# Selection

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### What is selection?

{% embed url="<https://youtu.be/KuPRp2GHYQg>" %}

In a graphical software context, a selection is an area that has been selected. Changes will only be applied to this selected area. This helps prevent any unwanted changes to the remaining of the working space.

In Pixquare, the selected area will be marked with an animated dashed line surrounding the area.

Pixquare has an advanced selection tool with 5 selection types and 5 selection modes.

### Selection types

<figure><img src="https://1813203282-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FOddm4yDredA8gF0g7cDm%2Fuploads%2F6JU3dy8SLBoH96wNgW8s%2FSelection%20type.png?alt=media&#x26;token=50de30cc-fb1e-43ff-a0e4-63e1e6d5f17e" alt="" width="217"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

* Box - Drag to select a rectangle area
* Ellipse - Drag to select an ellipse area
* Lasso - Draw a stroke to select the area encapsulated inside the stroke. This works similarly to the [contour brush](https://docs.pixquare.art/brush#contour), but instead of filling color, it selects the area
* Polygon - Tap or drag to set the corner of a polygon, it will connect those points and then select the area surrounded by the polygon.
* Magic wand - Tap to select all the pixels with the same color. It has 3 options: contiguous, tolerance, and sampling mode which work in the same way as the color bucket's options.
  * [Read more about contiguous >](https://docs.pixquare.art/color-bucket#contiguous)
  * [Read more about tolerance >](https://docs.pixquare.art/color-bucket#tolerance)
  * [Read more about sampling modes >](https://docs.pixquare.art/color-bucket#sampling-mode)

### Selection modes

<figure><img src="https://1813203282-files.gitbook.io/~/files/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2FOddm4yDredA8gF0g7cDm%2Fuploads%2FHGIDR9g5xHzBto20nzbD%2FSelection%20modes.png?alt=media&#x26;token=781d7398-2e8d-45af-94f8-a084659e7d71" alt="" width="219"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>

* Replace (individual) - When a new selection is made, it will replace the previous one.
* Add (Union) - When a new selection is made, it will combine with the previous one.
* Subtract - When a new selection is made, it doesn't select the new area, instead, it will deselect that area from the previous one.
* Intersect - When a new selection is made, only the pixels that belong to both the new one and the previous one remain selected.
* Exclusive - The opposite of Intersect, when a new selection, only pixels that either belong to the new one or the previous one (but not both) are selected.

{% hint style="info" %}
When there is an active selection, we can simply tap on the canvas to deselect
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="info" %}
We can use the "Select all" option to quickly select all the content of the current layer
{% endhint %}

### Marching ants opacity

Sometimes the marching ants (the animated line around the selection) can be distracting.&#x20;

To mitigate that, we can adjust its opacity with the slider in the Selection tool option panel