It’s rare to find a perfect circle or rectangle in a scanned image, so the normal marquee tools often aren’t very useful in making selections. However, you can stretch, skew, rotate, and distort the selections you make with those tools. How? In Photoshop 5, select Transform Selection from the Select menu. If you’re using Photoshop 4, try switching to the Quick Mask mode (press Q), transforming the mask (press command-T to activate the Free Transform tool), and then switching out of Quick Mask mode again (press Q). | ||
![]() | 1. I want to select an egg in a stock photograph. In Photoshop 5, I use an oval marquee selection-but it doesn’t fit the egg quite right. | |
2. After I choose Transform Selection from the Select menu, the Free Transform rectangle appears. To rotate the rectangle, I drag outside the box; to scale, I drag a corner handle; to distort, I command-drag a corner handle. | ![]() | |
![]() | 3. With a few quick moves, I distort the selection rectangle to a nearly perfect fit. Then I press enter to finish the adjustment, or esc to cancel the transform if I want to try again. |
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