Adobe Photoshop Elements Select Menu - Including Modify, Grow, Similar, and Loading, Saving, and Deleting a Selection

Modify gives you a few options for your selection. Border allows you to create a border around the selected pixels (up to 200 pixels) so that only the pixels within that border are selected. You can copy this selection to a new layer and fill the layer with a color to make an outline of your image. Smooth works a lot like feathering. It will give the selection a softer edge so it looks better, rather than having jagged pixels. Expand lets you make your selection bigger by up to 200 pixels so that you can select the exact portion of the image. Lastly, Contract will let you make your selection smaller to define the exact portion of the image you want to select.

Grow: Grow works by selecting more pixels that match the color of your selection. For example, you’ve selected a portion of a tree. Grow will choose all of the pixels that match the color of the tree portion you’ve selected. This works best if you have an image that has a high contrast, otherwise it may select more pixels than you need.

Similar: Similar will select all of the pixels in an image that match the color of your selected pixels. Again, this works best with high contrast images so that you don’t end up selecting pixels you didn’t need.

Load Selection, Delete Selection, and Save Selection all work together. To load a selection, you first must save it. Here is how this works: Say you’ve just finished selecting a portion of a tree, you’ve spent tons of time selecting that tree, making sure you’ve gotten all of the pixels. Saving the selection allows you to save that exact outline to use again later. Load selection allows you to load a previously saved selection, and delete selection deletes any saved selections you no longer want or need.