10 Photoshop Techniques You Can't Work Without:

 

8. Space-Drag Selections:

Summary: Perfectly positioning a selection marquee can be frustrating, especially in the case of elipses. But, did you know you could nudge a selection marquee while dragging it out? Just hold the space bar and achieve the perfect fit.

 

 

 

Shown: Here we have an image of a globe on a black background. We'd like to select and isolate the blue globe.

 

 

Step 1: With the Selection Marquee tool active (press M to activate), click and drag outward from the point shown and release. The result isn't quite what we wanted.

 

 

Step 2: Rather than using trail-and-error, this time we click and drag out again, but hold down the Space bar while dragging to re-position the marquee. Release the Space bar and you can continue to grow or shrink the elipse. Repeat until you get the perfect selection.

Tip: Holding ALT while dragging out a selection marquee will center it around the cursor. To select a circle, hold ALT while clicking and dragging out from its epicenter.

Tip: Hold SHIFT while dragging to add to an existing selection. Hold ALT while dragging to subtract from an existing selection. Hold SHIFT+ALT obtain the intersection of two selections.