Oval selection

The second method to select manually is the “Elliptical Marquee” tool.  This option can be found under the “Rectangular Marquee” tool. So click on the botton right corner of the “Rectangular Marquee” tool and when the pop-up menu appears, choose “Elliptical Marquee”.  I do not give much explanation here, because it works the same way as the “Rectangular Marquee” tool and has the same options.

So if you want to know how to select a circle with an oval shape tool, read in the previous lesson on how to select a sqaure with a rectangle tool. 

Row Marquee / column Marquee

The two sub-selection tools, “Single Row Marquee” and “Single column Marquee” are the the least used tools I think, they are the most useless tools I know.

What these do is, select a row of pixels across the entire row or column of the picture.

Lasso

We use the lasso when we want to draw a selection in any shape we want.

The only requirement is that you have a steady hand. If your on daily drugs or alcohol, you better stay away.

When we click on “Lasso” tool, you can see two other tools appear. The “Polygonal Lasso” and the “Magnetic Lasso” (1).

You use the Polygonal Lasso tool if you want straight lines and select the magnetic lasso, which basically is an automatic method of selection.

To use the lasso tool, you first select the “Lasso” (2) tool, quite logical.

You click in the picture where you want to start the selection and you drag the mouse (3) around what you want to select.

Do not you release the mouse button until you’re back at the beginning of the selection.

This is important because once you release the mouse button, Photoshop will automatically connect the start point of the selection to the point where the mouse button is released, with a straight line.

Polygonal Lasso

If you have to select straight lines, use the tool “Polygonal Lasso” (1).

Lets click on the start of the selection, you click on the second point, the third point, fourth point, and so on. Until you get back to where you started. All these points are called anchor points.

Move your mouse pointer over the starting point, that is the first anchor point, then a small circle appears. Click on this circle and the selection is closed.

If you want to close the selection earlier, double click an anchor point in the picture. This will be just as the lasso tool, closes the selection to the first anchor point, by means of a straight line.

Move the mouse pointer between two points, a kind of elastic band appears between the last point clicked and the mouse pointer.

If you want to switch between the “Polygonal Lasso” tool and “Lasso” tool, then click the Alt key on your keyboard and stick it down. Do not let this go, then it switches back to the Photoshop “Polygonal Lasso” tool.
This is useful when you are selecting a shape such as the window (3) in the photo above, where there are straight lines and free forms to be selected.

If you accidentally inserted an anchor point where you do not want, click the button “Back” on your keyboard. This will remove the last placed anchor. If you wish to delete multiple anchor points, click the button repeatedly.

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