From the course: Photoshop 2022 Essential Training

Using the Marquee and Lasso tools - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2022 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, to 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. The most common selection tools are the marquee tools and the lasso tools, so we'll start with those. I'll select the marquee tool, in this case, the rectangular marquee tool, I could just tap the M key to select it. The marquee tool drags from the upper left corner by default. And if I hold down the shift key, I can constrain it to a square. If I hold down the option key on Mac or the alt key on Windows, then it drags the marquee from the center. And if I ever need to change the point of origin while I still have the mouse down, I can hold down the space bar, and then reposition that point of origin, release the space bar, and then continue drawing with the mouse down. In order to de-select a selection, I can click away from the selection, or I can use the select menu and choose de-select, or use the keyboard shortcut command D on Mac or control D on Windows. If we know the exact size of the shape that I want to create, I can use the style option to enter in a fixed ratio, or a specific fixed size. Now in order to draw the window, I'll click and drag out the first rectangular marquee. And then in order to add to that marquee, I can use the icons in the options bar, or I can hold down the shift key, I get the icon with a little plus, and I can drag out the second window pane. But if I'm going to continue to add to my selections, then we have to be careful about aligning them, and I'll probably have to use some guides. So instead. I'm going to de-select using command D on Mac, control D on Windows, and then, I'm going to drag one large rectangular marquee over all four of the window panes. Then I can use this third icon in the options bar to subtract from, or, I can just hold down the option key on Mac or the alt key on Windows, and drag in order to subtract that first window pane. Again, I can hold down that space bar if I need to reposition the point of origin. And again, holding down the option key or the alt key on Windows, I'll subtract that second horizontal area right there. All right, now the marquee acts like a mask, in that, whatever's inside the marquee will be affected. So I want to fill this with a dark blue. In order to do that in a non-permanent way, I'll use the layer menu, select new fill layer, and then choose solid color. I'll go ahead and name this window. And then in the color picker, I'll select a dark blue color. We can see in the layers panel, I have this new color fill layer, they're very flexible. If I tap the V key and select the move tool, I could reposition the contents of that layer. I'll use command Z to undo that. And if I ever want to change the color, I just need to double click on the color swatch in the layers panel that will bring up the color picker and I can make my change and then apply it. All right, let's hide that layer for a moment so that we can see the template, and then we'll move to the elliptical marquee tool. So the same keyboard shortcuts work with this tool. And by default, when I click and drag, it starts dragging from the upper left. I can hold down the shift key if I want to constrain this to a circle, and hold down the option key if I want to drag my selection from the center. All right, let's, de-select that. And now I want to drag this circle that I'm going to use for the Crescent moon. And I'm just going to imagine that there's a straight horizontal line and a straight vertical line from the right side and from the top of the moon. And then I'll place my cursor where I think those two lines would intersect, and then click and drag to the left. And don't worry if you're off a little bit, because you can always hold down that space bar in order to reposition it as long as your mouse is still down. So I'll hold the shift key as well to constrain it to a circle, and then just position it over the moon. Now, if you don't want to use those keyboard shortcuts, you can always use the select menu and choose to transform your selection. Now you can reposition the selection and you can use any of the anchor points in order to change the size of your selection. So I'll reposition that and just make that a little bit smaller. Tap enter or return to transform those marching ants. We can also use our arrow keys if we need to nudge a selection into place. All right, let's add another color fill layer, this time, I'll use the adjustment layer icon at the bottom of the layers panel and choose solid color. I'll select white as my color. And now we need to remove some of this area in order to create the Crescent. Instead of dragging another circle, I can use the select menu and reselect the last selection. Then I'll position my cursor within those marching ants and click and drag in order to offset it. Then if we look at the layers panel, we can see that where the mask is white, we're seeing the moon, where the mask is black, it's hiding the moon, so I'll make sure that the mask is targeted in the layers panel. And then using the edit menu, I'll choose fill, and I'll fill with a contents set to black. In order to de-select, I'll use command D on Mac or control D on Windows. All right, let's switch to the polygon lasso tool, that's the middle one here. And it can be really helpful when I need to select things that have straight lines. So I'm just going to zoom in using command plus to this tree area here, I'll start at the top of the tree, and then all I need to do is just click, and click each time I want to set down and have a point here to bring it over, down, doesn't have to be perfect. For now, let's just do this rather quickly, just clicking every time I want to set down that selection. All right. When I returned to the point of origin, you can see that the icon changes a little bit, I get a little circle. So I know that if I click it will close the selection. All right, from the bottom of the layers panel, I'll choose the adjustment layer icon, select a solid color again, and this time, let's add a dark green, maybe a little darker like that. Now to draw a more free form selection, I'll switch to the regular lasso tool. Here, I'm going to select her shoulders and I'll start in the lower left area, that's just going to make it a little bit easier when I reach the right side. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect, but we'll just use this as a template. All right now, when I get to the right, I don't actually need to draw all the way back to the point of origin, I can just release my cursor and Photoshop will automatically close the selection for me. But let's zoom in, I want to make a few adjustments here. I've selected too much, so I can use those keyboard shortcuts to subtract from my selection. I use the option key, and I want to select this area here to be removed, so we'll just draw that. I'll use the space bar to move over to the other side. Here, I need to add to my selection, so I'll use the shift key in order to just add that area. All right, that's fine, we'll use command zero in order to zoom out, and then add another color fill layer from the bottom of the layers panel. I'll add another blue fill layer here, maybe a little bit darker, and click okay. All right, so I can't see her hair right now, which is what I want to select next, so we'll hide that layer. Then, I'm going to switch to the magnetic lasso tool. Now the magnetic lasso tool can be very helpful because, it tries to detect edges in the image, and it helps us to make that selection. So I can click once and then just start dragging my cursor without pressing down, I'm just kind of tracing the line of her hair, and Photoshop is automatically setting down those points for me. Now I can always click in the image area in order to kind of force a point to be laid down if the tool's not going in the right direction. So I'll just slowly just trace. And my mouse isn't down, I've just got my mouse up, and Photoshop is adding all those points automatically for me along that edge. Now, if the tool does kind of go astray, say it goes down here or something, you can just tap the delete key. And every time you tap the delete key, it'll walk back one anchor point. All right, so let's just come up here, again, I'll tap the delete key 'cause I was off a little bit there. So I can just click to set down an anchor point if it's not quite picking up the right edge. All right, then we'll just come around the other side of her hair here. And when we get back to the beginning, we see that same circle icon, so I know that I can just click in order to create that selection. The bottom of the layers panel, let's add another color fill layer, this time, I'll choose maybe a dark brown color, and then all zoom out using command zero. And I still need to create a selection of the entire canvas, so I'll use select and then all, and we'll add our final color fill layer, in this case, I'll just add a dark gray. Now, we need to change the stacking order, so let's drag that down right above that template layer. I'll toggle on the visibility of the window as well as her shoulders. And because we have a different layer for each one of the selections, if I ever need to reposition any of them, or go in and change the color, that's as easy as double clicking on the color swatch and making our edits. So as you can see, the marquee tools are great for selecting your geometric shapes, and the lasso are great for a more free form type of shape. And of course you can use any of these tools in combination with one another to make more complex selections.

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