Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Selecting Irregularly Sized Areas

It would be nice if you could always get away with making simple rectangular or elliptical selections, but is life really ever that neat? You won't always want to select a geometric-shaped chunk of your image. If you want to change the color of one fish in your aquarium picture, selecting a rectangle or square just isn't going to cut it.

UP TO SPEED: Paste vs. Paste Into Selection

Newcomers to Elements are often confused by the fact that the program has two Paste commands: Paste and Paste Into Selection. Knowing what each one does will help you avoid problems.

• Paste. Ninety-nine percent of the time, Paste is the one you want. This command simply places your copied object wherever you paste it. Once you've pasted your object, you can move whatever you've pasted by moving the selected area.

• Paste Into Selection. This is a special command for pasting a selection into another selection. Your pasted object appears only within the bounds of the selection you're pasting into.

When you use Paste Into Selection, you can still move what you paste, but it won't be visible anywhere outside the edges of the selection you're pasting into. This command is very handy if you want to do something like putting a beautiful mountain view outside your window: Select the window, copy the mountain (Ctrl+C), and then use Paste Into Selection to add the view. Then you can maneuver the mountain photo around till it's properly centered. But if you move it outside the boundary of ...