Help...Stupid Selection Tool Question

I'm not seeing the dots when using the selection tool and am unable to select sections of objects. I don't know what to do.

I figured it out myself. I was in "Object Drawing Mode" rather than "Merge Drawing Mode". A simple CTRL + B solved my issue.
Hope this helps anyone who has a similar issue...

Similar Messages

Basic Quick Selection Tool Question

Is this just a newer way to do the same thing the other selections tools have been doing for years OR is there a benefit to this tool over the other selection tools?

The Quick Selection Tool does indeed operate differently from the Magic Wand Tool.
But it’s been introduced at least with CS3, so why the question now?

Selection tools question

I'm fairly new to Photoshop Elements, so hope fully this is a simple question.
I've used the selction tools, magic wand, lassos, etc, to trace out areas of a photo that I want to eliminate and fill with another layer. I only have my background layer, a color fill layer, and a gradient layer. Problem is, when I go back to my background layer, my selections that I traced out are no longer accessible, and it seems like I have to redo all my selctions again. There's got to be a way to keep and access my selections, but I'm unsure how to do this. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Nate

nateu,
Have a look at this print screen of a selection of the swan and the layer structure:
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1usGtChF3D8cfv7mPcaCKt7Lw9IsG1
I duplicated the background layer, then shut off the visibility of the background layer by clicking on its eye icon, worked on the background copy layer. I do this routinely, since the background layer is a locked layer, and also if I wish to start over again, I just delete the newly generated layers and am back to square one. The academic purists may not agree with this work-flow, but so be it.
Next, I selected the swan - used the magnetic lasso tool here, but any of the selection tools will work. You should see "marching ants" around the selection, indicating that it is active.
Then, I went to Layer>new>layer via copy. This put the swan on its own layer. Note the checkerboard pattern around the swan selection - indicating transparency
You can put a blank layer between the swan layer (Layer 1) and the background copy layer, fill it with color, or a gradient, or texture, etc. for a new background
If you want to save the selection as per Ken's post, Press CTRL+left click the swan thumbnail on Layer 1 to make it active, then go to Select>save selection

Help! Selection tool functions switched / reversed!

This is driving me crazy and impeding my work.
The functionality of the selection tool (v) and the direct selection tool (a) have apparently switched. The selection tool behaves exactly like the direct selection tool should (example: click-dragging a selection over a point or path selects that point or path, not the whole object). The reverse is also true: the direct selection tool behaves as you would expect the direct selection tool should (example: click-dragging a selection over a point or path selects the whole object, not the point or path.
Platform: MacBook 2.4 Ghz, OS 10.6.5, CS5
Attempts at fixing: Deleted preferences for Illustrator (multiple times), including quitting Illustrator and restarting machine
Also, I went so far as creating a new user on my Mac, opening Illustrator, and testing the selection tools. Under a different user, these tools behave as expected, the selection tool behaves like the selection tool should, the direct selection tool behaves like the direct selection tool should.
Google and forum searches have yielded no help.
Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Yes, absolutely:
1) Quit Illustrator
2) Delete preferences
3) Restart Illustrator
I have tried deleting these files and folders:
1) user/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings
2) user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Illustrator CS5
Perhaps there's some preferences file hierarchy that I'm not aware of, and I
need to delete a file higher up this hierarchy? Like
"com.adobe.CSXS2Preferences.plist"?
( It appears someone else has or had this problem:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/2488436#2488436 )
Thanks

Help with selection tool (trying to add white background)

Hello everyone,
Please help me with adding a white background with my pic, am not even sure if i should searching how to perfectly use the selection tool or how to add white background, I need to add a solid white background to my pics but when i try they dont turn out so well, here is a pic, thats the best i have gotten, what am i doing wrong? I know to to fill in the white but the pic looks terrible. thanks

Hello Silkrooster, I appreciate your reply so much and thank you for trying to explain though I even got more confused, I am attaching 4 pics, the before and after of what I have worked on so far (I changed backgrounds when taking the pics) and what am working on now with the new background but still the result is not perfect, thank u so much

HELP-Time selection tool acting crazy all of a sudden

Hi all, Audition CS6 is suddenly acting strange on me! I am editing an audiobook, and have to pull dialogue from a male character from another open file to insert into my larger raw narration file....so I go back and forth between these two files quite a bit, but have to stay in the place I left off on each one....normally, this works beautifully; when I switch to view a different file and go back to the previous "still open" file, the time selection tool remains in the same place I left it...but suddenly, it has started remaining at the time I left it on the PREVIOUS FILE... when I return to the other file. Wow, let me rephrase that incase that was too confusing. If I am at, say, position 02:14:12 on file A, and then open file B, and copy a piece of audio, leaving the cursor in THAT file at position 00:00:45, when I switch back to file A, the time selection tool is now at position 00:00:45, rather than where I left it. Again, it didn't used to do this (as in didn't do it last night even!) I tried restarting the computer, and that didn't fix it. I am not aware of changing any settings, but I'm guessing I must have accidentally hit the perfect storm of keystrokes to engage this "option."
BTW, I thought it might be the Preference-->Playback-->Return playhead to start position on stop (not that I had changed it) but that does not fix it either.
Thanks in advance for any help!!!

Hi Melissa,
Souinds like the "Synchronize across files" preference got enabled. Open Preferences > General and uncheck "Synchronize selection, zoom level, and playhead across files in the Waveform Editor"

HELP! Selection tool problems cs3

Suddenly my selection tool(v) will now only select as the direct selection.
How do I fix this?

It looks as if you've accidentally hidden the bounding box. Go to View>Show Bounding Box, or keyboard shortcut command [control]-shift B.
Peter

Having difficulty using quick selection tools to remove background form images. Any help appreciated

Hello All,
I am trying to remove background from images using the 3 different selection tools. I start off fine, but ultimately the entire images keeps getting grabbed which ever tool I am using. It is easier if you are using a pro version of photoshop and not any of the elements versions? I have elements 11.
Thanks
-Deby

Accents Accents wrote:
Whenever I have watched a video of this process, it seems so easy!
So much depends on the image itself to determine which tool is most appropriate. Another tool to try is the selection brush, where you literally paint in what you want to select.
Cheers,
Neale
Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children
If this post or another user's post resolves the original issue, please mark the posts as correct and/or helpful accordingly. This helps other users with similar trouble get answers to their questions quicker. Thanks.

Can no longer use my selection tools - help!

while cutting, copying and pasting, I accidentally clicked on something in the top bar that caused all of the tools that are in the left-hand side (default) of my Photoshop CS 4 workspace (and the picture) to remain a black pointed arrow which is the mouse pointer. I tried exiting from the bridge and photoshop proper, shutting down and restarting my computer but it looks like I screwed up my photoshop.
How can I reset my photoshop to get all of my selection tools back?

Ok I pressed command + alt + shift upon starting photoshop, and this is what comes up (see screenshot) - what do I do now? And about the Photoshop CS 4 patch v11.0.1 - should I d/l this? Will this help me? How to I trash my prefs? How do I start from a new user-account - I didn't even know that I had a user-account?

Magic Quick Selection Tool NOT working right. Help please?

We've used the magic quick selection tool lots and most of the time it works well.
It's very slow.............. v e r y slow and I'm wondering if there's a patch to download from Adobe or
what to do to fix this. We have pictures to edit and it's making the editing torture. Please help?
Thank you so much. tkccvalentine

It's the Quick Selection Tool in Photoshop Elements 9 and I'm trying to get the background and make it another layer so I can even out the color of the background then bring down the transparency. Not sure if that makes sense. I'm new to this.... Sometimes the area it will grab can go ...not fast.. but not slow. Sometimes it's like it's just messed up and literally takes 30 seconds to process each move. I rebooted my computer and re opened it and it helped a little. It's not clear what causes it when it messes up and when it doesn't. Just frustrating. It's probably user error because I'm so new at Photoshop. Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

QUICK SELECTION TOOL HELP!

I am trying to use the quick selection tool to select images in my photo. When I use it I can see what I am selecting then as soon as I release the mouse button the selection disappears. Please help if anyone knows why this is happening. Also the refine edge button is not working.
Lyndsey

Be sure you aren't on an empty layer... If you are on the right layer, you might try this tool reset:
Benjamin

Selection tool not working... please help

I am using Illustrator CS 5.1 and the selection tool has stopped working.
It lets me select the object, but when I go to drag it I get an error sound and it won't move. No error message appears so I'm not sure what is wrong.
I've tried locking and unlocking all objects, and opening previously working files, but all now have this same problem.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I've got a coursework deadline due next monday...
Thanks in advance.

Common accident.
Precisely because it seems to be such a common accident (because B and H are too close to G on the keyboard) it's not a bad idea to redistribute your keyboard shortcuts. So if you think you are Grouping and accidentally hit Cmd+B or Cmd+H you won't get into trouble.
I have redistributed a lot of mine. Things like Cmd+U for Ungroup (of course) and Cmd+Shift+G for Smart Guides, Cmd+L for Average (like it was in the old days) and that sort of thing. Keep more complex 3-key combinations for more seldom used commands and remember that a lot of commands are used so seldom that you go to the menu for them anyway.
If you find some of the default keyboard shortcuts illogical or difficult to remember, just change them. It will make save you a lot of frustration in the long run. One sometimes wonders why so many of the commonly used keyboard commands were made more complicated in newer versions of Illie. Personally I can see no good reason for it.

HT1222 I received message: cannot download, select tools, download only and download manually (something like that). Please help, what does this mean?

I received message: cannot download, select tools, download only and download manually (something like that). Please help, what does this mean?

Exactly what it says.
Do as the message says.

Cs5 crashing whilst using selection tool - pls help

hi
does anyone who how to fix this problem when using the selection tool? Photoshop seems to crash each time i use the selection tool, even if the thing im selecting is fairly small, i have tried deleteing the ps preferences file, turned off open gl and turned off export to clipboard...
is there anything else i should be doing as this is VERY annoying and keeps losing my work! Especially on an imac as it crashes the whole computer and i have to power off and on again..
Any help would be very much appreciated...
cheers
sarah

You must have some system related problem there causing that. On mac Photoshop never crashes the Operating System on its own.
• First of all do a system update, make sure that you have updated your Operating system to its most recent version - Software Update.
• if you have already done the above - then run Onyx
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/onyx.html
everything apart from 'rebuild databases' in the automation menu
• After you have done this you may need to trash Photoshops Preferences, to start Photoshop with a clean slate.
General advice with macs is that although these days they are very reliable, its still best to do these maintenance tasks every once in a while. For tip top speed of operation as much as anything else. Unfortunately people get a little lax on these tasks, now things are so generally reliable.

My selection tool stopped working, it won't let me resize objects. Yes, show bounding box is on. Please help

The selection tool won't let me resize objects. I have read different forums where they all say I just have to show bounding box, but not even this works. I have been using Illustrator for a long time and never had this problem before. Please help me fix this

kimoen,
In addition to what Larry said, the Adobe team are working on the Live Rectangle bug which is limited to the MAC versions starting with 10.7 and 10.8, but not 10.9 (Mavericks).
So a switch to Mavericks with a reinstallation might be the way to solve it here and now, if that is an option, in which case you should reinstall after upgrading the OS.
But you may get round it in a couple of ways while using your present OS.
In each case, it is possible to Expand the Live Rectangles to get normal old fashioned rectangles, or to Pathfinder>Unite, or to use the Scale Tool.
A more permanent way round that is to create normal old fashioned rectangles, after running the free script created by Pawel, see this thread with download link:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1587587

Help...Stupid Selection Tool Question

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