
You might also want to use one of the other selection tools to refine your selection further. If you have selected too much, you can put the selection tool on Subtract mode to remove parts of the selection. If you have selected only a part of the apple you can put the selection tool on Add mode and select the remaining parts with the Magic Wand Tool.

Release the mouse button to complete the selection.ĭepending on where you started your selection and the tolerance you used, you'll either have selected the whole apple or just a part of the apple. Make sure to increase the tolerance in such away that we select all of the apple including the stem. This will include more of the apple in our selection. We can increase the tolerance by dragging the mouse further away.

You'll see an overlay appear, telling us which parts of our image are going to be selected. Step 2Ĭlick on a part of the apple, hold the mouse button and drag the mouse. Make sure the selection mode is set to New Selection. Then activate the Magic Wand Tool from the Tools Palette. With the Magic Wand Tool we can also select areas of our image based on their color shade.ĭeselect our existing selection by using the key combination Command-D. You'll see that only the color of the apple changes.Īnother selection tool that has a lot in common with the Paint Selection Tool is the Magic Wand Tool. Double-click on the Colorize effect.Īdjust the color wheel to change the color of the apple. Go to the Effects Browser and choose the Color Adjustments effects. We can now change for example the color of the apple without changing the color of the stem or the hands around it. We have now told Pixelmator that every edit we want to do to our image, should only be applied to the parts of the image that are selected. This is because we used the Paint Selection Tool in subtract mode. When we release the mouse button we see that a hole appears inside our selection. The overlay shows the parts of the image the Paint Selection Tool wants to select for us. While painting you'll notice that an overlay appears over the stem. Paint with the mouse pointer over the stem by clicking and dragging. Use the key combination Command and + to zoom in. This will be a detailed selection and therefore we want to zoom in on our image to see as much of the stem as possible. Adjust the slider so the diameter of the mouse pointer is slightly less than the width of the stem of the apple. In the Tool Options bar we see a diameter slider. Select the Paint Selection Tool from the Tools Palette and set the selection mode to subtract The mouse pointer changes into a circle representing our brush size. The Paint Selection Tool then tries to intelligently select more of the image based on the color shades we are painting over. With this tool we can make a selection by painting over the area we want to select. The Paint Selection Tool is a great tool for detailed selections of parts of images with different color shades. We can also hold the Option-key before starting the selection to switch to add mode temporarily. Make sure not to include the whole stem into the selection.Īctivate Add to Selection Mode and draw an elliptical selection around the parts of the stem that weren't selected yet. Holding both keys at the same time will create a circular and centred selection. If you prefer to start your selection in the middle of the apple, then you can hold the Option-key to start drawing from the centre of the selection. While dragging with mouse you can hold the Shift-key in order to constrain the shape of the selection to a circle.

Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool, activate New Selection Mode from the Tool Options bar and make a selection around the apple. An image of an apple on a white background is perfect for this exercise. Open an image that looks similar to the image we use in this tutorial. Releasing the mouse button will finish the selection.įor each selection tool there are similar options in the tool options bar that let us: Then we click inside the document window where we want our selection to start, hold the mouse button and drag the mouse to draw our selection. To make a selection with one of these tools we have to select them from the Tools Palette first. The rectangular and elliptical marquee tools are ideal for making quick selections of areas in our image.
