Page 52 - CS6_PS_Look_Inside

Stage 3 Creating Complex Selections

At this stage of the project, you still have a few issues to resolve: some of the images are still randomly
stacked on top of one another, and some images have areas that are hiding other images (the blue sky
in the Skyline layer, for example). In this stage, you start fixing these problems.
Virtually any Photoshop project involves making some kind of selection. Making selections is so
important, in fact, that there are no fewer than nine tools dedicated specifically to this goal, as well as a
whole Select menu and a few other options for making and refining selections.
In an earlier lesson you learned how to use the Rectangular Marquee tool to draw simple
selections. In the next series of exercises, you use several other selection methods to isolate pixels from
their backgrounds (called silhouetting).

MAke A feAtHered selection

1. With aftermath.psd open, hide all but the Lightning layer. Click the
Lightning layer to make it active.

2. Select the Lasso tool in the Tools panel.

3. Drag a rough shape around the lightning in the photo.
The lasso tools allow you to make irregular selections — in other words, selections that
aren’t just rectangular or elliptical. When you release the mouse button, the end point
automatically connects to the beginning point of the selection.

Lasso tool

Open ends of the
selection automatically
connect when you release
the mouse button.

Marching ants
identify the
selected area.

Note:
4. With the marching ants active, choose Select>Modify>Feather.
You could also create a
Feathering means to soften the edge of a selection so the
image blends into the background instead of showing a feathered selection by
sharp line around the edge. The Smooth, Expand, and typing in the Feather
Contract options in the Select>Modify submenu are self- field of the Options bar
explanatory; the Border option creates a specific number before drawing the
of pixels around the active selection (like the stroke/ selection marquee.
border that surrounds a shape in an illustration program).

60 Project 1: Composite Movie Ad