Border Selection dia- log box appears, as shown in Figure 9.2. You can type the size of the border in pixels ranging from 1 to 200, and the border is created, centered on the original selection. The border selection is soft-edged, feathering out from the original selection, as you can see in the effect created using the Border Selection tool in Figure 9.2. FIGURE 9.2 A Border Selection could be used to create special effects such as this “man in the moon.” On the Web Site You can access the JPEG of the moon as well as the final PSD file used in Figure 9.2 by downloading both ver- sions from the Web site. n 15_584743-ch09.indd 26115_584743-ch09.indd 261 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Part III: Selections, Layers, and Channels 262 l Smooth: This reduces the “hills and valleys” in your selection by smoothing the edges of the selection based on the pixel value you enter. l Expand: This increases the overall size of the selection by expanding it the number of pixels indicated. l Contract: This decreases the overall size of the selection by contracting it the number of pixels indicated. l Feather: This makes the specified pixels on the edges of the selection gradually trans- parent. This allows changes you make to the selection to blend with the surrounding areas, whether you apply an adjustment to the selection or create a mask with the selection. l Grow: This expands your selection based on color. The areas that are adjacent to the selection that fall within the tolerance range specified in the Magic Wand tool (covered later in this chapter) also are selected. l Similar: Like the Grow option, this also expands your selection based on color, but using the entire image rather than just the adjacent areas. l Transform Selection: This allows you to scale and rotate your selection. l Edit in Quick Selection Mask Mode: Quick Mask mode uses a red overlay called a ruby- lith that can be changed using a brush to make precise refinements to your selection. It can be accessed more quickly from the Toolbox. The Quick Selection Mask is covered in greater detail later in this chapter. l Load Selection: This allows you to reload any saved selections. l Save Selection: This option allows you to save the current selection and retrieve it at any time, even after the file is closed and reopened (provided that the file has been saved as a .psd). You can save as many selections as you need to. Using the Selection Tools There are as many shapes and sizes of potential selections as there are images. In order to make selection as simple and efficient as possible, Photoshop provides several tools, as shown in Figure 9.3, that can be used to make specific types of selections. These tools can be used in conjunction with each other for even more versatility. With the advancements made to the tools, options, and refinements over the last few versions of Photoshop, selection has gone from a tedious process to an enjoyable one. Cross-Ref As I teach you about selection tools in this chapter, keep in mind that some selections are easier to make using a specific color channel rather than the full image. This is a more advanced concept, so you can read about Color Channels in Chapter 11. n 15_584743-ch09.indd 26215_584743-ch09.indd 262 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Chapter 9: Creating Selections 263 FIGURE 9.3 The selection tools in the Toolbox Quick Selection tool The Quick Selection tool is the best selection tool in the Photoshop Toolbox. It’s been part of the Photoshop repertoire since CS3, and it easily trumps all the other selection tools. It has a new look in CS5, but it does the same remarkable work. The Quick Selection tool works by selecting adjacent areas that are similar in color and texture to the area that you are dragging over. It works well for almost anything, because as you drag the selection roughly around the edges of the area you want to select, the tool automatically finds the edges of your selection and creates a more precise selection than you could make freehand. Because it can be used to fine-tune selections made by the other selection tools, I show you how to use it first. Quick Selection tool options When you click the Quick Selection tool, the Options bar above the document window displays the available options, as shown in Figure 9.4. Familiarizing yourself with these options before you use the tool helps you to get the most out of this tool’s capability. FIGURE 9.4 The Options for the Quick Selection tool Tool presets New, Add, Subtract Brush picker l Tool presets: You can save and retrieve your favorite tool settings using this drop-down list. Click the little black arrow to see a menu of available options. 15_584743-ch09.indd 26315_584743-ch09.indd 263 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Part III: Selections, Layers, and Channels 264 l New selection: When this option is highlighted, every time you drag the selection brush, you create a new selection. As you use the Quick Selection tool, it begins with the Add new selection option and automatically changes to the Add to selection option after your first selection. l Add to selection: With this option highlighted, everything you select is added to the cur- rent selection. This makes it easy to zoom in and do the detail work after the initial selec- tion is made. l Subtract from selection: With this option highlighted, you can subtract areas from the current selection. l Brush picker: This sets the size and style of your selection brush. When using the selec- tion tools, size is all that really matters, but it can make a difference in your selection. A larger brush has a larger tolerance and is less likely to find the more detailed edges. l Sample all layers: With this option checked, the Quick Selection tool uses color and tex- tures from all available layers to determine the edges of your selection. l Auto-Enhance: This option smoothes out the edges and reduces the blockiness of your selection, automatically performing some of the refinements so you don’t have to, using the Refine Edge dialog box. It is time-consuming and doesn’t give you any control, how- ever, so it isn’t usually the best option. l Refine Edge: Refining the edge of a selection is the finish work that perfects your selec- tion. This option is covered later in this chapter. Using the Quick Selection tool In the photo used in this example, you can see that the background is very distracting, so I am going to select the boy and blur the background so that the boy is clearly the subject of this photo. See how quickly and easily you can select an area in your photo by following these steps: 1. Click the Quick Selection tool in the Toolbox, or press W. 2. Click the Brush Picker and then choose a size and brush style from the Quick Selection options menu at the top of the preview window, as shown in Figure 9.5. The size and softness of the brush determine the detail of the edge selection. For large, hard edges, your brush can be quite large, making the selection faster. To fine-tune smaller areas, use a smaller brush size. Tip Use the brackets ([ and ]) to quickly reduce and expand your brush size. n 3. Drag a rough outline around the area you want to select. As I drag around the boy in Figure 9.6, the selection outline is adhering to the edges of his body. You don’t need to make this selection continuously; you can add to and sub- tract from the selection as you go. 15_584743-ch09.indd 26415_584743-ch09.indd 264 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Chapter 9: Creating Selections 265 FIGURE 9.5 The brush picker for the Quick Selection tool FIGURE 9.6 The Quick Selection tool uses color and texture to define a selection. On the Web Site You can try your hand at creating this selection by downloading Figure 9-6 from the Web site. n 15_584743-ch09.indd 26515_584743-ch09.indd 265 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Part III: Selections, Layers, and Channels 266 4. Use the Add to Selection and Subtract from Selection tools to fine-tune your selection. Zoom in on hard-to-define areas and reduce your brush size to make the smaller selec- tions. If you select too much, use the Subtract from Selection to take the extra area out. That is the beginning of creating a selection with the Quick Selection tool. From beginning to end, it took less than five minutes to select the boy off the background of the sample image. Magic Wand tool Nested with the Quick Selection tool is the Magic Wand tool. The Magic Wand tool creates a selec- tion by targeting areas that are the same color. Use this tool if the area you want to select is all a similar color or colors. This works best, of course, if the areas that you don’t want selected are a contrasting color. Magic Wand tool options Before using the Magic Wand tool, you should familiarize yourself with the options displayed above the document window in the Options bar, as shown in Figure 9.7. Familiarizing yourself with these options before you use the tool helps you to get the most out of this tool’s capability. FIGURE 9.7 The Options for the Magic Wand tool Tool presets New, Add, Subtract, and Intersect l Tool presets: You can save and retrieve your favorite tool settings using this drop-down list. Click the little black arrow to see a menu of available options. l New selection: When this option is highlighted, every time you drag the selection brush, you create a new selection and the old selection disappears. l Add to selection: With this option highlighted, everything you select is added to the cur- rent selection. This makes it easy to do the detail work after the initial selection is made. l Subtract from selection: With this option highlighted, you can subtract areas from the current selection. l Intersect with selection: This option selects only those areas that were in the first selec- tion you made, as well as the second, and deselects anything that was selected only once. l Tolerance: The tolerance level determines how many shades of the color you choose with the Magic Wand are selected. A higher tolerance selects more shades; a lower tolerance selects fewer. The level you set depends entirely on your photo. 15_584743-ch09.indd 26615_584743-ch09.indd 266 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM . selection tool in the Photoshop Toolbox. It’s been part of the Photoshop repertoire since CS3, and it easily trumps all the other selection tools. It has a new look in CS5, but it does the same. just a few examples of things you can do by selecting a portion of your photo. Knowing the different selection tools that are available to you in Photoshop and how and when to use each is. final PSD file used in Figure 9.2 by downloading both ver- sions from the Web site. n 15_584743-ch09.indd 26115_584743-ch09.indd 261 5/3/10 10:24 AM5/3/10 10:24 AM Part III: Selections, Layers, and