A selection isolates one or more parts of your image. By selecting specific areas, you can edit and apply effects and filters to portions of your image while leaving the unselected areas untouched.

Photoshop provides separate sets of tools to make selections of raster and vector data. For example, to select pixels, you can use the marquee tools or the lasso tools. You can use commands in the Select menu to select all pixels, to deselect, or to reselect.

To select vector data, you can use the pen or shape tools, which produce precise outlines called paths. You can convert paths to selections or convert selections to paths.

Selections can be copied, moved, and pasted, or saved and stored in an alpha channel. Alpha channels store selections as grayscale images called masks. A mask is like the inverse of a selection: it covers the unselected part of the image and protects it from any editing or manipulations you apply. You can convert a stored mask back into a selection by loading the alpha channel into an image.