To reach the Editor’s functions for editing the selection border, visit the menu named Selection. The selected part of a picture lies within a border (normally shown as an animated dashed line). You can copy the selected part of a picture to the Windows Clipboard and then paste it into another picture. Most of the Editor’s tools, filters, and effects work with the selected part of a picture. If there is no selection, they affect the whole picture.
Besides the commands for editing the selection border there are also several others here:
Edit Selection
There are several things you can do with a selection: stretch it/shrink it, give the selection outline an emphasized border with a size of your choice, or blur the selection; this is good for “softening” the selection borders. Enter the numbers for these settings as numbers of pixels. When Automatic Preview mode is active (the padlock icon), changes are previewed immediately.
Selection Display Modes
Selection display modes are useful for advanced work with selections. These make it easy to check whether or not you’ve selected the part of the picture that you wanted. To switch among selection display modes, use Selection | Selection Display in the menu or use the toolbar towards the top of the Editor’s Side Panel. Several options are available:
- None – the selected area is only outlined with an animated dashed line
- Cover Unselected – the unselected part of the picture is tinted red
- Cover Selection – the selected part of the picture is tinted blue
- Black and White – the unselected part of the picture is pure black; the selected part is pure white
- Selection Only – only the selected part of the picture is shown, on a transparent background
- Selection Only—On White – only the selected part of the picture is shown, on a white background
- Selection Only—On Black – only the selected part of the picture is shown, on a black background
Use Show Selection Outline to hide or show the selection border. This can be useful when, for example, previewing the output of editing tools full-screen in the Editor. The mask display and selection outline settings return to their default settings when you move to a different picture: that is, the mask is not shown and the selection outline is visible.
Stroke Selection
Use Selection | Stroke to fill the border of the selected part of a picture with a Color of your choice, in a way defined by the Mode and Opacity. You can also set the pen Width and its Position.
Fill Selection
Use Selection | Fill to fill the selected part of a picture with a Color of your choice, in a way defined by the Mode and Opacity.
Fill with Surroundings
Removing an unwanted object from a picture can be a relatively demanding and time-consuming process, requiring the use of multiple tools, and with no guarantee of a satisfactory result. Use the Fill with Surroundings tool to make Zoner Photo Studio attempt to remove an object automatically, thus avoiding this tedious process. Create a selection containing the material to be retouched out of the picture, then press [Shift+Delete]. This function fills the selected area with fragments based on the picture, making the area blend with its surroundings as well as possible. Because the algorithm for filling in an area has high processing demands, this function is recommended for small areas only. When a large area is selected, especially in a high-definition image, the process can be extremely slow.
Crop Selection
This function crops the picture based on the selection. This produces a rectangular crop containing the entire selected area (even if the selection is not rectangular).
Save Selection
This saves the current selection (to PNG by default) so that you can later read it back in using Load Selection.
Load Selection
This loads in a selection (not its contents!) from a file. You can add the loaded selection with the current one, subtract it, or use its intersection. You can also set its position in the picture.
More Information
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