Selections in Photoshop

Selecting is a way to mark an area of an image. Once you’ve selected an area, you might:

• Lighten the selected area (e.g. brighten it) while leaving the rest of the pic the same.
• Copy it, so you can paste it into another file
• Duplicate it

Here’s how:

Open the image in Photoshop

Choose the lasso tool (there are others we’ll learn later)

Zoom way in (scroll the mouse wheel)

Hold the mouse button down and draw carefully right around what you want to select

If you missed areas, click the “add to selection” mode. Then circle the missed area, and it will become part of the selection. If you’ve taken too much, subtract areas using the subtract mode.

If you want to smooth the edges a bit, try setting “Feather” to 1 or 2 px (pixels) before you start.

Once you’ve made the selection, if you want:

• To copy it, just do Edit, Copy. Then open the pic you want to paste it in and do Edit, Paste. You can then use a soft eraser to smooth the edges (more on that later).
• To adjust it (e.g. levels), just click the appropriate command (e.g. Enhance, Brightness/Contrast, Levels). Experiment!!!

Here I’ve given the head & hair a whole new colour while leaving the sky alone!