ADVANCED IMAGE EDITING SKILLS
M
ost of the tools and menu commands in Photoshop Elements
change the colours and tones in the entire image, or enable
you to copy and paste every pixel, for example. However, you
may want to perform more selective adjustments on particu-
lar areas, and this calls for the services of the Marquee tools. A marquee
is a straight or curved line made up of animated black and white dashes
(which are often referred to as ‘marching ants’). Think of a marquee as a
fence that isolates the pixels within it from the rest of the image. You
can copy the selected pixels or change their colour or tone, without
altering pixels that fall outside the selection marquee.
The Elliptical and Rectangular Marquee tools share a
compartment in the Select section of the Toolbox. You can use these
tools to make quick and simple selections, or combine them to select
more complex shapes.
The Lasso tools are also in the Select section of the Toolbox. These
more versatile marquee-making tools enable you to
select shapes that aren’t rectangular or elliptical. The basic Lasso tool
enables you to draw a quick freehand marquee, which is good for making
rough-and-ready selections.
Some selection tasks require a tool with more control, such as the
Polygonal Lasso. This variant enables you to make a quick selection by
clicking to place anchor points around your subject. A straight marquee
line is drawn between each point.
The Magnetic Lasso also creates anchor points while making a selec-
tion, but these are placed automatically as you draw around the object
that you want to select. We’ll put some of these simple selection tools
through their paces in the steps overleaf, so you know which one to use
for which task...Make rough and ready selections ............................................
Select areas quickly by mastering
the Marquee and Lasso tools
BEFORE
GET THE START FILES HERE: http://bit.ly/type-files
AFTER