Selections

A selection limits where edits happen. Its outline is shown with “marching ants”. Selections can be undone like any change but are not saved with the project.

Selection tools

• Marquee (M) — rectangle or ellipse. Hold Shift while dragging for a square or circle, Alt to draw from the centre.
• Lasso (L) — freehand, or polygonal: click to add points, double-click or press Enter to close.
• Magic Wand (W) — selects similar colours. Set the tolerance, whether the area must be contiguous, and whether to sample all layers.

Hold Shift to add to the selection, Alt to subtract, and both to keep only the overlap — or choose the mode in the tool options. Drag inside a selection, or use the arrow keys, to move its outline.

The Select menu

• All, Deselect, Reselect and Inverse.
• Color Range… selects every pixel close to a colour, with a fuzziness slider.
• Feather…, Expand… and Contract… change the edge.
• Transform Selection scales and rotates the outline with handles.

Using a selection

• Brush, pencil, eraser, paint bucket and gradient only paint inside it.
• Delete clears the selected pixels; Edit → Fill (Shift+F5) fills them.
• Cut, Copy and Paste work with the selected pixels.
• Cmd/Ctrl+J copies the selection to a new layer.
• Image → Crop to Selection crops the canvas to it.