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In this video I’m going to select this space ship and
drag it over into this blue background
photograph . . . I’m going to select it two different ways, the
traditional way with
your basic selection tools . . and then I’m going to select
it using the Pen Tool and vectors
and I’ll show you the difference between the two.
First off, I’ll select the ship using the Quick Selection Tool.
Alright, I have a selection, and I’m going to mask out the background
by adding a mask
Then I simply drag the space ship over into the
blue background.
Now, I’m going to go back to the space ship, and this time I’m going to use the Pen Tool and
vectors to select it . . . I go back to
the beginning . . .
To start with the Pen Tool, I get
into the Pen Tool . . . make sure I’m in
“Paths” and, by default, you’re
. . .in CS6 you’re in to “Add a Path” mode
which is what you want.
And I want to start by clicking on “A” and dragging
to this red dot. By clicking and dragging you’re making
a curved anchor point.
And then I go to “B.” I click and drag to the red
Now, I’m still making curved anchor points at this
juncture, so I want to convert “B” now
to a corner point. To do that I hold down my
“Option” on a Mac, or “Alt” on a
PC . . . I get that little inverted “v” . . . I can click
that anchor point -- and now it’s a corner point.
Then I can click “C” . . . click “D”
there’s this rounded area, so I’m going to click “D” and drag
“E” and drag . . . Click once at “F”
“G” to the red dot
“H” to the red dot . . . “I” to the
red dot . . . “J”
“K” to the red dot, “L” to the red dot
“M” . . . “N” . . . and now I convert
this corner point to a curved point, because it’s going to come up
and meet with “A” . . . So I hold down my “Alt” or “Option”
and click once,
and then I can drag up to the red dot
and finish out the selection -- “A” to the
red dot. . . Now, if I look into my
paths panel
I have my space ship as a work path. I’m going to rename that
work path “saucer”
and I can back and edit this path by using this tool
called the
Direct Selection tool . . . over here
For example, let’s say I want
to fix this dot at “C” or this curve
I just click on the path and I can move the
anchor point slightly and
I can change the curvature of
the direction lines . . . Let’s say
I want to move this
anchor point up, so I do
--it makes a really crisp edge around my
space ship.
Alright, so I’ve edited my
saucer path, and I can turn that into a selection
at any time. . . I want to go back to
“Layers” because I have these two holes right here
in the fins of the space ship that I want to subtract
from my selection . . . So I’m back in “Layers,” I’m on the background
I’m just going to quickly select those using the
Magic Wand Tool . . . Hold down
my Shift key and add the selection . . . So I have the two fins, I’m
going to go ahead and save those . . .
Select, Save Selection . . . call them
“fins” . . . just in case I want to come back to them.
And I’m going to turn on my Paths panel
and I’m going to convert those fin selections to their own path.
I go down to the bottom of the Paths panel
. . . there’s this button called “Make Work Path from Selection”
I click that
and I can name that second work path “fins.”
Alright, now I have two work paths. I want to turn those paths
into selections. . . I’m going to click on the “saucer”
work path and go down to the bottom of my
Paths
panel . . . and click the button called “Load This Path as a Selection.”
And that will give me the marching ants around the
space ship. . . . Then I want to subtract
the fins from that . . . So I get on the “fins” path
and this time I’m going into the Paths menu, and I’m going to
click the button “Make Selection,” but
this time I’m going to click the option called “subtract” from
selection . . . See, I already have a selection going, and I want to
subtract this path selection from it. So I click on that
Click “ok” . . . and now I have my space ship
fully selected . . . I’m going to get
back into my Layers panel, click on the
Mask button to mask out the background . . .
I’m going to do Window > Arrange > Two Up Vertically
and in the Move tool I’m going to drag
him over
Now, let’s what the difference is . . .
I’m going to zoom in on this . . . This bottom
space ship here is the one we did with the vectors, and notice the
crisp. clean selection edge.
The top one was done with the regular selection tools
So you can see the difference there.
Alright, click on the next video to continue this
exercise.