welcome to the Corel series of
tutorials on using selection tools in
PaintShop Pro, starting with an
introduction to creating selections.
Selecting the parts of images to edit
can be an important step in your
workflow yet it can also be quite a
tedious task.
Luckily the various selection tools and
options in PaintShop Pro will help to
simplify the process and speed up your
workflow. Selections can easily be
confused with masks; selections are
similar to masks and can be used in
conjunction with each other while both
can be used to isolate an object to
remove and/or replace it. Masks carry
this idea further by introducing
gradients and effects, affecting it and
layers beneath it. Selections are kind of
a subsection of masks and can be used
alone for many purposes. By creating a
selection you can isolate and edit a
particular area while leaving the rest
of your image unchanged. You can use
drawing or painting tools to modify
selected areas of your image. You can also apply commands to invert, flip, copy, crop,
expand, contract or perform other actions
on the selected areas. Let's take a look
at basic selections using geometric
shapes, point-to-point and auto select. Go
to the tutorial page and download the
written tutorial and sample images if
you'd like to follow along as it has
full instructions to complete this
tutorial on your own. Let's begin.
I've already opened a few images for our
first try at selections. I've opened up a
calm lake image, an image of Salt Flats
and I've also opened for later use a
sunset image and put it on another layer
in the calm lake image and hid it for
now. Select the Selection tool in the
Tools toolbar. The "S" key on your keyboard will also select this tool. Dropping down
the selection list will reveal the other
selection tools available that we'll be
using in other selection tutorials. I'll
drag a marquee to encompass the entire
lower area of the water. I'm a little
nervous about getting it exactly right
so I'll draw it a tad shorter than the
horizon for now.
You can also start out beyond the outer
edges of your image and the marquee will
automatically shrink to fit. I'll zoom
into the horizon to give you a better
view. You can see where my selection has
been set between the two interfaces. Go
to Selections > Modify > Expand. Now I'll
adjust the horizon here to make it
viewable in the Before and After
windows. If I start out about a 25 pixel
expansion we'll start to see the
coastline above, meaning I've expanded
too far for what I need.
Let's try less somewhere around 10
pixels. That looks good and I'll
click OK. Now that I have just the right
selection I can do a couple things with
it. If I hit Delete well it will delete
it to a transparent background. Important
to note: earlier I right-clicked on the
background layer and selected Promote
Background Layer. This lifts and floats
the Salt Flats layer above the
background surface and allows more edits.
If I didn't do this, the checkerboard
pattern would just be white
I'll undo this. I'll switch the selection
to the sky half of my image by going to
Selections > Invert. Now I have the sky
selected as opposed to the salt flats.
Now this is useful for my purpose.
I'll hit Delete again. Now if I unhide
the sunset layer underneath it we
have merged images. The lighting's still
rather off between the two images but
you're getting the point.
Let me back up a few steps to
where the water was the selection. If I
grab my Pick tool instead of hitting
Delete, I can grab the center point and
moving this selection will leave the
underlying image unaffected.
But if I use the Pan tool, right-click
and copy then go to the salt flats image
and say Paste as New layer then switch again to the Pick tool, I can now move it down
to cover the salt flats with a lake
instead.
As you can see there's quite a bit you
can do with just basic rectangular
selection but even better the selection
type drop-down in the tool options bar
shows a plethora of other shapes you can
make selections with. I think I'll try
one with the Star 1, make it a cutout
and move it to the upper left-hand
corner. Remember it makes a copy
I'll also do this of one of the arrow
choices.
Let's try something different. Let me close
these images and open up another one.
Here we have a shape that's not
rectangular, nor does it fall into any of
the shapes in the drop-down list we just
used. There are two ways we can tackle
this. The first is using the
point-to-point selection option in the
Freehand Selection tool.
This came out pretty good but it's
not an exact selection, as I went
straight down the right side and
straight across the bottom.
If you require super accuracy there is
another way. I'll delete this new
selection and now I'll try the Auto
Selection tool. If you're using the
Complete workspace you'll find Auto Selection in
the existing selection tool drop-down. In
the Essentials workspace you'll need to add it
to your tool palette by clicking the
plus at the bottom of the tool palette.
With this tool you simply drag a marquee
around the blocks in as close as
proximity as you can, like this. I'll then
use the Pick tool to move and resize it
so we can compare the two. If there's any
residual artifacts they can easily be
deleted with the Eraser tool. I hope this
gets you more comfortable starting to
use Selection tools as they can really
increase your creativity with minimal
effort. If you're watching this video on
YouTube you'll find a link in the
description below that will take you to
our tutorial page on the Discovery
Center. Here you can download a written
copy this tutorial to follow along and
find other helpful tutorials for PaintShop Pro.
