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TIMESAVING SELECTIONS

Ever found yourself trying to make an elliptical selection with a round tool? Well here are a couple of great new ways to get a handle on time and learn some Adobe® Photoshop® 5.0 timely techniques.

1.

The goal of this project isto make elliptical selectionseasily and quickly. We’ll startby making a standard selectionwith the ellipse tool as shownin this image. We can accessthe ellipse tool by clicking andholding the marquee tool onthe tool palette. No need tomake the ellipse selectionexact. That’s the beauty of this technique.

Adobe Senior CreativeDirector Russell Brownmakes selections theeasy way withPhotoshop 5.0.

INTERMEDIATE

2.

Now, to introduce a newfeature found only in AdobePhotoshop 5.0 or later… Fromthe Select menu, choose Trans-form Selection, as shown to theright. This new feature willtransform the shape of theselection without altering itscontents. It’s new! It’s wild!You’ll use it all the time!

Shortcuts

Throughout thisdocument, “Command/Ctrl” means Commandon the Macintosh andCtrl on Windows.

Timesaving Selections2

3.

WOW! You can now rotate,scale, and distort the selectionuntil the ellipse fits the shape of the face of the watch. Press theEnter key and the newly trans-formed selection will be pre-cisely in position. Amazing!But wait – there’s more!

Technique number two!1.

Here’s another, less obviousapproach to transforming aselection. We’ll use it to trans-form the watch as we did withtechnique number one. How-ever, this time we’ll get a specialkind of preview!Once again, make a selectionwith the ellipse tool as shown tothe right. Remember, there’s noneed to be exact.

2.

In the tool box, click on theedit in quick mask mode icon.The flashing selection will nowbe displayed as a Quick Mask.The default color for the QuickMask is red with a 50% opacity.As you can see here the QuickMask appears like a transparentlayer of plastic over the image.Painting on this layer withwhite will add to the selectionand painting with black willsubtract from the selection.

Selections

To reshape the selec-tions, simply selectand move any of thecontrol points available. To rotate the selection,move the mouse justoutside the selectionuntil you see therotation icon, and thenrotate the selection.

Special note:

You cannow change the pointof rotation by movingthe central controlpoint to any otherlocation on the image.

Quick masks

Make a selection. Ashortcut for the edit inQuick Mask mode is topress the Q key on thekeyboard.

Timesaving Selections3

3.

This time, choose FreeTransform from the Edit menu.

4.

The transformation controlvectors appear as before, butthis time we are transforminga visible mask. The selectionarea becomes much more clearand distinct.

5.

As before, we can rotate,scale, and distort the QuickMask with the transformationtool until it fits the watch faceexactly. Then we can press theEnter key to apply thetransformation.

Super user tip

Double-clicking insidethe transformationregion is a quick andeasy way to apply thetransformation.

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