Why select?

In Photoshop, we have plenty of options to select.  But why and when do we select?
We select a part of a picture to change only that portion of the image.

For example the color or brightness.

A second example is when you want to combine part of a photo with another photo.

If you want to edit or copy only part of a photo, first select that part.

Select / Deselect

To select a part of the picture, we use one of the many selection tools that Photoshop has.

For example, the “Rectangular Selection”.  Select this tool in the tool bar and click and drag in the photo on the section you want to select.

When you release the mouse, you will see the marquee with moving stripes on the picture.

The part of the picture in the bounding box is selected.

The portion that falls outside, is not selected. 

To deselect a selection, click the “Select” button in the menu bar and choose “Deselect” from the drop-down menu. The fastest way to deselect something is indeed the key Ctrl + D on your keyboard.
If you want to delete and re-apply a selection, then click the “Select” button in the menu bar and choose “Reselect” in the drop-down menu or click the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + D on your keyboard . As long as you have no new selection made, Photoshop will apply the old selection back.

Select all

If you want to select everything in your picture, click “Select” in the menu bar and select “All” in the drop-down menu.
This can be used for example when you take a picture and copy into another picture.

Hide Selection

When a selection is in your way, you can temporarily hide it. Especially in complex selections, this will sometimes be the case.
To hide the selection, click the “View” button in the menu bar and click “Extras” in the drop-down menu.
The hotkey for this is Ctrl + H on your keyboard.
To display it back, repeat this action.

Marquee

As I mentioned previously, we have a number of tools in Photoshop to make a selection in a photo.
For this we have two methods. You have the manual methods and you have the automatic methods.
An example tool, in which we use the manual method, is the “rectangular marquee” tool.
With the “Rectangular selection” tool, we make selections in the form of a rectangle, or in the form of a square.
To select a rectangular shape, click and drag in the photo, until you’ve reached the desired size.
To form a square selection, click and drag in the picture and without you releasing the mouse button, hold the Shift key on your keyboard pressed.  When you have reached the desired size, release the mouse button first and then the Shift key.

There is also a second way to make a square selection.  Click on the downward pointing arrow next to the “Style” box on the Options bar and select “Fixed Ratio”. In the “B” and “H” you give the same values and the width and height will maintain the same proportions (1), while clicking and dragging.

This aside. With the second option in this drop-down menu “Fixed Size”, we can enter a preset value for the marquee. Example, 200 in width, 300 in height. The only thing you still need to do is a single click in the image and the bounding box with the given dimensions will appear in the photo.  The value you enter in the headings is always in pixels.

When we have selected a selection tool, no matter what, we have four buttons (2) in the options bar.
The first button “New Selection” is selected and it is for a new selection.

The second button “Add to Selection”, the selection will be added to the already selected.

The third button “Subtract from Selection” will remove a selection from the already selected.

And the last button “Intersect with selection”, we use when we want to retain only a part of the selected. Click and drag over everything you want to retain.

Another tip:
When you select something with the “Rectangular Marquee” tool, it is always a selection from one corner to another corner.
However, if you want to make a selection from the center of the rectangle, first click on the position where the center of the selection should be and drag the mouse pointer.

Click the Alt key on your keyboard.

You will see how the marquee moves.

When you have reached the desired size, first release the mouse button and then the Alt key.

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