ADVANCED IMAGE EDITING SKILLS
1
Make a selection
To practice making selection marquees, open the ty_elements13.jpg
starting image. Grab the Elliptical Marquee tool in the Toolbox. If
it’s not visible, click its colleague – the Rectangular Marquee. You can
then click the Elliptical Marquee icon in the Tool Options. You can also
toggle between either version of the Marquee tool by pressing M. Click
and drag to draw an elliptical marquee around the hull identification
number on the boat.3
Add and subtract
You can modify your marquee selections with ease. If you click
the Add to selection icon in the Tool Options, a plus sign will
appear by the cursor. You can then click and drag the cursor to add to
the existing marquee. Alternatively, you can click the Subtract from
selection marquee icon and a minus icon will appear. You can use this
option to trim away sections of the elliptical selection. These options
can be applied with other selection tools.2
Transform the selection
You can use the cursor keys to nudge the marquee into a
new position. To fine-tune the shape of the ellipse, go to
Select>Transform. You can squash or stretch the selection marquee by
dragging the bounding box handles. This doesn’t change the selected
pixels, just the marquee’s shape. Drag outside the bounding box to
rotate the elliptical marquee. When you’re happy with the transformed
shape, click the green tick.4
Feather the edge
By default every selection marquee tool produces a sharp edge.
A softer edge helps to blend edited pixels inside the
marquee with their neighbours. You can set the Feather option’s
slider to a desired value before drawing a marquee. Alternatively, go
to Select>Feather and choose a Feather Radius such as 10 pixels. Click
OK. Grab the Eyedropper tool and click to sample the boat’s hull.
Choose Edit>Fill Selection. Select Use Foreground Color and click OK.