The Basics of the Marquee Tool
If you haven’t done so, you should read over my previous posts on the basics of Photoshop and the move tool. Most of the content that you will work with in Photoshop is raster based (bitmapped images). Photoshop’s pixel-based tool, the Marquee Tool, is the number one tool used to manipulate this type of content. The Marquee tool creates a selection on the canvas that is indicated by a dashed outline and allows for basic layer functions such as cut and copy as well as various other tools outlined in this section. Part 1 will talk about some of the basics of this tool and Part 2 will be about more advanced features.
1. How it Works
The Marquee tool has four options: Rectangular, Elliptical, Single Row, and Single Column. You can select the Marquee tool by hitting ‘m’ and toggle between rectangular and elliptical options by hitting shift+m on the keyboard.
- The Rectangular tool selects in the shape of a rectangle and the Elliptical in a rounded shape.
- The other two marquee options do exactly as they are titled. They select either a 1px column or row.
- After you have chosen the correct tool for the job, simply select the area you are trying to work with. After you have made your selection, you can move it around by placing the mouse cursor within the selection and dragging it around.
- You can also use the arrow keys along with the shift key to move the selection around.
2. Top Bar Options
The options bar at the top of the workspace allows for manipulating the way you make selections and can help you greatly in getting your selection just right.
- The Feathering option allows you to blur the edges of the selection so that it blends with the non-selected area. You can edit the threshold of blurring by changing the amount of feathering in pixels.
- The Style selector lets you indicate how selections are made through three methods. Normal operates as it indicates, normally. Fixed Ratio matches the selection at the ratio indicated (1:1 by default). Fixed Size bounds the selection to the width and height you indicate.
- The four icons at the top are Create a New Selection, Add to a Selection, Subtract from Selection, and Intersect with Selection respectively. Adding and Subtracting either subtract or add from the current selection with a newer one while Intersect selects the overlapped area of selections.
3. Keyboard Shortcuts
When selecting, you can duplicate the effect of some of the options in the top bar through keyboard shortcuts. Holding shift while making a selection functions much like setting the fixed ratio to 1:1 (selecting squares). Also, when you already have a selection you can hold shift to add or Alt/Option to subtract from a selection. Cmd+D for Mac or Ctrl+D for Windows will deselect the selection and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+I will invert the selection. When making a selection, you can hold Alt/Option to originate the center of the selection from the cursor point.
4. Modify Selection
Once you have made your selection, you can modify it using the Select->Modify menu. The options are: Border, Smooth, Expand, Contract, and Feather.
- Border simply selects a border of the size indicated around the edge of the selection.
- Smooth smoothens all the corners of the selection by the amount specified; very useful for creating rounded edges.
- Expand and Contract do exactly as they are titled by the amount you give it.
- Feather works much like the feather described in tip #2.
5. Filling/Stroking the Selection
Once you have made a selection there are various coloring options available to you. Most of the time you are going to want to Fill a selection with a particular color. You can access the fill options via the menu (Edit->Fill…) or using keyboard shortcuts: Shift+F5 or Shift+Backspace. You can also stroke the selection using Edit->Stroke which can be better then using the Blending Option->Stroke when it is on the outside because it is more concrete. Play around with both methods to see the differences. Some quick fill options use the the foreground and background colors. To fill the selection with the background color use Cmd/Ctrl+Backspace or Alt/Option+Backspace for the foreground color. Cmd/Ctrl+i will invert the color of the selection.
Author: Team VaynerMedia
