From the course: Photoshop 2023 Essential Training

Using the Marquee and Lasso tools - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2023 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 our images. 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 tap the M key in order to select the marquee tool and then I'll start clicking and dragging in the image area, we can see that the marquee drags from the upper left. If I want to drag from the center, then I can hold down the Option key, now we can see that it drags out from the center of the rectangle. If I want to constrain the marque to a square, I can hold down the Shift key, and if I ever need to change the point of origin, as long as I still have the mouse down, I can add the space bar then reposition the point of origin then release the space bar with the mouse still down and I can continue drawing out my selection. When I'm finished, If I need to deselect a selection, I can use the select menu and choose deselect or use the keyboard shortcut Command + D on Mac or Control + D on Windows. All right, we're going to begin by selecting all four of these window panes but instead of dragging out one selection and then trying to add to it and get them all in alignment, I think it's going to be easier if I drag out one large rectangle that would cover all four of the window panes and then I can switch to this third icon, this is the create new selection, add to selection, subtract from selection and intersect selection icons. So I want to subtract from my selection, so now I'll just click and drag to remove this area from the selection and I'll do the same here, clicking and dragging to remove this area. Now that we have our four different selections, on the bottom of the layers panel, I'm going to add a solid color fill layer and let's just choose a deep dark blue for the windows and I'll double-click just to rename this so that we can keep track of our layers. Since it's covering up the template, I'll go ahead and hide it for now and next, let's create the crescent moon. I want to switch from the rectangular marquee tool to the elliptical marquee tool, all the same shortcuts apply, so as I drag out, it drags out from the upper left, if I hold down the Shift key, it'll constrain it to a circle, if I hold down the Option key, it'll drag from the center, and if I hold down the Space bar, I can change the point of origin. All right, I'll use Command + D to deselect that and to select a circle that's the same shape as this moon here, I'll want to pretend like there's an imaginary line that goes horizontally and vertically and creates a square. Then I can click and drag to create my circle, again, holding down the Space bar if needed to reposition it. I'll hold down the Shift key as well in order to constrain it to a perfect circle. And if it's not exactly correct, that's okay, we can keep working. All right, so I've got my initial selection, if I need to nudge the selection a little bit, I can use the arrow keys in order to reposition it, if I need to nudge it a lot I can add the Shift key and then reposition it. Let's add from the bottom of the layers panel our next solid color fill layer, this time I'm going to choose white so now we have the full moon. I'll use the move tool and just reposition it so that we can see what we're doing as we cut out the crescent. I could switch back to the elliptical marquee tool but if I want to use the same shape as I've already drawn, I can load the shape of the selection that was used to create the mask on the color fill layer by holding down the Command key on the Mac or the Control key on Windows, you can see that the icon has a little rectangular marque that's added, so when I click, it loads the contents of that mask as a selection. With the marquee tool selected, I can then just offset that selection to make that crescent area by filling this area with black. So I'll be sure that the mask is targeted in the layers panel and choose Edit and then fill and I'll fill it with black. Then we can use the select menu to deselect, then I'll switch to the move tool by tapping the V key and we can move that back into position. All right, let's hide that for now and we'll move on to our lasso tools. I want to start with the polygon lasso tool, the polygon lasso tool makes selections by just clicking. So if I click, click, click, and click, we can see that it's drawing straight lines between the clicks. When I position my cursor near where I started, I get the added circle to the icon which tells me that if I click now, it would close that selection and I'd get my marching ants. All right, I'll use Command + D to deselect that, I'll zoom in using Command + 1 and then reposition the template so that we can see the tree and I'll start at the top of the tree and I'll just start clicking my way around the tree. So each time I click, I can then change directions and if you hold down the Shift key, it'll make sure that you are creating either a vertical or a horizontal line. So we'll click there, come up the side of the tree, just a few more clicks and when I get back to the beginning, we see the circle icon and I can click to complete the selection. All right, from the bottom of the layers panel, let's add another solid color, gradient fill, this time I will add just a dark green and let's go ahead and rename that layer tree and I forgot to rename this one moon so we'll do that at the same time. All right, let's scoot over, I'm going to hold down the Space bar and I'm going to use just the regular lasso tool in order to trace around her shoulders, so we'll switch to the lasso tool, and I'm going to start at the bottom here so that when I finish over on the right hand side, I can just release the cursor and Photoshop will automatically close that selection. So I'll just start dragging up and again, if it's not perfect, that's fine. I mean, if it's really bad and you release the cursor, not a problem, you can just use Command + D or Control + D to deselect and then just start again, I know that sometimes it's easier to drag in one direction than it is in the other. So we'll come over here, and when I get down here to the bottom, I'll just release the cursor in order to close that selection. Now, if I do want to make edits to it, I can use the same icons that we were looking at with the marquee tools. So if I want to add to my selection, I'll click the second icon, We can see that the icon for the tool gets a plus next to it, so I can start anywhere inside the selection and then just drag up, include the area that I want to add. So again, you don't have to be very accurate on the inside of the selection 'cause this is already been selected, it's only in the area that you're trying to add that you want to be more accurate. Likewise, if I wanted to subtract an area like this area, I could move to the next icon, I don't have to be very careful out here because this isn't part of the selection, but then I could just come down and say, all right, well, maybe I want to subtract that area. If I go too far, you just switch back and in this case, I'm going to start right here, come down here where I don't have to be very accurate and then just go a little bit slower and add that. All right, excellent, so once we're happy with that, we will use that same icon at the bottom of the layers panel, add a solid color fill layer, I'll go ahead and leave it black for this one and let's move on to the hair. I'm going to hide this layer and to select the hair, I'm actually going to switch to the magnetic lasso tool. This is an amazing tool, I'm going to use the Command key and the minus key to just zoom out a little bit, the magnetic lasso is going to help me to draw the selection because it's going to look for an edge and when it finds the edge, it's going to lay down little points in order to help. So I'm going to start right here in the part of her hair and then I'm not clicking the mouse, all I'm doing is tracing the shape and Photoshop is actually putting down all those little anchor points. Now if it goes crazy, which it might in a minute or if you get to a point like this where you want to reverse direction, you can always click with the mouse and then start in the other direction. So, while it's automatically putting down points when you click, you're kind of overriding it and saying, no, I need you to go in this direction. So we'll come up here, we'll come back down, we'll try to grab that little one right there, we might need to do that manually later and then just follow this along, coming up, again, clicking if you want to change directions and kind of override the tool. But you can see how this is really helping by knowing what an edge is, okay, so there it's going a little bit crazy, so what you can do is you can move your cursor away and then tap the Delete key and you keep tapping the Delete key and it'll keep removing the anchor points until you get to the point where you want it to be and then you can start dragging again. So, we'll just drag around here, click to set down that point to go in the opposite direction and then just drag, drag, drag, I'm being patient, don't go too fast 'cause it's got to draw all those anchor points and come down around here, and when I'm finished, I see that same circle icon, I'll click and I'll close the selection. All right, so I was a little bit off over here so, same icons with this tool if I want to add or subtract from the selection in this case, I need to subtract from it, so, I'll just grab this area right here and remove that from the selection. It might be easier actually, if we get off of the magnetic lasso tool and just do this free form, again, just making sure that you have the subtract and then going in here and removing that. All right, excellent, when you've got it the way you like it, we'll use the same icon and add another solid color fill layer, let's just make this a little bit brown and click OK. All right, let's zoom out using Command + 0 on Mac and let's make all of our layers visible. All right, let's toggle off the background layer but now we have transparency, so let's just add one more of these solid color fill layers, I'll add a dark gray, and then all we need to do is reposition the stacking order of that so that it's underneath the windows and we complete our image. So, as you can see, the marquee tools are great for selecting geometric shapes and the lasso tools are great for more free form 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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