Save Selection

A Photoshop SOS (Save Our Selections)...

Have you ever spent ages making a selection, only to lose it? How very annoying!

You can guarantee that this will always happen after you've just spent 10 minutes selecting something in minute detail. You've used marquees and magic wands, tolerances and feathering, and finally your masterpiece is ready to be used!

A few minutes later once you've discarded it, you'll be kicking yourself when you need it again. :)

This doesn't have to be the case though.

There's a really simple tip to prevent this from happening. Just pick 'Select - Save Selection' from the main menu. Then give the selection a memorable name, so that you will know what it is later on.

Suppose now that you do some other work, edit some other parts of the image, and then want to come back to your selection. Simply pick 'Select - Load Selection' from the menu.

Extra Options

If you didn't have anything else selected when you reloaded the selection, the only option you'll see in the dialog box will be 'New Selection'. This simply loads the selection you saved, with the option to invert it as well if you like using the check box.

The three other options are only available if you already had a selection when you picked 'Load Selection' from the menu. These allow you to combine the saved selection with the current selection, for example by adding them together.

'New Selection' discards the current selection and selects everything in the saved selection.

'Add Selection' simply selects everything that was in either of the selections.

'Subtract Selection' selects what was in the current selection minus anything in the saved selection.

'Intersect with Selection' selects only the pixels that were selected in both selections.

Have I said the word 'selection' enough yet? :P

Remember that the 'Load Selection' dialog will only be available once you have saved at least one selection.

Closing the Document

The great thing about this is that the selections are actually saved with the psd document. This means they are persistent even when the document is closed. This won't work for jpg files or other standard images though, only Photoshop files.

Want to stop work for the day, but in the middle of something? You can save your selection and close the computer down for the night, and the selection will be ready for you to load in the morning.

The only downside to this is that the selections aren't easily transferable between documents. But there are several ways to achieve this. For example, fill the selection with a blank color in the source document, then copy this selection over to the new document, and save the selection, then discard the color.

I hope you've found this tip useful! Any questions or comments, just get in touch with my Contact Form.

Kind Regards

Robert Redwood Robert Redwood - Bio
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