Photoshop Marquee Tool: Shape Selection
: Friday, April 13th, 2007 (Last Updated: March 4th, 2008)
: freetime
The marquee tool 
let you select rectangles, ellipses, and 1-pixel rows and columns. By default, a selection border is dragged from its corner. Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a each shape.
You can select Marquee tool by press “M” or use Shift + M to switch between each Rectangular Marquee Tool and Elliptical Marquee Tool 
. Or use Single Row Marquee Tool 
and Single Column Marquee Tool 
to make a 1px row or column selection.
Short Cuts:
When using any marquee tool, you can hold-down keyboard key while dragging mouse to make selection for perform specific option.
- Shift+Drag: To constrain the marquee to a square or circle (release the mouse button before Shift to keep the shape constrained).With the Rectangle tool, the Rounded Rectangle tool, or the Elliptical Marquee tool.
- Alt+Drag (Option for Mac): To start drag marquee from center (from corner by default).
- Alt+Shift+Drag: To start drag selection form center and constrain to square.
- Space-bar: Hold down space-bar while making selection (keep pressing mouse button) To reposition selection.
Note: After you make section you can re-position it by move your cursor over your selection your cursor will change to
.
Tip: To detailed re-position (Nudge) by pressing Up, Down, Left or Right keyboard keys. The selection will move 1 pixel in arrow key direction. Or hold down Shift and press arrow key will nudge 10 pixels. (You have to select any selection tools, marquee, lasso or magic wand, to move selection).
If you already have selection in your picture you can use following key to perform Add, Subtract or Intersect. See Marquee tool option below for more detail.
- Shift+Drag: To add area to current selection.
- Alt+Drag (Option for Mac): To remove area form current selection.
- Alt+Shift+Drag: To select only overlap(intersected) area of your current selection with new selection area.
Note: You may notice that when you hold down key your cross-hair cursor will change, form default
, depend on each operation. Add
, Subtract
, Intersect
. And also the selection mode button in tool option bar will temporary switch to each mode depend on button press.
Tool Option:
Note: Before manually adding to or subtracting from a selection, set the feather(b) and anti-aliased(c) values in the options bar to the same settings used for the original selection.
Normal: Create New Selection. Your Current selection will be replace.
Add: Add new selection area to current selection.
Subtract: Remove new selection area to current selection.
Intersected: Result in overlab area of your current selection and your new selection area.
Feather (B): Blurs edges by building a transition boundary between the selection and its surrounding pixels. This blurring can cause some loss of detail at the edge of the selection. (See Also Using Photoshop Selection Feather)
Anti-Aliased(C): Smooths the jagged edges of a selection by softening the color transition between edge pixels and background pixels. Since only the edge pixels change, no detail is lost. Anti-aliasing is useful when cutting, copying, and pasting selections to create composite images. Turning off this option produces a hard-edged transition between pixels–and therefore the appearance of jagged edges.
Style (D): You can define width, height or proportion of selection by using this option.
- Normal to determine marquee proportions by dragging.
- Fixed Aspect Ratio to set a height-to-width ratio. Enter values (decimal values are valid in Photoshop) for the aspect ratio. For example, to draw a marquee twice as wide as it is high, enter 2 for the width and 1 for the height.
- Fixed Size to specify set values for the marquee’s height and width. Enter pixel values in whole numbers. Keep in mind that the number of pixels needed to create a 1-inch selection depends on the resolution of the image.
Width and Height (E): To define your width and height of your selection for Fix Size selection style(d) or width and height ratio for Fixed Aspect Ratio selection style(d). Will disable if you use Normal style.
Swap Width and Height Button (F): Using this button to swap between width and height value.
Related Article:
- Using Photoshop Tool Preset
- Using Photoshop Selection Feather
- Define Selection Edge
- Photoshop Quick Selection Tool
- Photoshop Lasso Tool
- Photoshop Magic-Wand Tool
- Photoshop Move Tool
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May 30th, 2007 at 11:43 am
whenever i attempt to delete a portion of an object that was created with the rounded rectangle shape tool or rectangle shape tool, the entire shape is deleted, instead of the piece that i have selected.
when i create an object with the marquee tool and attempt to delete a piece of it using the marquee tool, it works fine. i only have this problem when working with the shape tool.
any tips on what i might be doing wrong? thank you.
May 31st, 2007 at 1:20 am
Hi cardinal
Shape tool is generally use to create Path, Shape layer or filled pixel depend on tool setting at option bar. Basically it work similar to pen tool.
To use shape tool to delete the portion of object, you need to covert it to selection. You can create selection from shape only when you use shape tool as Path or Shape Layer.
If you create shape as path, you can go to Path Palette and Ctrl(Command) + Click the path layer you just create. To make a selection from it. The new path layer usually name as Work Path, if you need to keep it for later use you can double click its layer to save path layer.
If you create shape as shape layer you can Ctrl(Command) + Click at Shape layer to make a selection.
I hope this might be useful.
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