Fun with Selections in Photoshop

Fun with Selections in Photoshop

updated by rck, 2004-11-09

One of the main reasons, why I haven't fully switched to Linux and cope with Windows XP must be the incredible amount of amazing software for Windows. The best, of course, is Photoshop. Let's make a graphic with it.

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Drawing the inner circle
inner circle	Let's start in the middle. We do a circle first. Now, that we have our guides, this is really easy. Create a new layer (Layer\|New\|Layer...) and select the "eliptical marquee tool" (upper / left, first tool in the toolbar, hidden below the "rectangular marquee tool"). Now, click and drag from the middle of your guidance to the right/upper corner (or any other corner, doesn't matter). What we now have is a nice circle, sized the quarter of our whole image. If you fill it with gray (edit \| fill), it should look just the way the image to the left does.

Drawing the inner circle

inner circle

Let's start in the middle. We do a circle first. Now, that we have our guides, this is really easy. Create a new layer (Layer|New|Layer...) and select the "eliptical marquee tool" (upper / left, first tool in the toolbar, hidden below the "rectangular marquee tool"). Now, click and drag from the middle of your guidance to the right/upper corner (or any other corner, doesn't matter).

What we now have is a nice circle, sized the quarter of our whole image. If you fill it with gray (edit | fill), it should look just the way the image to the left does.

Into the middle
What use is a middle-circle if it ain't in the middle? We can fix that easily. Again, the guidelines come to help. Take your arrow tool (upper right of the toolbar) and move the circle in the middle. Quite a sight, isn't it? Just fine. Now throw in two more squares, the same way you did the circle in the first place. You might want to choose different colours while filling them (or you might not -- hey, it's your graphics!). Put each on it's own layer and look to the graphics on the right. It should look similar.	two squares and a circle

Into the middle

What use is a middle-circle if it ain't in the middle? We can fix that easily. Again, the guidelines come to help. Take your arrow tool (upper right of the toolbar) and move the circle in the middle. Quite a sight, isn't it? Just fine.

Now throw in two more squares, the same way you did the circle in the first place. You might want to choose different colours while filling them (or you might not -- hey, it's your graphics!). Put each on it's own layer and look to the graphics on the right. It should look similar.