From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Using the Marquee and Lasso tools - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Using the Marquee and Lasso tools

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- [Instructor] Photoshop has a number of tools to help us make selections in order to draw and paint, mask objects and make changes to isolated areas in an image. We're going to use a number of different tools to create this illustration using the image as a template. Now, the most common selection tools are the marquee tools and the lasso tools. So we're going to start with those. I'll tap the M key in order to select the marquee tool, or we can select it from the toolbar. Now as you click and drag with a marquee tool, you'll notice that it drags from the upper left hand corner. If I want to constrain this to a square, then I can hold down the shift key, and if I prefer to draw it from the center, I can hold down the option key or the alt key on Windows. If I want to reposition it while I'm still holding down the mouse, I can hold down the space bar and that will help me to reposition the point of origin. Then I could release the space bar, and with the mouse still held down, I can continue dragging out my selection. So I want to select all four of these window panes, but I'm actually going to do it a little bit differently because if I do it this way, I should probably get some guides to make sure that the tops and the sides are all in alignment. Instead, I'll choose to deselect, and then I'll click and drag out over all four of the windows, and I'm going to just hold down the space bar just to realign that point of origin and then release the cursor. Now in the options bar, we have additional icons to add to and subtract from, or we can use the keyboard shortcuts. The option key will subtract from, and the shift key will add to, here I want to subtract from, so I'll hold down the option key and then I'll just drag this center pane that I want to remove. I'll do the same thing here and remove this center pane. So now we have the four rectangles and I want to fill them with a color. The most flexible way to do this would be to select layer and then new fill layer and solid color. I'll go ahead and give this a name, windows. And then I'm going to choose a color with a color picker. So I'll make it a little bit lighter and let's bring that into the blues. All right, I'll go ahead and hide this layer, but before I do, we can see that because I had a selection when I added the solid color fill layer, Photoshop automatically converted the selection into the mask. All right, we'll hide that. Next I want to create the moon. So I will select the elliptical marquee tool and it shares the same shortcuts. So by default it drags from the upper left of the ellipse, holding the shift key will constrain it to a circle and holding down the option key will drag it out from the center. All right, so let's go ahead and deselect that. And I'm going to imagine that there's a line at the top of this circle that would meet the left edge of the moon and I'm going to start dragging there and then just drag over. And if I want to constrain it to a circle, I'll hold down the shift key, but I wasn't quite accurate. So I'm going to hold down the space bar and that's going to enable me to just reposition that. Then I can release the space bar and then continue to change the size. Now if you don't want to hold down a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, you can also just drag out the marquee and then choose the select menu and choose to transform the selection. Now you'll get the transformation handles and you could go ahead and transform the selection in order to match the size of the moon. By default, it has constrained proportions turned on, but you could hold down the shift key if you wanted to distort it. Alright, I'm going to go ahead and click done. And then instead of using the layer menu to add our new fill layer, we can do the same thing by clicking on this icon at the bottom of the layers panel and choosing solid color. This time I will choose white for my moon and apply that and then we can rename this moon, but I really want a crescent moon, so let's use the move tool. I'll tap the V key in order to move this over so we can see what we're doing. That's another convenience of using these solid color fill layers is that they're very easy to move and reposition the mask. I could also go in and double click in the color swatch if I wanted to change this to a different color, but for now I'll hit cancel. So I need to cut out this area of the moon. And while I could use the elliptical marquee tool to drag another ellipse, I actually want an ellipse of exactly the same size. So I can position my cursor over the mask and as soon as I hold down the command key on Mac or the control key on Windows, I get the little icon of the marquee. And if I click in that mask, it will load the contents of that mask as a selection. So I get the exact same selection that I had before. Now with the marquee tool selected and this first icon targeted, I can just reposition this wherever I want. And then all I need to do to hide this part of the moon is just fill this mask with black. So I'll choose edit and then fill, and I'll choose black as the contents. And now we have our crescent moon, so I'll choose to deselect that. And then if we want to, we can use the move tool and just scoot that over, and then we'll hide it. Okay, next, let's zoom in. I'll use command one to zoom into the tree and we're going to switch to the lasso tools. And I'm going to start with the polygonal lasso tool. And the nice thing about this tool is you just click and then move your cursor and you click again and Photoshop will draw straight lines between clicks. Once you get back to the beginning, it gives you a little icon with a circle telling you that you can close that selection. But I'll go ahead and deselect that and start at the top of the tree that's outside. And then I'm just going to click and click every time I want to change directions. Now if I want to constrain this, I can hold down the shift key and that will constrain it to a horizontal or vertical line so we can be a little more accurate there. And I'll come up the other side and over and then I'll release the shift key and just do this a little bit more freeform. So here we go up towards the top and we see the circle that will close the selection. Okay, bottom of the layers panel. Let's grab that solid color and this time we will make this, how about kind of a pine green? All right, let's hide that. We'll rename it as tree, command zero to zoom out. Now I need to draw over her shoulders, but I want to switch to just the regular lasso tool because that's going to make it easier to draw. And I'll use command plus in order to zoom in and the space bar to reposition this. All right, so this is just kind of freeform. We can just drag, it doesn't need to be too accurate. If you do make a mistake, you can always start over. Just hit deselect. I am starting in the lower left though, and that's going to make it really easy when I'm finished in the lower right, 'cause Photoshop can just close the selection for me. And I do want to show you what happens, how you can make adjustments if you make a mistake. So I'm just going to be a little sloppy there. Come over here and come right down here. And then as soon as I am finished and I come to the bottom, I can just release the cursor and Photoshop will close that selection. Okay, so right here I have selected too much. So I need to subtract so we can use the same keyboard shortcut. So I could use option to subtract and I could use shift to add, or I can use these icons up here. I'll just use the option key and subtract that and then the shift key. And look when you're in the area that you already have and you want to add something to it, you don't have to be very careful down here, you just have to be careful going along the edge. So then I would just end my selection right there. Okay, that looks just fine. So let's go ahead and add another solid color and we can leave this one black and then we will call this woman. Okay, then I'm going to hide that so we can see the hair. And for the hair, because there are such great edges between the hair and the window and everywhere else, I'm going to switch to the magnetic lasso tool because it has the ability to look at edges. So I just clicked and it started laying down anchor points. So I'm not clicking right now to add those anchor points. It's doing it for me automatically. And I'm just going to come around here and then come all the way down here. And now if I need to change directions, I can click to lay down an anchor point and that kind of overrides any of the anchor points that Photoshop is laying down. All right, so I'll click there again, go in the other direction, click and then say please follow me in the other direction. So that's pretty small, but I think just clicking three times. Yep, I did a good job there. Let's come over here and click and come down here and then come over here and come up here and right down here. Now if it does start going crazy, like if it goes to another line like down here, don't panic because you can just start tapping the delete key and retracing your steps and it will start taking away those anchor points until you get to the point where you want to get back on track. And then you would just click to set down your own anchor point and then keep going along that edge. All right, so don't go too fast, or it might miss the edge. I'm just going to come up here and all the way around the top of her head and when I get to the top it's going to show me the little circle so I know that I can close that selection. Great. I will add another solid color. Let's make this a little bit brown and click okay. And that is the hair. Excellent. Let's toggle on all the visibility of all those layers and let's hide the background. I'm going to target the background though because I do want to add just one more solid color fill. Let's make this gray for the inside of the room and then use command zero in order to zoom out. And there you go. If you want to change any of the colors, you can double click on the swatches. And if you want to reposition any of the masks, you can click on the mask with the move tool and reposition it in the image area. So as you can see, the marquee tools are great for selecting your geometric shapes and the lasso tools for your more freeform shapes. And of course you can use any of these tools in combination with one another to make more complex shapes.

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