Digital Scrapbooks and More Blog

In the spotlight today is the Elliptical Marquee Tool. If you have been following along we talked about the Rectangular Marquee tool yesterday – see that blog: In the Spotlight: The Marquee Tool Part 1.

Basically, the Elliptical Marquee tool creates  elliptical selection (or a circle, when used with the shift key).

To select the Elliptical Marquee tool go to the tool bar area and get the drop down menu and pick the Elliptical section tool.

Here is what it looks like in Photoshop:

In Photoshop the Elliptical Marquee often might appear to be hidden but when you go to the marquee tool click on the small triangle button at the right hand bottom of the tool, a drop down menu appears, and then you can select the Elliptical Marquee tool.

For Photoshop Elements it work the same way. See the image below:

After you have selected the Elliptical Marquee tool, the option bar appears at the top of the program and gives you many different controls. These controls work much the same way we explained in yesterdays blog on the Rectangular Marquee tool but of course now with a different shape.

Digital Scrapbooking and Photo Editing the Elliptical Marquee Tool is a favorite!

The Elliptical Tool is often used in both digital scrapbooking and photo editing projects. So it is really helpful to understand the options and how to use this tool.

For example in this digital scrapbooking page, you can see the elliptical embellishment with the button on it.  (see the green arrow pointing to elliptical embellishment) The embellishment was made by using the Elliptical marquee tool to select a part of a digital scrapbooking paper, then dragging the selection to another digital scrapbooking project!

Both digital scrapbookers and photo editors use this tool to make selections, and this is a very important tool to understand.

Also, you can use the marquee tool for other things like making a selection and then going to the Top Menu > Layer > Fill New Layer > (Solid Color, Gradient, Pattern). You can use this to fill the marquee shape with a color, a gradient color or even a pattern! Nice trick huh?!

Once you start using the marquee tool you will wonder how you lived without it! Below are a few items that are important to review when using the Elliptical Marquee Tool.

We will quickly review a few important concepts for using this tool:

To give your tool more power and functionality, specify one of the selection options on the option menu bar in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements.

Selection options

A. New B. Add To C. Subtract From D. Intersect With

Next, specify a feathering setting in the options bar. Turn anti-aliasing on or off for the Elliptical Marquee tool.

For the Elliptical Marquee tool, choose a style (Photoshop) or mode (Elements) in the options bar:

• Normal: Determines marquee proportions by dragging.
• Fixed Ratio: Sets a height-to-width ratio. Enter values (decimal values are valid) for the aspect ratio. For example, to draw a marquee twice as wide as it is high, enter 2 for the width and 1 for the height.
• Fixed Size: Specifies set values for the marquee’s height and width. Enter pixel values in whole numbers.

Photoshop Users Only Extras:

Photoshop Users, on the Option Bar you have another button called Refine Edges. When you push this button it lets you refine the edges of your selections more.

You can move the sliders and if the preview button is checked then you can see the changes it makes to your selection.

This is only a few of the special marquee tool extras that Photoshop has that Elements doesn’t have.

Other great marquee tools in Photoshop are the

Single Row  or Single Column Marquee  tools