Marquee Tool
Selection Tools

We worked with the fundamental, basic selection tools and layers in Photoshop – this includes the marquee tool, lasso tool, polygonal lasso tool and the magnetic lasso tool found in the toolbar.

Layers

Using layers allows you to arrange different aspects of your work to have them separately accessible. This then helps you to work on different parts in greater detail as they won’t interfere with the rest of your canvas as you work on it. We used these throughout the task so that we could put each illustration using the different tools on separate layers so that they wouldn’t get in the way of each other.

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 14.34.29

Marquee Tool

The marquee tool enabled us to use basic rectangular selection across layers, with which we created a blue background and a red box.

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 14.20.22

Although it was easy to use, we were limited to squares and rectangles and so this tool could be more suited for larger, more general selections.

Lasso Tool

The lasso tool was more freeform and so allowed for rounded selections rather than just rectangles. We practised drawing a simple face and filled it in with colour.

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 14.20.43

It was easy to draw with and the outline after filling in had a smooth finish but, as the tool was freehand, it would make it difficult to select a large specific section of colour accurately.

 

Polygonal Lasso Tool

The polygonal tool was freehand whilst using straight lines to create the shape of the selection. We once again practised drawing a face.

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 14.21.04

This tool would be helpful in selecting polygonal shapes and creating angular selections to add or remove colour. When drawing this face, it only would’ve been helpful if I were trying to draw in an angular style as creating rounded selections is not suited to this tool.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

The magnetic lasso tool was freehand but designed to be used on images and drawings that have already been created rather than to select an area to then fill with colour like we tried to when drawing our final face.

Screen Shot 2018-09-17 at 14.21.26

This final face had jagged edges as this tool is designed to select individual pixels of an image which appear most similar to the ones initially selected. This is why it didn’t work as well when trying to draw on a transparent/clear background and why it would be more helpful to use on things like photographs.

 

Selection Tool Modes: Set, Add & Subtract

We practised using the different modes of selection tools:

Set   Set mode makes it so that you can only have one selected area at a time. When you make another selection, the previous one will disappear.

Add   Add mode makes it so that you can make multiple selections and have them all active at the same time.

Subtract   Subtract mode allows you to remove areas that you have selected by drawing over them.

The add and subtract modes seem to be modes that allow refining of your selections.

Thanks for reading ～