From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: The Basics

Using the Marquee and Lasso tools - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2021 Essential Training: The Basics

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Using the Marquee and Lasso tools

- [Instructor] Photoshop has a number of tools to help us make selections in order to draw and paint and mask objects and just make changes to isolated areas in images. So the most common selection tools are the marquee tools, the rectangular and elliptical marquee tool, as well as the three lasso tools. So let's begin with the marquee tools. I've got the rectangular marquee tool selected and if I just click and drag in my image area, the marquee tools drag by default from the upper left corner. Now, if I wanted to constrain this to a square, I could hold down the shift key. If I wanted to draw it from the center, as opposed to the upper left hand corner I can hold down the option key, and if I need to reposition it as I'm drawing, I can hold down the space bar in order to change that point of origin, and then when I release the space bar I can continue dragging out my marquee. Now, once I've laid down my marquee, if I want to de-select what I've selected, I can either click anywhere outside of that marquee, or I can use the select menu and choose to de-select. Shortcut for that is just command D on Mac or control D on Windows. If I knew the exact size of the shape that I wanted to create, then I could change the style for the marquee tools from normal to either fixed ratio or fix size. For now, I'll just leave it as normal. Now I want to select the four window panes here and while I'd be tempted to select the first one and then add to my selection by either selecting the option here in the options bar, or by just holding down the shift key. So as I hold down the shift key, I get the little plus icon that tells me I can add to my selection. The only thing is, I probably wouldn't be very accurate as far as the tops of the window frames, so I'd probably have to drag out some guides. Instead, I'm going to de-select this. So I'll use command D or control D because if I wasn't using that shortcut, the shift key when I was adding to my selection but instead I'd actually selected the add to icon, well, now I can't really just click to de-select because it thinks I want to add to that selection. So that's why I think that command D or control D is a nice shortcut to know in order to de-select. All right, so what I'm going to do instead is I'm just going to select all four of the window panes to begin with, and then instead of holding down the shift key to add to my selection, I'm going to hold down the option key, which will subtract for my selection. You can see that it automatically toggles to this subtract from. So now I can just click and drag in order to subtract that middle area from the window pane. And again I'll do the same thing here, holding down the option key on Mac or the alt key on Windows to just subtract that area so that now, I have the four rectangles. All right, we're going to use fill layers in order to add color to this image. So at the bottom of the layers panel, I'll click on the adjustment layer icon, and at the very top, I'll choose solid color. That brings up the color picker where I can select a color and then I'll click okay in order to apply it. So the great thing about a color fill layer is that when I added it, it knew I had a selection, so it added that selection as a mask in the layers panel. If I option click on the mask, we can see it, and if I click on the eye icon, we'll see the layer again. This is going to make it really easy if I need to reposition or transform or change the color of any of the layers, because if I tap the V key to select the move tool, we can see it. I can just change or reposition the contents of that layer. If I want to change the color, I just double click on the color swatch in the layers panel, and then I can change the color. All right, let's hide that layer for a moment and return to the background. I want to draw the moon next. So I'll select the elliptical marquee tool and similar to the rectangular marquee tool, the shortcuts apply in that if I start dragging, it's going to start dragging from the upper left of the circle. If I hold on the option key, it would drag from the center, if I hold down the shift, it's going to constrain it to a circle, and if I hold down the space bar, I can then change the point of origin. So I'll go ahead and de-select this. So when I draw the moon with the elliptical marquee tool, I'm going to imagine a straight horizontal line across the top of the moon and a straight vertical line going down the side of the moon and I'm going to guess about where they intersect and then I'm just going to drag out my marquee. Now, it doesn't matter if it's not perfect at first. I'll hold down the shift key to constrain it to a circle and then the space bar in order to reposition it and I'll go ahead and release the cursor. Like I said, it doesn't matter if it's not perfect. We can use the arrow keys to nudge it into place, or you can always go into the select menu and actually transform the selection. That's going to transform the marching ants not the actual contents of the layer, but for now, I'll just escape out of there. All right, with the full moon selected, I'm going to go to the bottom of the layers panel and then add another solid color fill layer. I'll change this to almost white and click okay but I need to cut out this portion of the moon so that I just get the crescent. So if I ever need to reselect my last selection, I can choose select and then reselect. Now, because I have the marquee tool selected, I can actually reposition the marquee and it's not moving the pixels underneath. So I'll just move it down a bit and then if we option click or alt click on Windows on the mask, we can see that I need to fill this area with black in order to hide it. So with black as my background color, I can use the keyboard shortcut command delete on Mac or control delete on windows, then I'll use command D in order to de-select that and when we view that layer, we can see that I have that crescent moon. All right, I probably want to be renaming all of these layers. So there's my moon and there's my window. And now let's hide that moon and let's start making the selection of the tree. I'll use command one on Mac or control one on Windows to zoom in and then use the space bar in order to reposition the image. Now I'm going to switch to the lasso tools, but I want to start with the polygonal lasso tool, and I'll start at the top of the tree. Now, the great thing about this tool is all you need to do is just click and click in order to set down points and Photoshop will automatically draw the straight line segment in between. Here, I'll hold down the shift key to keep it constrained to a horizontal line and then I'll just come over and keep tracing the shape of this tree. It's all right if it's not perfect, but when I reach the top, you'll notice that the icon changes. I get a little circle and that tells me that if I click now, I will close that path. Excellent. From the bottom of the layers panel, let's add another solid color fill and we'll just change the color here making it a little bit darker and maybe a little less saturated to a nice forest green. All right, I'll hide that. Use the space bar to navigate over to the girl in the foreground. And I just want to use the regular lasso tool here to just draw around her shoulders. Again, it doesn't matter if it's not perfect but you can just try to follow that outline and you can always come back to it and either add to it or subtract from it. Doesn't really matter under the hair area. I just want a general outline here. Now the reason that I started it down at the bottom of the document was so that when I come over to the right hand side, I can just release the cursor and Photoshop will automatically close that selection. Then if I wanted to add to the selection, we can just go back along any of these lines with the shift key held down, in order to add to that selection. All right, let me just add a little bit more over here on the right hand side and right over here and right down here. Okay. Once I've got that selection, we'll just add another color fill layer. Of course we could be adding gradient fill layers or pattern fill layers. That's up to you. We can always change that later as well. So right now I'll just pick a dark blue and click okay, and then we can hide that. All right, now I want to select the hair and the hair is going to be a little bit challenging to select if I just use this freeform lasso tool. So instead I'm going to choose the magnetic lasso tool and I'm going to start at the top of her hair, and I'm just going to trace with the cursor and you can see that Photoshop is automatically laying down points along her hair. So when I need to reposition the image, I can just hold down the space bar. It gives me the hand tool, then I can reposition it, and then I'll just continue drawing. Now, when I get down to sort of these snug parts right here I might want to override the tool. So I can just click with a tool to set down a point and then start going in the opposite direction. So I'll just keep following this, and again, you don't have to set down a point. It's just, if it's not doing what you want it to do sometimes that can help. And again, I'll just follow the hair here, right down along the bottom, coming up a little bit. All right, let's go ahead and bring that around. Click there. It's doing a really nice job of following the hair. If it's not, if it goes weird, like that just did right there, what you can do is just tap the delete key until it goes back to the last anchor point that you want and then you can keep drawing. So I'll keep dragging over here and then down, and then we'll come back up the other side. And again, if I need to reposition this, all I need to do is hold down the space bar. That'll give me the hand tool and then release that space bar and then just keep dragging. Oop, I didn't quite get it right there, so I'll tap delete and then delete again and I'll just keep hitting delete until I'm back to the last anchor point that I liked and then we'll scoot around the top of the hair and when I'm done, I get that same icon with the circle telling me that I can close that path and it'll turn it into a selection. Excellent. I'll use command zero in order to zoom out and we'll add another fill layer, solid color, and let's go ahead and make this maybe a nice dark brown. All right, if I toggle on all of these layers and toggle off the background, we can see that I still have a large, transparent area here that I need to fill. So I'll do a quick select all and then the bottom of the layers panel, we'll add our last solid color fill layer. This time, I'll make it that dark gray, maybe and click, all right, and click okay, but of course it's at the top of our layer stack so I need to rearrange that, putting it down at the bottom. I think that's a little too dark, so let's double click on that and just lighten that up a bit, and then we can't see the moon. So let's reposition that above the window and we'll just rename these to our tree layer and then our figure and then our hair. So as you can see, the marquee tools are great for selecting your geometric shapes and the lasso tools are great for your more free form shapes, and of course you can use any of these tools in combination with one another to make more complex shapes at any time.

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