The Marquee Tool is a quick way to select a series of pixels simply by dragging out a Rectangle, Square, Circle or Elliptical Marquee. But photographic subjects are usually slightly more complicated than a simple shape, so what are the benefits of these tools.

In it's simplest form you can just drag out a rectangle as in the first screen shot. Once you have created a marquee (also known as marching ants) reposition it by dragging or using the arrow keys to nudge it. From here you can either Copy (Ctrl+V) or Cut it (Ctrl+X), both methods will place the content within the selection to the clipboard. If you create a New document the values will be exactly the same as your selection, you can now paste in the copy. A very useful way to make a new document.

The Rectangular and Elliptical marquees have some extra options. Hold down the Shift key whilst dragging and your selection will be constrained to a prefect square or circle. Hold down the Alt key and the Rectangle or Circle will have it's center set from the starting point of your marquee. If you start to drag out a selection with the Alt key and then aslo hold down the Shift key, the marquee will jump to either a perfect square or circle with it's center point set by your intial placement. To quickly change between Rectangular and Circle marquees, hold down the Shift key and press the letter M.

Photographers who like a soft edge to their pictures might like to try this, set the Feather value to 20 pixels, this will vary depending on your image size. Drag out a marquee leaving a gap between the marquee and image edge. Invert the selection, Select > Inverse make sure the background colour is set to White (click on the two small squares under the colour patches). Now press the Backspace key and the border turns white with a soft edge, press it again to repeat the effect. You can of course use any colour you like as a background.