Path Selection and Direct Selection in Photoshop

In this session of photoshop we will learn path selection and direct selection

Where and how is it used?

Here you find pen tool.

Shortcuts of pen tool is p .

From here i selected pen tool.

Now i will show you how to select pen tool.

I have Zoomed in with Alter and scroll bar.

I will keep the point from where i have to start the selection.

Now you keep another point till you want to select.

See here is another point by click.

After clicking from the mouse, you don't have to leave the mouse click.

After that you can see the selection line is straight and i need to make it little tilted curve line.

So for that i will drag the mouse pointer a little downwards.

See as I dragged, the line is tilted a little bit okay?

Here you can see two more lines, which is called its handle.

See i adjusted them and leave them here.

Now can leave the mouse point.

We will call handle to these two lines.

After leaving, you wish to adjust, you can.

What do you need to do to adjust?

Press alter and you will find a reverse V shape.

Again select stretch using mouse.

So this is how you can adjust by dragging the mouse.

Now what to do to go ahead.

Come Here in middle point, you will find this type of minus sign.

Make a click here and can continue your selection from here.

See i am continuing in this way.

Again lets move the image little bit by pressing hand tool by pressing space.

See in this way we are going ahead in selection.

This is the best tool for selection.

You can select easily and very well and in speed as well.

See i will zoom out little bit so that i can select speedily.

You can even adjust handle select after selecting totally.

So obviously your selection will be perfect.

See in this way i will keep selecting ahead.

See here my selection is not adjusting .

No problem i will do ctrl Z here, zoom in.

What is here is, as I will select further, an automatic curve is forming but here is little straight line.

So I don't want the curve, I will do control Z.

After I control Z, I will go to the middle point of its handle by pressing the alter.

See again reverse V sign is here.

As it will arise, you have to click here.

As you will click here, you can see your handle is halfly cut.

Which means you can from here you can reselect the way you selected in the starting.

In the same way you can select from here which means.

If you wish to control your selection, your handle so you need to cut handle in this way.

See from here i will go ahead this much and take this downward.

So see i am done with my perfect selection.

So this is a very useful tool for perfect selection.

As i will go from here, selection will be with curve.

As you find more curve and difficulty in selection, so you have to goa head by pressing alter and cut the half handle of that selection.

See i will cut half handle of this selection.

Now i will go ahead in this way for selection.

In this way you can select perfectly, exact border to border.

Now see i have gone here and cut that, after cutting i am selecting its border again.

As i came here and select, see the line is going out a little bit.

Saw? Because i have not cut the handle here.

I will control Z and go there to cut the handle and select again.

See now its selection will be perfect, it wont go out.

See in this way you can select perfectly.

Keep cutting the handle here ahead and keep selecting.

In this way you can select whole car.

Hope you are able to understand me.

See the handle we are stretching, that is making it very easy to cover round curve of tyre.

Can be easily selected.

See half handle cut, going ahead in selection.

See here is straight line so zoom out and stretch the line from here to there.

What happens with the pen tool is you can make straight line as well as curve line.

This is very helpful for selection.

 See i am selecting tyre of car with selection tool.

See in this way, cutting handle makes command to be perfect in selection.

Basically it is a drawing tool.

We are not doing anything, we are drawing border of the car with pen tool.

But it has one more feature that whatever you have drawn line, in photoshop it is known as. path, that path can be converted into selection.

So here I am complete with the selection. My whole car is selected.

Second thing, here it is given below ‘path selection tool’.

What happens with the path selection tool? If you have drawn any line with a pen tool, or with any other vector tool. So, to select that line, you only have one tool, this one, that is the path selection tool.

You cannot select any path through move tool.

Move tools helps in cutting image, selecting image and moving it.

But to select this path, path selection tool is used.

Now i have taken path selection tool from here.

The line i have drawn, the border i have drawn, i am selecting that border.

After selection, i have to do right click here.

Here is one option given ‘make selection’.

As i will click on this .

That will ask me ‘feather’.

So this will be a new thing in make selection.

So what is feather radius?.

Feather radius is used to blur the border of the part that we select.

Now what will be the difference by blurring the border? That i will let you know in some time.

For now let's keep feather radius xero and click ok here.

As you can see this much car is selected.

Now i will open a image by going into the file.

I have one this image, i have opened it here.

I don't have to do much, the portion is selected .

Simply copy by going into edit or press control C.

copied, go ino new image, here ctrl V which means pasted.

Here is the car right?

Now you can see our car is going outside the artboard okay?

Select the car using move tool.

As you can see car is totally going outside the work area, outside the artboard.

So you need to make it smaller.

 So to make it smaller, you need to use transform.

Go in edit, here is a option given transform.

Which means if you want to scale in any object, rotate, skew, distort, or want to change its. perspective view, or to warp, anything like this you wish to do, you have to use transform that is ctrl t.

Above it is given ctrl t for free transform.

You need to do Free transform ctrl T.

Here i will do ctrl T.

Which is known as free transform.

As you can see, i did ctrl T, the area of the car is selected.

With addition of the points in the corner.

We can make changes using those points.

If you want to scale, so you need to go in the corner of this selection.

See as you will go here, shape of your tool is changed.

Now you have to press shift and alter.

After pressing shift and alter, drag the mouse to make it smaller. 

This is done with the scale, see you can make it smaller or bigger.

Benefit of pressing shift and alter will be that selected object will be scaled symmetrical from all four sides that is similar.

But if you scale without selecting anything, so see in this way you can do non symmetrical scale.

Okay? Advice is to scale by pressing shift alter, that will be better

After scaling, i will move this.

 See in this way moved.

After moving, as your work is completed, press enter.

As you will press enter, your free transform will be closed.

If you want to rotate it little bit then too you can use free transform.

Control T.

You can rotate with control T okay? And even scale too.

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