Part of Lesson Plan: Making Selections with Marquee Tools

Activity Overview / Details

Look at the images you saved for your digital composite project.

• How are we going to move the animals, buildings, people, equipment and vehicles to your selected background?
• Do they have a solid background?
• Are they a solid color?
• Are they round or square?

These are the questions you need to answer to choose the correct selection tool to move the individual images to your digital composition.

There are various selection techniques we can use: Marquee Tools, Lasso Tools, Color Range, Magic Wand and Quick Selection Tool.

We are going to learn how to use the marquee tools to make selections.  Photoshop selection tools make it easy to select objects that are rectangular or elliptical. Unfortunately, not all objects fall into those two categories.  We are focusing on those that do fit into those categories. 

To select an object by shape you do the following:

1. Click the rectangular or elliptical marquee tool on the tool panel.
2. Drag the pointer around the object.

 Watch this video.