From the course: Learning Photoshop

Understand selections in Photoshop - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Learning Photoshop

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Understand selections in Photoshop

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- [Instructor] Selections are really important because they let you make changes to just part of an image. That could be anything from editing a sky to changing the color of a car. In this movie, I'll show you some common use cases for selections because I want you to understand when and why you need to make selections. And then in the other movies in this chapter, we'll cover how to make selections using different Selection tools. One common use for selections is to cut something out so you can use it in another image or somewhere else in the same image. Let's try to cut out one of these butterflies. The Selection tools are in the toolbar arranged in groups. You've got Geometric Selection tools, Freehand Selection tools, and Selection tools that do some of the work for you automatically, which are my favorites. I'm going to click on the Object Selection tool here and then come into the image and click and drag over one of these butterflies. If you look closely, you'll see some animated dashes around the butterfly. Those are called the marching ants, and they indicate where the selection edge is. If you don't get all of the butterfly in one go, that's okay. Just come up here and click the Add to Selection icon and select the rest of the butterfly. By the way, if you see pink outlines around elements in the image, you can always turn those off. To do that, go up to the Options bar and click here and choose Never Show Overlay. So that's all there is to making a selection with the Object Selection tool. But the question is, what can we do with this selection? Well, there are so many things, but one thing is that we can cut out the selected butterfly by copying it to a separate layer. So let's do that. I'll go up to the Layer menu and choose New, Layer Via Copy, and that makes a new layer here in the Layers panel that contains only a copy of that butterfly. And because that butterfly is on its own layer, we can do anything we want to it without disturbing the rest of the image. For example, let's move it. Go over to the toolbar and select the first tool, which is the Move tool, and then click inside that blue bounding box and drag to move the copy of the butterfly to somewhere else in the image. Because the copy of the butterfly is on a separate layer, we can edit it independently of the rest of the image without disturbing anything else. We could even drag or paste this butterfly into another open image, and none of that would be possible if we hadn't started with a selection. Another common use for selections is to isolate part of a layer so you can change the appearance of that part without bothering the rest of the image. For example, let's say we want to change the color of this flower. In the Layers panel, select the Background layer, which is the layer that contains the flower, and then go to the toolbar, and select the Object Selection tool again, and then come into the image, and click and drag across that flower. And again, if you don't get it all, make sure you have the Add to Selection icon selected in the Options bar and click and drag over the rest of the flower. So there's our selection. Now let's do something with that selection. Go to the Layers panel, and click the icon that looks like a black and white cookie, and choose Solid Color, and that will create a new special kind of layer in the Layers panel called a Color Fill layer. And you can choose any color you want for that Color Fill by going to the Color Picker that opened and clicking on a color. If you want a different color, move the sliders on this bar up till you get to the color you like, say purple, and then choose a shade of that color in the big square, and click OK. Now our flower is purple, but it's solid purple, and I really wanted to see the details of the flower. So I'm going to apply what's called a Layer Blend mode. Blend modes control the way that the colors on a layer. like this Color Fill layer. interact with the colors and tones on the layer below. There's a lot to know about Layer Blend modes, and we'll look at them in more detail later in the course. But for now, just go to the Layer Blend mode Menu, the menu labeled Normal at the top of the Layers panel, and from that menu, go down all the way to the bottom and choose Color, which is a Blend Mode that allows you to see the underlying tonal values in the selected object. That looks great. So that's one more thing that you can do with a selection. So I hope you now have a feeling for when and why you'll make selections in Photoshop. I gave you just a few examples here, using a selection to cut out an object, the butterfly, and to change the color of another object, the flower. The thing to remember from this movie is that whenever you want to make a change to just part of an image, your workflow will probably start with a selection.

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