Taking a look at our options
Learn what each tool does
Regular and Floating Selections
Alpha Channel Selections

Open a new image 200 x 200 white background, 16 million in colors. Choose the selection tool (the rectangle). Note, if you have your toolbars already customized you may notice another rectangle icon that looks like the selection tool. (Fig.1) It is NOT, if you look closely you will see it is just a little bit different. This is for your marquee's, also known as "marching ants" in the graphics community. When working with selections, sometimes they will get in your way and you can't see what you are editing so you can choose to "Hide marquee" and you WILL still have your selection but you just won't see it with the "marching ants" around it. If you don't see it on your toolbar then look in your SELECTIONS menu at the top. (Fig.2) For now make sure that it is deselected so that you can see our new selection when we make it. Now since you have chosen the selection tool already we need to figure out more details about our selection. As with any tool, anytime you work with a tool you have your tools control palette to set different settings to accommodate the selection you are making.(Fig.3) Each tool has it's own appearance and choice settings in the control palette.

In your control palette for the selection tool you will notice the 3 areas (Fig.3) for this particular tool. The Selection type is the shape of the selection. Click the arrow at the side and a menu with different shape selections will appear.(Fig.4) Click any of the shapes to choose the one you want. Choose a rectangle for the purpose of this tutorial please. Next you see the feather option. Leave it (or change if it isn't ) to zero for now. Make sure that the antialias is checked. Now click on your canvas and drag to draw out the shape. Draw towards the top of the canvas to leave room for some other selections and when you are happy with the selections then release the mouse. You should then see the marquee (marching ants) surrounding an area of the shape (rectangle) that you have selected. (Fig.5) Next choose the flood fill tool . Click the arrow (Fig.6) in the color palette to expose the flyout, then choose the paint brush in the flyout (Fig.7). This is for color, a solid color. Repeat again and set the background to NULL.

Click in the color swatch area in the color palette but NOT on the arrow this time.(Fig.8) This will bring up your color selections.(Fig.9) Choose a color you want to fill. I choose green, doesn't need to be anything fancy this is just a simple exercise on selections, we are not making anything that we will want to keep. Click once inside your selection to fill it with the green color.(Fig.10) Your shape should now be filled with the green color (or whatever you chose) with the marching ants still around the selection.

That was simple huh? LOL That is just a real basic selection. Now at this point (or any point) you can right click to deselect your current selection. Your marching ants should disappear indicating that you no longer have a selection. You can also choose SELECTIONS and then SELECT NONE. Now let's see what some of the other little things in the control palette do for us. Make sure you still have your selection tool selected and then choose the control palette again, make sure that your rectangle is still selected and then set the feather to 10 and leave the antialias checked. Now draw out the selection on the canvas but make it smaller than the one you drew before, you will understand why in a minute. (Fig.11) Choose the flood fill tool again and you can change the color if you like or leave it green, I changed mine to blue. Click once in side the selection to fill with the color.(Fig.12) Notice that your selection expanded a bit and now has soft edges? This is what the feathering does for any selection that you make. You can set it to a higher number or a lower number depending on what you are wanting it for. It comes in real handy when removing people from backgrounds and you don't want rough looking edges around your people. Right click to deselect your selection and your marching ants will disappear and you will have your two shapes one feathered and one not. (Fig.13)

Now one last little thing. The antialias I told you to always keep checked. Antialias controls the edges around your image and/or text that you are working on. It is kind of hard to see using a basic selection tool so as an example I am just going to add a couple screen shots below here so that you will understand what it does but it is going to be text instead of a selection since it is more visible on text than with basic selections. When antialias is checked you get a smoother effect on your edges, it blends the colors together to give a softer look. (Fig.14) UNchecked you will get what is commonly called "jaggies" (Fig.15) If you can't see it I took a screen shot of the same text zoomed in (Fig.16) so that you can see the difference in the edges. The antialias shows a much smoother edge than the non-antialias.

That is pretty much the basics of the selection tool. Now there are the other selection tools, the Lasso/Freehand and the magic wand. These are a little more in-depth but hopefully I will be able to explain them in a way you can understand. If not please don't hesitate to e-mail me to translate the "bonesy babble" LOL The lasson and the magic wand tutorials are on the next couple of pages. Just click the next button below, or you can go back to Newbieville and choose the specific tool from there if you like. The next one I have is the freehand/lasso tool.