Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

112 Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

Making Quick

Selections

TIP It’s much easier to select an object that’s been photographed against a plain background.

So, if you know you’re going to want to select a bicycle, for example, shoot it in front of a blank

wall rather than, say, a hedge.

Making Quick Selections

Sometimes the only thing you want to do is select your entire photo. For instance,

if you want to copy and paste your whole photo, you need to select all of it. Ele-

ments gives you some useful commands to help you make basic selections in a

snap:

• Select All (Select ➝ All or Ctrl+A) tells Elements to select your entire image.

You’ll see the “marching ants” (shown around the outline of the bell in

Figure 5-1) around the outer edge of your entire picture.

If you want to copy your image into another picture or program, performing a

Select All is the fastest way to select the entire image. If your photo contains lay-

ers, which you’ll learn about in Chapter 6, you may not be able to get every-

thing you want with the Select All shortcut. In that case, the section about

merging layers on page 162 explains what to do.

Figure 5-1:

The popular name for these dotted lines is “marching ants”

because they march around your selections to show you

where the edges lie. When you see the ants, your selection

is active, meaning what you do next happens only to the

selected area.

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