How to Save Marquee Selection in Photoshop

The marquee tools in Adobe Photoshop like the rectangular marquee let you select a portion of an image and perform various operations, such as apply a filter, scale an area or distort the selection. Once you deselect the area, however, that portion of the image cannot be reselected. The answer to this problem is to save your selection to an alpha channel before you deselect the area. Once the alpha channel is created you can retrieve the selection at a later time from the Channels tab.

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Photoshop (most versions)

1. Open any Photoshop document and select the layer you will work on.

2. Choose the marquee tool and select an area within the layer.

3. Pull down the "Select" menu and choose "Save Selection."

4. Ensure that New Channel is selected and Click "OK."

5. Deselect the active area within the layer.

6. Click on the Channels tab and view your new alpha channel.

Tips & Warnings

• You can name your alpha channel in the Save Selection dialog box to better organize your channels. You can also store your new channel in another document from this dialog.

• Photoshop limits the number of alpha channels you can store in a single .psd file to 56.

References

• "Photoshop Studio with Bert Monroy: Digital Painting;" New Riders Press, 2008.

Resources

• Adobe.com: Photoshop Help and Support Forum