Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Selecting with a Brush

Elements also gives you two very special brushes to help you make selections. The Selection brush has been part of Elements since Elements 2, so if you've used Elements before, you probably know how useful it is. Elements 4 brings you a terrific new variation on the Selection brush: the Magic Selection brush. With this brush, Elements does most of the work of selecting for you. You just make a quick scribble on the object you want to select, and Elements figures out the actual selection. It doesn't always work, but it's quite an amazing tool when it does.

The Magic Selection brush and the Selection brush are grouped together in the Toolbox, and they appear in both the Standard Editor and the Quick Fix, because they're so useful. You may well find that with these two tools you rarely need the other selection tools anymore.

The Magic Selection Brush

You probably won't wonder why Adobe calls this tool "magic." The Magic Selection brush can make even the most complex selections as easy as doodling. It automates the whole process of selecting to an amazing degree. With this brush, you just make a few marks on the subject you want to select, as shown in Figure 5-10. Then Elements does all the calculating and figuring for the actual selection and creates the selection for you. If you want to practice the following steps on a real live picture, download the photo shown in Figure 5-10 (rose.jpg) from the "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com. Here's how to use the ...