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Often, the image that you start with has portions of it that you don't want. How do you eliminate them? Photoshop has a couple of tools that allow you to select and eventually delete(if you wish) portions of an image. No matter which of the tools to the left that you use to select a portion of an image, you can also select the opposite of what you outlined. Using the pull down menu shown at the right, you can flip-flop back and forth between the area you selected and everything else on the image. This is a valuable option.

• The selection tool in the upper left hand corner allows you to do an autoshape select of a rectangle, circle, or even a one pixel column. This icon also contains the crop tool. Once you have selected the area you wish to crop, go Image...Crop.
• The lower left hand selection tool allows you to free hand trace a shape. This is the tool I used to trace around my odd shaped head above. Because you are tracing freehand, use the magnifying tool to enlarge the image. If you didn't trace it exactly right, you can hold down the Shift key to add parts you missed onto the original trace. Holding down the Alt key will allow you to delete sections of your original trace.
• The magic wand in the lower right hand corner of the selection box, allows you to click on an area of the same color to select that area. If you set the tolerance at 0(see right), the magic wand will only select the exact same color. Increasing the tolerance number allows you to select an area with "similar" color. Experimenting with the magic wand will increase your understanding of the value of this tool.
• The final tool in the selection square(upper right) is for moving objects.

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