Marquee tool
Draw a pixel selection as a rectangle, ellipse, polygon or lasso, then combine, expand, feather and invert it.
The Marquee (M) makes a pixel selection: a mask that limits where painting, erasing and filling can land. The selection belongs to the project rather than to a layer, so it stays put while you switch layers, and it survives until you clear it.
A live selection is drawn as marching ants. Everything the tool can do to an existing selection is on the right of the options bar, and those buttons are greyed out until there is one.
| M | Marquee tool |
| Shiftdrag | Add to the selection, whatever the Mode dropdown says |
| Altdrag | Subtract from the selection |
| ShiftAltdrag | Intersect with the selection |
| Enter | Close a polygon selection |
| Esc | Discard the polygon in progress; cancel a selection transform; clear the selection when neither is running |
| CtrlShiftI | Invert the selection |
| CtrlD | Deselect: commits a floating selection first, then clears the mask |
| Delete | Clear the pixels inside the selection |
The four shapes
| Shape | How you draw it |
|---|---|
| Rectangle | Drag a box. The default. |
| Ellipse | Drag a box; the ellipse is inscribed in it. |
| Polygon | Click each corner. Double-click or press Enter to close, Esc to cancel. Fewer than three points is discarded. |
| Freehand | Drag a lasso. The path closes itself on release. |
With Rectangle or Ellipse, a box smaller than one document unit clears the selection, but only in Replace mode, so a stray click cannot wipe a selection you are adding to.
Combining selections
The Mode dropdown decides what a new marquee does to the selection you already have.
- Replace: the new marquee becomes the selection. The default.
- Add: the new area is added to it.
- Subtract: the new area is removed from it.
- Intersect: only the overlap survives.
Any mode other than Replace draws an accent line under the dropdown. One word in a menu is easy to read past, and a latched Subtract or Intersect makes the tool look broken: both leave an empty selection, so dragging appears to do nothing at all.
The modifiers override the dropdown for one drag, Photoshop-style: Shift adds, Alt subtracts, Shift+Alt intersects. The dropdown still decides what a plain drag does. A modifier held mid-drag is picked up too, so you can start the box and decide afterwards.
The Mode dropdown is shared with the Magic Wand, again the way Photoshop shares it: the combine mode belongs to the selection rather than to one tool, so setting Add here keeps applying when you switch to the wand, and the two tools build up one mask together.
Reshaping a selection
| Button | Field default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Expand | 2 px | Grows the selection outward by the number of pixels in the field beside it (1 to 64). |
| Inset | 2 px | Shrinks it inward by the same amount. |
| Feather | 4 px | Softens the edge over the given width (1 to 64), so strokes fade out across the boundary instead of stopping dead. |
| Invert | None | Swaps selected and unselected. |
| Deselect | None | Clears the selection. |
Expand and Inset flank the number they share, one on each side, so the amount can only belong to them; Feather has one direction, so its amount follows its button. All three are worked out at a cost that does not grow with the number, so a 64 px expand is as immediate as a 1 px one.
What a selection constrains
While a selection is live it masks every painting operation, on every layer type. A brush or eraser stroke is clipped to it, on a Raster or Pixel layer and on the vector blob brush alike, so you can work straight over the boundary and only the selected area changes. That holds for the tools that paint straight onto the layer as well: the eraser, Smudge, Deform, and any textured or blend-mode brush. The Fill tool flood is clipped the same way on a vector layer as on a raster one, and Delete clears the pixels inside it.
The clipping is live, not just applied at the end: paint stops at the marching ants while you are still drawing, rather than spilling over and snapping back when you lift the pen. On the vector blob brush the on-canvas preview is clipped to the selection's bounding box, which is exact for a rectangular marquee and generous for an ellipse, lasso or wand region; the committed shape is cut exactly in every case.
A feathered edge softens a raster stroke pixel by pixel. Where the selection has to become a vector outline, which is what happens when the blob brush is clipped, the soft edge has to harden somewhere: the cut is made at 50% coverage.
With the Move or Transform tool active, the selection itself is what you transform, not the layer under it: the marching ants are the subject, and they carry the pixels with them. Four corner handles scale, a knob above the top edge rotates, and a drag inside moves. Hold Shift for uniform scaling and 15 degree rotation steps. Hold Alt and drag inside the selection to leave the original behind and move a copy. Clicking outside commits the move; Esc cancels the transform and leaves the selection where it was, rather than throwing the selection away with it. Arrow keys nudge the selected pixels rather than the whole layer.
Undoing a selection
Every change to the mask is a history step of its own: drawing a marquee, adding to it, clearing it, and each Expand, Inset, Feather or Invert. Ctrl+Z brings the previous mask back intact, including its feathered edge, and History names the step Select pixels, Modify selection or Deselect pixels so it is distinguishable from a layer selection.
Practical notes
- The marquee needs no layer and creates none. On an empty project it still draws a selection, it just has nothing to constrain yet.
- The mask covers paint that lies outside the canvas as well, so a selection over an oversized pixel layer works out to the edge of the artwork.
- The marquee does not snap to the grid or to vertices.