Again, this depends on how you have it set up in the Preferences. Both the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee Tools can be selected by pressing the letter M, and to switch between them, you either press M again by itself or you'll need to press Shift+M.
Every tool in the Tools panel can be accessed by pressing a certain letter on your keyboard. You can easily switch between the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee Tools from your keyboard, although exactly how you do it will depend on how you have things set up in Photoshop's Preferences. Whichever Marquee Tool you selected previously appears in the Tools panel. Click on the Elliptical Marquee Tool in the fly-out menu to select it: To access it, simply click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool, then hold your mouse button down for a second or two until a fly-out menu appears showing you the other tools that are nested behind it.
This tutorial is from our How to make selections in Photoshop series.ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF!īy default, the Elliptical Marquee Tool is hiding behind the Rectangular Marquee Tool in the Tools panel. In fact, the only real difference is that the Elliptical Marquee Tool allows us to draw oval or circular selections! If you already know how to use the Rectangular Marquee Tool, think of the Elliptical Marquee Tool as being the same thing, just with extremely rounded corners.
It's nearly identical to the Rectangular Marquee Tool and works much the same way. The Elliptical Marquee Tool, which is what we'll be looking at here, is another of Photoshop's basic selection tools.
In a previous tutorial, we learned how Photoshop's Rectangular Marquee Tool allows us to quickly and easily select objects or areas in a photo based on simple rectangular or square shapes.