The question you’re asking is about making the most basic selection. What you’re trying to do can be accomplished many ways – pen tool/path, polygon lasso tool, magic wand on background, calculations + channel selection, layer mask, etc, etc, etc.
But before you can do any of those things, you need to gain some fundamental knowledge about Photoshop. And before anyone here can answer your question, you need to have that knowledge.
There are many tutorials on-line, but the best way to start would be to pick up a copy of Classroom-In-A-Book for Photoshop. It is published by Adobe and is available in most bookstores. It will guide you through the things you need to know to start using the program.
When you have difficulties, please come back here and ask. Some of the folks who answer questions might seem intimidating, but they’re all good at heart. (Right, folks?) Don’t be scared off.
Good luck.
Learn to use the pen tool. It’s a valuable skill for those who work with Photoshop.
Go to online tutorials and be patient, it takes some practice, but well worth the investment in time.
Joshua:
You might want to experiment with the Crop tool and Perspective if you would like your book to be a true rectangle rather than a trapezium.
You could also use the Free Transform Skew to make the book into a rectangle.
Ooops! that book will never be a trapezium
In UK English, that book could easily look like a "trapezium"!
<< There are two common definitions of the trapezium. The American definition is a quadrilateral with no parallel sides.
The British definition for a trapezium is a quadrilateral with two sides parallel (Bronshtein and Semendyayev 1977, p. 174). >>
<
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Trapezium.html>
Um, Joshua…
If you’re still with us, you can also find this info in your user’s guide for Photoshop (real or virtual version). For a shortcut, look up the key words in the index for starters.
Please come back if you have further questions.
Neil
Thanks all … I guess that I’m not that new at these things, I am just more of an indesign maven than a photoshop one, I work more in bookpublishing than other things, I’m familiar with the tools … and I know the ones listed, but I haven’t found them very accurate,more than anything, I’ve found them a bit tempermental and oversensitive … I haven’t been able to control them as much as I had hoped and get the result I’m hoping for … what I’m really looking for is a trick that can get me a more accurate result … I was hoping to be able to use the rectangle selection tool and then move the points to the exact size and shape of the image and then inverse select and delete, similar to what can be done with the cropper, but alas, that doesn’t seem to be an option
Any more, more specific ideas would be really appreciated
Using the Pen Tool, make your rectangular shape that you mention you’d like to do with the rectangle selection (Marquee) tool. Then, using the Path Direct Selection Tool, shift the corner points to exactly the spots you’d like. Name your Path in the paths palette. Select your path, and invert the selection and delete. It’s almost exactly what you described you’d like!
Thanks, Zina. That’s exactly what I was looking for …
When Joshua said
"I’ve found them a bit tempermental and oversensitive … I haven’t been able to control them as much as I had hoped and get the result I’m hoping for …"
I figured he must be discussing the Mac PS Forumees…
🙂
