PCPhoto
4 Fundamental Photoshop SkillsLearn these essential tools and techniques and you'll be equipped for most common image enhancements |
|
|
|
Page 2 of 6 If the object or area you want to select is all one color, the fastest tool may be the Magic Wand. This tool selects all pixels of the sampled color, within a tolerance that you specify. The Magic Wand tool can be quick, but it takes some practice and it’s not the fastest when you want to select an object that’s multicolored or varied in tonality. Select > Color Range is a similar tool that lets you use eyedroppers to create selections by sampling colors. Most often, I use the Lasso tools to make selections. The Freehand Lasso is just that, and follows your cursor wherever it goes. The Magnetic Lasso tries to find edges and snap to them as you trace around an object. This tool can be helpful when there’s a clear, high-contrast edge around the area you’re selecting. My favorite of the Lassos is the Polygon, which works in angles and creates a new anchor every time you click. It’s fast for selecting an area that’s angular with lots of straight lines, as in this example. Feathering Feathering a selection softens its edge, blending the transition of effects you apply to your selected area and its surroundings. There will be times when you’ll want a hard edge, but usually a slight feather smoothes the transition and makes the edge less jarring to the eye. The amount of feather depends on the size of your selection and the size of the overall image. For best results, start with a small feather of a few pixels and be ready to go back in the History palette and increase or decrease the feather—trial and error pays off. Adjusting Selections If you make a mistake and need to adjust your selection, switch your mode. Additive mode lets you start a new selection that will be added to your current one; Subtractive mode lets you remove areas of the current selection. With the Polygon Lasso set to additive mode and a feather of 5 pixels, I clicked at the top-left corner of the one-way sign, which created the first anchor point of my selection. I then worked my way clockwise around the signs, clicking to create a new anchor each time I wanted to start a new angle until I had completely enclosed the signs and post. As I had already set my feather in the tool properties, there was no need for the Select > Feather command. Next I used the Select > Inverse command to change my selection from the stop sign to everything else, as it was the background that I wanted to desaturate. To finish the effect, I created a new Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, which was automatically masked based on my selection and reduced the saturation to -100%. That removed all color information from the background without effecting the stop sign.   |
