Quick Mask works in photoshop

Dragging a corner handle changes width and height at
the same time. (Hold down the Shift key to retain the
proportions of the original selection.) Dragging a side
handle changes either the width of the selection or its
height. This feature can be a great help when working
with elliptical selections because it lets you drag the
edges of the selection instead of its so-called corners
 Rotate: To rotate the selection, move your cursor a little
bit beyond one of the corner points; the cursor should
change into an arc with arrows on each end. You can
control where the pivot point of the rotation will be by
moving the crosshair that appears in the center of the
selection
 Distort: To distort the shape of the selection, hold
down the Command/Ctrl key and then drag one of the
corner points. Using this technique, you can drag each
corner independently
You can also distort a selection so that it resembles
the shape of a road vanishing into the distance. Drag
one of the corners while holding down Shift-Option-
Command on the Mac or Ctrl-Shift-Alt in Windows
(Figures 2.73 and 2.74).
To move two diagonal corners at the same time, hold
down Option-Command on the Mac or Ctrl-Alt in
Windows while dragging one of the corner handles.
Finalize your distortions by pressing Return/Enter (or
by double-clicking inside the selection). Cancel them
by pressing Esc.


Loading and Saving Selections
If you’ve spent hours perfecting a selection and think
you might need to use it again in the future, apply the
Save Selection command (Select > Save Selection) to
store the selection as an alpha channel. Don’t worry, you
don’t need to know anything about channels to use these
commands—all you have to do is supply a name for the
selection. If you want to find out more about working
with channels, check out the bonus video “Channels” at
www.danablan.com/photoshop.



81


Chapter 2 Selection Primer


These saved selections remain in your document until you
manually remove them using the Channels panel. They
won’t be saved on your hard drive until you actually save
the entire file. Only the Photoshop (.psd), Large Docu-
ment Format (.psb), Photoshop PDF (.pdf), and TIFF (.tif)
file formats support multiple saved selections.
When you want to retrieve a saved selection, choose
Select > Load Selection and pick the name of the selection
from the Channel pop-up menu (Figure 2.75). When you
use this command, it’s just like re-creating the selection
with the original selection tool you used, only a lot faster.

Quick Mask Mode

Earlier I mentioned that the marching ants marquee
doesn’t accurately show what a feathered selection looks
like. Quick Mask mode can show what a feathered selec-
tion really looks like and can also help in creating basic
selections. The Quick Mask icon is located directly below



To see how Quick Mask works, first make a selection by
using the Marquee tool. Turn on Quick Mask mode by
clicking the Quick Mask icon (or just press Q). In Quick
Mask mode, the selected area should look normal and all
the unselected areas should be covered with a translucent
color .

Now that you’re in Quick Mask mode, you no longer need
to use selection tools to modify a selection. Instead, use
standard painting tools, painting with black to take away
from the selection or white to add to it. When you’re done
modifying the selection, switch back to Standard mode, and
the marching ants will reappear (Figures 2.79 and 2.80).