Photoshop's Polygonal Lasso Tool, another of its basic selections tools, is a bit like a cross between the Rectangular Marquee Tool and the standard Lasso Tool, both of which we looked at in previous tutorials. It allows us to easily draw freeform selection outlines based on straight-sided polygonal shapes. But while the Rectangular Marquee Tool limits us to drawing 4-sided polygons (rectangles or squares), the Polygonal Lasso Tool lets us draw as many sides as we need, with as much freedom as the Lasso Tool gives us to move in any direction we need!
The Polygonal Lasso Tool is hiding behind the standard Lasso Tool in the Tools panel.
Once you've selected the Polygonal Lasso Tool, it will appear in place of the standard Lasso Tool in the Tools panel. To switch back to the Lasso Tool later, click and hold on the Polygonal Lasso Tool, then select the Lasso Tool from the fly-out menu:
Whichever of the three lasso tools you selected last will appear in the Tools panel. Select the others from the fly-out menu.
You can cycle through Photoshop's three different lasso tools (Lasso Tool, Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool, which we'll look at later) by holding down your Shift key and pressing the letter L repeatedly.Drawing Straight-Sided Polygonal Selections
Drawing selections with the Polygonal Lasso Tool is a lot like drawing straight-sided paths with the Pen Tool. Begin by clicking somewhere along the edge of the object or area you need to select, then release your mouse button. This adds a point, commonly called an anchor or fastening point, to the document. As you move the Polygonal Lasso Tool away from the point, you'll see a thin straight line extending out from your mouse cursor, looking a bit like a spider weaving a web, with the other end of the line attached to the anchor point. Click again to add a second point, then release your mouse button. The line will become "fastened" to the new point, with both points now joined together by the straight line.Continue moving around the object or area, clicking to add a new point anywhere where the line needs to change direction, fastening the end of the line to each new point as you go along. Unlike the standard Lasso Tool, as well as many of Photoshop's other selection tools, there's no need to keep your mouse button held down as you move from point to point. Simply click to add a point, release your mouse button, move to the next spot where the line needs to change direction, then click to add a new point:
Click to add points around the object or area where you need the line to change direction.
Once you've made your way around the object or area, complete the selection by clicking once again on the initial point you added. Photoshop will convert all of the straight lines into a selection outline. A small circle will appear in the bottom right corner of the cursor icon when you're close enough to the initial point to complete the selection. I've enlarged things here to make the circle easier to see:
A small circle appears in the bottom right of the cursor icon when you're close enough to the initial point to complete the selection.
You can also close a selection simply by double-clicking anywhere with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Photoshop will automatically close the selection with a straight line from the point you clicked on to your initial starting point.Here's a photo I have open in Photoshop showing a large blank billboard hanging on the side of a building. I want to add a photo to the billboard, which means I'll first need to select it:
A blank billboard.
At first glance, you may think the billboard is shaped like a rectangle, so why bother with the Polygonal Lasso Tool when the Rectangular Marquee Tool should work just fine? Let's give it a try. I'll press the letter M on my keyboard to quickly select the Rectangular Marquee Tool, then I'll click in the top left corner of the billboard to begin my selection and drag down to the bottom right corner. To complete the selection, I'll release my mouse button:
Attempting to select the billboard with the Rectangular Marquee Tool.
As we can see, even though the billboard probably would appear rectangular to us if we were standing directly in front of it, the angled perspective of the photo is distorting its shape, and the Rectangular Marquee Tool ends up doing a rather lousy job of selecting it.I'll press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to remove my failed selection outline. This time, let's try selecting the billboard with the Polygonal Lasso Tool. I'll grab the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the Tools panel as we saw earlier, then to begin my selection, I'll click in the top left corner of the billboard and release my mouse button. This sets my initial starting point for the selection. I'll move to the top right corner and click to add a second point. Photoshop joins the two points together with a thin straight line. I'll click to add a third point in the bottom right corner, then click to add a fourth point in the bottom left corner, fastening the straight line to each new point as I make my way around the billboard. Again, I'm not holding my mouse button down as I move from point to point. I'm simply clicking to add points, then releasing my mouse button each time:
Clicking in each of the four corners with the Polygonal Lasso Tool, beginning with the top left and moving clockwise.
If you make a mistake and click to add a point in the wrong spot, there's no need to start over. Just press the Backspace (Win) / Delete (Mac) key on your keyboard to undo the last point you added. If you need to undo multiple points, continue pressing Backspace (Win) / Delete (Mac) to undo points in the reverse order they were added.To complete my selection, I'll click back on the initial starting point for the selection in the top left corner of the billboard, then release my mouse button. Photoshop converts all of the straight lines between the points into my selection outline, and as we can see, we were able to do a much better job of selecting the billboard this time:
The Polygonal Lasso Tool made it easy to select the billboard.
Now that the billboard is selected, I'll open up the image I want to add to it:
The soon-to-be billboard photo.
I'll press Ctrl+A (Win) / Command+A (Mac) to quickly select the entire image, then Ctrl+C (Win) / Command+C (Mac) to copy it to the clipboard. To add the image to the billboard, I'll switch back over to my original photo, then I'll go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose the Paste Into command:
Photoshop's Paste Into command allows us to paste an image directly into a selection.
This places the second photo directly into the selection, and after a little resizing with Photoshop's Free Transform command, the image appears on the billboard for all to see: Who wouldn't be excited to be larger than life on a billboard?
For a more detailed explanation of how to paste one image into another, be sure to check out our Placing An Image Inside Another Image in Photoshop tutorial.Up next, we'll look at how the Polygonal Lasso Tool handles something a little more complex than four-sided billboard, and what happens when we come across part of an object that's rounded or curved!
Hope you can learn something new from this tutorial.
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Reference: photoshopessentials
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