Learn selection basics

Create and modify a selection. Then use it to edit part of an image.

Published January 28, 2025

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00:01

Introduction

You may have heard of selections, but you may not know exactly what they do.

A selection is a way to isolate part of an image.

So, you can make adjustments to that part, or work on only that area.

Once you've made a selection only the selected area will be impacted by your edits.

Whether those involve making an image adjustment, applying a filter, painting or lots more.

In this video, we'll cover some basics about working with selections.

You can follow along with this image from the practice files for this tutorial.

Let's jump right in and make a selection.

We're not focusing on selection tools in this video.

00:37

Creating a basic selection with the marquee tool

So, let's just use the first selection tool in the Tools panel.

Which is the Rectangular Marquee tool.

This tool is used to make rectangular and square shaped selections.

Click on that tool and then move into the image and start at the upper left corner of this building and click and drag out a rectangular selection of part of the building and include the parking lot below too.

The animated lines you see represent the edge of the selection.

They're sometimes called 'marching ants'.

If you were to do something to the image now like make an adjustment it would appear only inside the area defined by the 'marching ants'.

Before we do that take a look at the Options bar for this selection tool.

There you'll find an icon for Adding to a selection and one for Subtracting from a selection.

You'll use these often and you'll find them in the Options bar for many of the selection tools.

01:36

Adding to and subtracting from selections

Let's say we want to Add to our selection to include the entire building.

Click the Add to Selection option in the Options bar and then come into the image and click inside the top right corner of the existing selection and drag to encompass more of the building and the parking lot too.

If you don't get it all you can come in and Add to the little bit that you didn't get the first time.

Now, let's say that you go too far - like this.

How do you subtract from a selection?

For that, go up to the Options bar and click on the next icon the Subtract from selection icon here.

Then come into the image and click and drag around the area that you want to remove from the selection.

I'm also going to subtract a little from the selection down here to remove the parking lot.

So, now that we have the building selected

02:28

Applying adjustments inside a selection

let's make an adjustment and you'll see that your adjustment affects just the area inside the 'marching ants'.

Let's go up to the Image menu and choose Adjustments and we'll use a Brightness/Contrast... adjustment.

Which we covered in more detail in an earlier tutorial in this series.

In the Brightness/Contrast dialog box drag the Brightness slider way over to the left.

To darken the building.

And drag the Contrast slider to the right to increase contrast.

And click OK.

As you can see that change is affecting only the area inside the 'marching ants'.

Let's say you wanted to make a different Brightness/Contrast adjustment to affect everything, except the building.

In that case you wouldn't have to start again creating a new selection.

03:16

Inverting and deselecting selections

Instead - you can invert this selection to select everything, except the building.

To do that, go up to the Select Menu and choose Inverse.

With this selection active, let's go to the Image menu and choose Adjustments, Brightness/Contrast.

And this time, let's increase the Brightness.

And click OK.

Finally, when you're finished with a selection it's important to deselect.

So that the next thing you do to the image isn't limited by the selection.

To do that, go to the Select menu and choose Deselect.

Or, you could use the keyboard shortcut Command + D, or Ctrl + D on Windows.

It's one to remember because you'll use it often.

When you save this image go to File, Save As... and save it with a different name.

So, you don't save over the original.

So those are the basics of selections.

But there's lots more to learn about making and working with selections.

So, stay tuned for the rest of the videos in this tutorial.

What you learned: To make a selection and adjust only the selected area

A selection isolates part of an image so you can work on that area without affecting the rest of the image.

In the Tools panel, select the Rectangular Marquee tool. Drag a rectangular selection onto the image. The area inside the animated border represents your selection.
To select more, click the Add to selection icon in the options bar or press Shift and drag. To select less, click the Subtract from selection icon in the options bar or press Alt (Windows) or Option (macOS) and drag.
Select a layer you want to adjust. Then try applying some adjustments (Image > Adjustments). With a selection active, adjustments affect only the selected area of that layer. The same is true if you were to apply a filter, paint, fill, copy, or make other edits.
When you’re done, deselect by choosing Select > Deselect or pressing Control+D (Windows) or Command+D (macOS).

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Cookies are small text files stored by your web browser when you use websites. There are also other technologies that can be used for similar purposes like HTML5 Local Storage, web beacons, and embedded scripts. These technologies help us do things like remembering you and your preferences when you return to our sites, measure how you use the website, conduct market research, and gather information about the ads you see and interact with.

If enabled:

We can improve your experience by tailoring the site and the content to things we think might be of interest
We can better keep track of your preferences — like what language you prefer to use
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