From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Auto-Select and the Move tool - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Start my 1-month free trial

Auto-Select and the Move tool

“

- [Instructor] In this movie, we'll move the bird to the top left corner of the composition. Which is a pretty basic operation, but it'll give me a chance to demonstrate the relationship between the move tool and its auto select setting. So the first thing I'll do is switch to the move tool. Which you can get by pressing the v key. And then, notice the auto select check box on the far left side of the options bar. This setting has been with us for many many years now. But in the past, it's been turned off by default. In the most recent version of Photoshop CC, it is now turned on by default. And let me demonstrate the difference that makes. Notice here in the layers panel, that the background is currently selected. But imagine that I want to move the bird, which I do, and so I'll just move my cursor into the image window and begin dragging the bird like so. And just like that, Photoshop goes ahead and automatically selects the layer as well as moving it. Which might lead you to believe that this is a really great change to the software. And an obvious one at that. But it can prove confusing at times. Imagine for example that you know that the wing number one layer is selected and you want your cursor, for whatever reason, not to be located directly on top of it. At which point, if you begin dragging for example as I am, then you end up moving an entirely different layer, in my case, the horse. The same thing could happen if I drag on one of these little dollops of paint here, in which case I would move that brushwork layer instead. Things get even weirder if you begin your drag outside of a layer. So for example, let's say I move my cursor below all the layers to this empty region right here. In which case, if I were to begin dragging, I would create this marquee and that marquee is going to automatically select layers as you can see happening over on the far right side of the screen inside the layers panel. So notice if I move my cursor down, nothing's selected and as I start moving it up, I select multiple layers inside this panel. After which point if I drag again, I move all these layers together. Which obviously is not what I want. And if I were to now just click up here in this empty region, I would select nothing whatsoever, inside the layers panel. Which is why personally I prefer the auto select checkbox be turned off. And let me show you what that looks like. I'll go up to the file menu and choose the revert command in order to restore the saved version of the image. The background layer is once again selected. And now I will turn off that auto select checkbox. Now if I try to drag anywhere inside the composition, whether on the bird or not, I'm going to end up with an alert message telling me that the move tool cannot move this locked layer. By which it means the background. Alright so I'll go ahead and click OK and then I will select the layer that I want to move and drag it around instead. Which works out great when you have just a few layers inside a composition. But what if you have dozens or even hundreds of layers, which is not unusual. Well you can still select layers inside the image window in a couple of different ways. One is to right click with the move tool. So let's say I wanted to select the horse, I could just right click on its head right there, and choose horse from the list. Now this is only going to work the way you want it to, if you take the time to name your layers. If your layers have default names, like layer one, two, three and so forth, that's what you're going to see in this pop up menu and it's not going to do you any good. So if you like this technique, make sure to name your layers. Another way to work is to press and hold the control key, or the command key on the Mac. And I want you to watch the auto select checkbox over here in the far left side of the control panel. If I press and hold the control key, or the command key on the Mac, that temporarily toggles that checkbox. So if it were turned on, it would now be turned off. But because in my case it's turned off, that turns it back on and now I can drag this layer to a different location as well as seeing this grid information. So that control or command dragging will go ahead and auto select the layer when this checkbox is turned off. Alright I'm going to go ahead and zoom in on the image. Just by pressing control one or command one on a Mac, which is going to take me to 100%. I want to be looking at the top left corner of the image however and for those of you who really love shortcuts, and have full size keyboards, you can get to the top left corner of an image any time you like by pressing the home key. Whereas if you want to go to the bottom right corner, you press the end key. In my case I want the top left so I'll press that home key. And then I'll just space bar drag a little bit. And now that I have that wing number one layer selected, I'll just go ahead and drag with the move tool until I snap the image to the top left corner of the composition. And then in a separate move, I'll go ahead and drag it to the right while keeping an eye on that heads up display until I see a first value of 136 pixels and a second value of zero pixels. And that tells me that I'm moving the image 136 pixels to the right. At which point, I'll go ahead and release to complete that move and then I'll press control zero or command zero on a Mac to once again fit the image on screen. And that's how you take advantage of the move tool. With or without the assistance of the auto select checkbox here inside Photoshop.

Contents