Photoshop Selections: The Rectangular Marquee Tool
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Drawing Selections From The Center
Up to this point, we've been starting all of our rectangular or square selections from the top left corner of whatever it was that we were selecting, and in most cases that works just fine. But there's no rule that says you must always start in the top left corner. In fact, Photoshop gives us a simple keyboard shortcut that allows us to drag selections out from their center rather than from a corner.
Click on your starting point in the center of the area you need to select with the Rectangular Marquee Tool and begin dragging out your selection, then hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and continue dragging. As soon as you add the Alt / Option key, your selection outline will begin extending out in all directions from the point you initially clicked on. Continue dragging the selection out from its center, release your mouse button to complete the selection, then release your Alt / Option key:
Once again, the order you do things here is important. If you release your Alt / Option key before releasing your mouse button to complete the selection, the selection outline will jump back to its default behavior of extending out from the corner. You'll need to press and hold the Alt / Option key again to switch it back to the center. Also, if you press and hold Alt / Option before clicking to set a start point, you'll enter the Subtract from Selection mode which we won't get into here but can cause unexpected results if you already have one selection active and try to start a new one. The correct order for drawing rectangular selections from the center is to click to set a starting point and begin dragging, then hold down Alt / Option and continue dragging. Release your mouse button to complete the selection, then release your Alt / Option key.
You can drag out a square selection from its center as well. Simply add the Shift key to the keyboard shortcut. Click in the center of the square object or area you need to select and begin dragging out the selection, then hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) which will snap the selection outline into a perfect square and force the selection to extend out in all directions from the point you clicked on. When you're done, release your mouse button, then release the Shift and Alt / Option keys.
Quickly Remove A Selection
When you're done with a selection and no longer need it, you can deselect it by going up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choosing Deselect as we saw earlier, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac). Or, for an even faster way to deselect a rectangular or square selection, simply click anywhere inside the document window while you still have the Rectangular Marquee Tool active.
Up next, we'll look at the second of Photoshop's two main Marquee selection tools, the Elliptical Marquee Tool!
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