Selections¶

A selection limits what the brushes change. The Mask Brush, Spot Brush and Dodge & Burn all stay inside the selection, and a selection can become a mask.

Make a selection¶

• Marquee (M): drag a rectangle or oval. Choose Rectangle or Ellipse in Properties.
• Lasso (L): choose Freehand and drag round the area, or Polygon and click the corners. Click the first point, double-click or press Enter to close it. Backspace removes the last corner and Escape cancels.

Marching ants mark the edge of the selection.

Move a selection¶

With a selection tool and New chosen, drag from inside an existing selection to move it; the marching ants follow the pointer and the selection lands where you let go. Pieces that leave the picture are lost. While you are still drawing a rectangle, ellipse or freehand outline, hold Space to move the shape instead of changing its size. Esc cancels a shape you are drawing. With Add, Sub or Overlap chosen (or Shift or Alt held), a drag from inside the selection draws a shape; hold Cmd/Ctrl while you drag to move the selection instead.

Combine selections¶

Choose New, Add, Sub (subtract) or Overlap (intersect) in Properties, or hold Shift to add, Alt to subtract and Shift+Alt to keep only the overlap.

Change a selection¶

• Feather softens the edge by the chosen number of pixels.
• Select → All (Cmd/Ctrl+A) selects the whole picture, Deselect (Cmd/Ctrl+D) removes the selection, and Inverse (Shift+Cmd/Ctrl+I) swaps selected and unselected.
• Add as mask (or Select → Add Mask from Selection) gives the active layer a mask from the selection.

A selection can be undone and redone, but it is not saved in the project.