Presice Square Selections??

BS
Posted By
Bryan_S_Campbell
Oct 10, 2003
Views
388
Replies
4
Status
Closed
This is hard to explain what I need to do, although it would really be accomplishing a simple task.

When you make a selection of an image in Photoshop 7.0, using the Square or Rectangle selection tool, you can drag it by hand and then you can cut or copy it (or whatever you need to do).. however…

want my square selection to be exactly 250×180 (just as an example) and then i want to move that 250×180 selection i created to the exact part of the picture i’m editing, and then once its on the area of the picture, i would cut or copy. is there a way to do this in 7.0?

fyi… i dont want to crop the entire picture to 250×180, and then "select all".. it would compress the image, and i only want part of the image cut anyways. i just want a certain area or areas in a selection thats exactly 250×180, or whatever demension i choose.

thanks!

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DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Oct 10, 2003
Bryan,

Defining an exact-sized rectangular selection is easily accomplished in PS7. With the rectangular marquee tool selected, look at your Options bar and select "Fixed Size" from the Style drop-down menu. Then, enter the dimensions in the boxes to the right, such as 250 px width by 180 px height to use your example. Then, upon clicking inside your image area, you’ll see that fixed area selection indicated and ready to be positioned as you need. As to a precise way to position the selection, I don’t know how to achieve that other than by observing the data values in the Info palette and letting them guide you…that is, I don’t see a way to manually enter the offsets. One workaround may be to create an action simply of that one selection step, after placing the selection boundary where you want it. In doing that, the recorded action will contain both the size of the selection and the offset into your image area. If you were cutting the same area from multiple images, this would allow you to easily duplicate the selection.

Hope that helps,

Daryl
NB
Norbert_Bissinger
Oct 10, 2003
To position the rulers and the grid might be of help. Both can be set in the Preferences to dimensions helpful por the purpose, then Using Snap to Grid and Snap to Guides.
If you past it always goes into the center then using the arrow keys with shift it moves 10 pixels whitout shift it moves one. This is a bit time consuming but very precise.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Oct 10, 2003
Phosphor,

Thanks for that link…as you say, it is good stuff. A short while back I split an image up into 8 even-sized layers, but did so manually while wondering how I might automate the process. I’d not thought of the approach used in that link, whereby the reference point is moved after initial area selection but redefined before completing the selection. Pretty clever.

Regards,

Daryl

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Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

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