Marquee Selection
Shortcut: Sor M
The Marquee tool — named Select in the app's tool panel — creates rectangular selections by clicking and dragging.
Basic Usage
Click and drag to create a rectangular selection. The selection appears as a marching ants outline (animated dashed line).
Modifiers
- Shift + drag — Add to existing selection
- Altor Right Click + drag — Subtract from existing selection
- Shift+Altor Shift+Right Click + drag — Intersect with existing selection
- Shift (while dragging) — Constrain to square (when there is no existing selection)
- Ctrl + drag — Draw from the center outward instead of corner-to-corner (when starting a new selection)
- Drag inside an existing selection — Lift and move the selected content (the pixels)
- Ctrl + drag inside an existing selection — Move only the marquee boundary, leaving the pixels in place
Selection Handles
An active selection shows handles with any of the five selection tools (Select, Ellipse, Lasso, Polygon, Magic Wand) — no need to switch to the Transform tool. The handles support moving, resizing, rotating, and skewing the selection.
- Corner handles — Drag to resize the selection area
- Edge handles — Drag to resize in one direction
- Outside a corner — Drag to rotate
- Outside a mid-edge — Drag to skew
- Handles provide visual feedback when hovered
Rounded Selections
Create selections with rounded corners using the corner radius option in the tool options row. This is useful for selecting rounded UI elements or creating soft-edged masks. It is the same control the Rectangle shape tool uses, and those two are the only tools that have it: the other selection tools show no corner radius.
After Selection
Once you have a selection, you can:
- Draw/paint only within the selected area
- Cut, copy, or delete the selection contents
- Press T to transform (move, scale, rotate)
- Apply effects only to the selected area