Making Photoshop Selections With the Keyboard

By William McBee

Dateline: May 7, 2007
Version: Adobe Photoshop CS2

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This tutorial owes its existence to sheer coincidence. While showing a friend how to composite and use layer masks, as well as preach my typical disdain for using the mouse while within Adobe Photoshop, "it" happened. "What did you just do? Show me again. How did you do it?" she asked. At that moment I was about as confused as you probably are now. But after a few questions about what exactly "it" was, I finally figured it out.

I had quick-selected an object that was properly masked out on a layer and then later I had used that selection to mask out another layer—something I thought was common knowledge. In this tutorial I'll quickly show you what I did, using Photoshop and an image I downloaded from PhotoObjects.net. For those of you unfamiliar with PhotoObjects.net, this is a subscription service providing download access to a collection of 120,000 royalty-free stock photos that each have a tracing path (You'll also find photo objects in the collections of Photos.com, AbleStock.com and Clipart.com). This can be used to quickly mask out the object within the photo and then allow for quick composition inside of Photoshop or any other program that uses tracing paths. For example, as shown in this tip, text can be made to flow around the object in Adobe InDesign by using these paths.

To work along with me, begin by downloading the example PhotoObjects.net photo object image, spraypaint.jpg, and opening it in Photoshop.

And first things first... double-click the Background Layer and just rename it to the default Layer 0. I know... I know... I don't like mice. But since I used one to open up the file, I thought I'd use it for this part too.

Switch over to the Paths tab within the Layer Palette.

Select the included Photo Objects tracing path (or clipping path) into a selection.

With the tracing path still selected, switch back to the Layers tab within the Layer Palette.

And then add a Layer Mask using the active tracing path.

From there, your image will now drop the typical Photo Objects white background and have the transparent background.

So far, standard fare. Now you're about where I was in my composition, but one more step is needed... dropping the Layer Mask totally. This sounds destructive, but with the Photo Objects materials, you can pretty much trust that they're properly masked out.

Drag and drop (okay, I'm still using the mouse, forgive me) the Layer Mask onto the trash can icon located on the bottom-right of Photoshop's Layer Palette and Apply the layer mask.

Now you're exactly at the same step as I was when I did "it." I didn't have a layer mask on the object any longer, just a floating object. Of course you could continue to use the mouse, but this is where I was in a rush and quickly did "it" in front of my friend.

While on the layer with the floating object, I quickly hit CTRL+A (COMMAND+A on the Mac), which selects everything on that layer.

As you can see, the "marching ants" are on the border of the layer, not the actual object itself. Which wouldn't be much help if I wanted to create a layer mask for other layers.

With the floating object layer (the boy in this example) and while still on the keyboard, hit the letter V to invoke the Move tool and then quickly use the Up Arrow and then the Down Arrow to select the free-floating object.

And that's "it."

That's using Nudge on the keyboard to quickly select an object—not just the outside, all of the layer mask it once had will be active—and from that you can use that on other layers and mask out portions that you wish to hide using your main object, or any object that's on its own layer and masked out.

This does not work with un-rasterized type or shapes but it's a quick way to quickly select something if you need to make a mask or save a selection for later use.

Of course, if you're in love with your mouse you can always CTRL+Click on the layer and it'll come out the same way. But then you'd miss out on the fun of showing somebody that you can do it all by the keyboard.