Modify, transform, save and load selections
The Select menu in Paint by Zaweba: Border, Grow, Similar, Transform Selection, saving to channels or a PNG, and turning a selection into a document.
Making a selection is half the job. The other half is shaping it into exactly the area you meant, keeping it for later, and moving it between pictures. The Select menu in Paint by Zaweba has a set of commands for that, and knowing them saves a lot of redrawing.
Modify, Grow and Similar
Modify > Border turns a selection into a band along its edge. That band is useful for working only on the outline of something: softening the seam where a cut-out meets a new background, or painting a glow just around a shape.
Grow takes the selection outwards to neighbouring pixels of similar colour, so a patch of sky you clicked with the wand can spread to the rest of the connected sky. Similar does the same across the whole picture, picking up matching pixels even if they don't touch the original selection. Use Grow when you want one connected area and Similar when the colour appears in several separate places.
Transform Selection
Transform Selection changes the outline without touching any pixels. You can scale it, rotate it, skew it, distort it, apply perspective or warp it. Only the marching ants move; the picture underneath stays exactly as it was.
This is handier than it sounds. If you drew an ellipse selection for a plate seen at an angle and it's slightly too small, scale it instead of drawing it again. If you selected a window in a building photo and need to match the same shape on another window that leans in perspective, copy the selection and apply perspective. Warping helps when an outline needs to bend round a curved surface.
Save Selection and Load Selection
A careful selection can take ten minutes. Save it. Save Selection stores it in a channel inside the document, which shows up in the Channels panel as an alpha channel, so it is kept with the file. Load Selection brings it back later, and Ctrl+click on the channel in the Channels panel does the same.
You can also save a selection to a greyscale PNG file, and load one from a PNG. That's a neat way to move a selection between documents, or to keep a mask for a series of photos taken from the same spot.
Selection to New Document
Selection to New Document takes the selected area and opens it as a fresh document. It's quick for pulling a detail out of a photo to work on separately, saving a crop for a thumbnail without cropping the original, or starting a new design from part of an old one.
How these fit together
A common sequence goes like this. Select an object roughly, use Grow to take in its neighbouring shades, then Save Selection so you never have to make it again. Later, Load Selection, apply Modify > Border, and paint a soft shadow just around the edge. Or select the object, Selection to New Document, and you have a clean copy to export.
These commands also pair well with Quick Mask. Transform or grow a selection, press Q to see it as a red overlay, paint in any corrections, then press Q again. Quick Mask is undoable both ways, so nothing is lost by trying.
Easy ways to trip up
Using Similar when you meant Grow is common, and it can select bits of colour all over the image. If odd islands appear, undo and use Grow.
Transforming the selection when you meant to transform the pixels is another. Transform Selection moves only the outline. If you want the object itself bigger, transform the layer instead.
And don't rely on a selection surviving. Selections vanish with a stray click outside them. If it took real effort, save it to a channel or a PNG straight away.
Each of these commands is small, but together they mean you can treat a selection as something to keep, reshape and reuse rather than redraw every time. That habit pays off on any picture that takes more than one session.
