Lee

Just for the sake of learning I took a picture with lightening, zoomed in so I could just select the lightening bolt and then tried to move and invert it so I could simulate a reflection of that lightening on the water. When I try and move just the selected lightening the whole image moves. Does a selection have to closed in like the marquee tool? If not, what am I doing wrong.

As always, thanks in advance.

L

pdog182

Did you cut or copy the selection before you tried to move it? I think that's the step you're missing. Let me know if i'm way off.

Lee

pdog, I didn't do either. I just selected it like I would with the Marquee tool and then hit the move tool to move and invert it but the whole image moved.

edit: I just tried to use copy but that didn't work either.

pdog182

okay, so with whatever selection tool you used, move it over the the selection and ctrl+click to cut and move the selection or ctrl+alt+click to copy and move the selection. After you've done that you can move the lightning with the move tool because it's on its own layer.

Lee, do you want to move that lightning to an area in the same document or a new document?

Lee

Apparently I'm still doing something wrong, pdog. I was using the Magic Wand tool and I did as you suggested. Even with only the second layer selected when I try and move the selected lightening the whole image is still moving. I have no clue what I'm doing wrong as I've moved a million selections before. This is the first time I've had this problem. ~sigh~

Gaus, I was moving in the same image. The lightening is at the top of the image and I was trying to move, invert and make a copy at the bottom of the image to simulate a reflection.

gymmie

Without seeing the actual image, it's difficult to know exactly what's going on here, Lee, but here's my guess.

Lightning is skinny. Even selected it's difficult to get the curser exactly on the thing. (Here's where the small curser comes in handy.)

I assume you've checked your new layer with the background off to make sure it has only the lightning on it? That sort of selection can be tricky; sometimes you may have selected more than you thought.

The Gurch

hmmmm could it be that you have "auto select layer" checked in the tool bar for the move tool if so and the lightning is a skinny selection you could be just selecting the larger image layer without realizing it and moving that instead.

post the pic if ya can pal so we can get more of an idea of whats going on [righton]

namvet

Lee ... just tried what I think you described and yup, everything moves ... and 'auto select layer' was not ticked ... I think maybe you need to (after you have selected your lightning) copy>open new layer>paste then move image (new lightning layer) to new position ... I did that on a test image and it worked ... hope that helps ...

Blinky2004

Once you copy a selected area, you can just paste it back and PS automatically creates the new layer for it. Adding a new layer before pasting is not neccessary.

Lee... make sure your document is in RGB mode. And also, just to rule it out, double-click your background layer, then when the dialog window comes up, just click OK to accept the defaults. That will make your doc's BG layer a standard 'transparency' layer.

See if these helps at all.