Back to Dye Printing Tricks & Tips
PhotoShop is awesome in its ability to choose one pixel over another, so be sure to let it do the work for you.
Tolerance
The amount of "give" you specify when setting how you want PhotoShop to select a color (red to redish orange or 10% gray out to 50% but not 70% gray)
Anti-aliasing
The amount of "smoothness" you can specify between color transitions (helpful with edges that you don't want hard edged or bitmappy).
Feathering
The amount of "blur" you add to build up a transition on the edge of a selection (can obscure details but does a great job of fading the selection away from hard-edged).
The Rectangular Marquee is the most used for selecting large areas quick. You can click and drag over an area then go to >Image>Crop and cut the image down to size. Did you know you can also double click on the Rectangular Marquee and use these options as well? Double click to Options palette then pull down on "Style."
Normal: does the basic cropping or selecting as noted above.
Constrained Aspect Ration: need to select only an area three times long as wide, but you aren't sure of the final dimensions? Enter 3 in the width box and 1 in the height box. Now no matter how you click and drag you will maintain that ratio.
Fixed Size: need to select a 100 x 150 pixel chunk out of 30 photos and you grow weary of checking "Image Size" each time? Enter your desired dimensions and the marquee will ONLY draw that size and shape. You can click and drag it anywhere, but the size will stay the same no matter where you go.
Border: Need to add a few more pixels to your selection width? >Select>Modify>Border. You can "grow out" your selection from 1 to 64 pixels.
Grow: Select part of an area and make PhotoShop go get the rest. Select your tolerance in the Magic Wand Options palette. Select the area you want then >Select>Grow and PhotoShop will expand your selection (even from rectangle to freehand) to include similar ADJACENT pixels. [Grow doesn't work for Bitmapped images.]
Similar: Have you chosen a color you want and you'd like PhotoShop to grab the same color elsewhere? >Select>Similar. It will grab the same shade within the tolerance you selected in the Magic Wand Options palette. PhotoShop will even grab NON-ADJACENT pixels. [Similar doesn't work for Bitmapped images.]
Click and hold the rectangle tool to get these tools:
The Ellipse Marquee is or selecting large circular areas quick. You can't use it to crop, but you can use it to make a nice vignette by feathering the edge several pixels, selecting your object then go to >Select>Inverse to grab everything BUT the selection then hit delete. You can also use the Constrained Aspects Ration and Fixed Size options listed above.
Single Row/Single Column Marquee Tools: You can select little bitty 1 pixel slices horizontally or vertically.
Crop Tool: There it is, hidden behind all those other marquees! Click, drag, hit "Return."
The Lasso Tool is good for freehand drawing. Hold down the Option key to switch to straight lines.
Click and hold the lasso to get these tools:
The Polygon Tool is good for straight line segments. Erase segments by repeatedly hitting the Delete key. If you draw too many lines and you can't find your beginning point double click or hit "Return" to close your selection.
The Magnetic Lasso is very good at guessing the edge of an object. If you play with the color contrast it can really grab an element easily. Double click on the tool to adjust not only anti-aliasing, feathering, but also width, frequency, and edge contrast. You have to play with it to get it to do what you want per photo.