CHAPTER 7
120
Selecting
• Hold down Alt+Shift (Windows) or
Option+Shift (Mac OS) so that cross hairs
appear next to the pointer, and select an area
that intersects the existing selection.
Adjusting selections numerically
You can use commands in the Select menu to
increase or decrease the size of an existing
selection and to clean up stray pixels left inside or
outside a color-based selection.
To expand or contract a selection by a specific number
of pixels:
1 Use a selection tool to make a selection.
2 Choose Select > Modify > Expand or Contract.
3 For Expand By or Contract By, enter a pixel
value between 1 and 100, and click OK.
The border is increased or decreased by the
specified number of pixels. Any portion of the
selection border that runs along the canvas’s edge
is unaffected.
To frame an existing selection with a new selection
border:
1 Use a selection tool to make a selection.
2 Choose Select > Modify > Border.
3 Enter a value between 1 and 200 pixels in the
Width text box, and click OK. The new selection
frames the original selected area.
The Border command creates a soft-edged, anti-
aliased selection border. (See “Softening the edges
of a selection” on page 121.) To paint a hard-
edged border around a selection, use the Stroke
command on a selection that lacks feathering or
anti-aliasing. (See “Filling and tracing selections
and layers” on page 144.)
To expand a selection to include areas with similar
color:
Do one of the following:
• Choose Select > Grow to include all adjacent
pixels falling within the tolerance range
specified in the magic wand options. A higher
Tolerance value adds a broader range of colors.
• Choose Select > Similar to include pixels
throughout the image, not just adjacent ones,
that fall within the tolerance range.
To increase the selection incrementally, choose
either command multiple times.
Note: Yo u cannot use the Grow and Similar
commands on images in bitmap mode.
To clean up stray pixels left inside or outside a
color-based selection:
1 Choose Select > Modify > Smooth.
2 For Sample Radius, enter a pixel value between
1 and 100, and click OK.
Photoshop Elements searches around each
selected pixel for unselected pixels within the
specified range. For example, if you enter 16 for
Sample Radius, Photoshop Elements searches 16
pixels on each side of every selected pixel. If most
pixels in that range are selected, any unselected
pixels are added to the selection. If most pixels in
that range are unselected, any selected pixels are
removed from the selection.
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