jreimsch

On the tutorial "Creating Scotch Tape", I can not get the Polygon Lasso Tool to work correctly. I follow the instructions and it never works. Any ideas? Thanks.

SCync

What is it doing?

Welles

Welcome to the forums, jreimsch.

It's hard to say where you are having problems from your description so I'll try a general answer.

The goal is to create a serrated selection and delete the end of the rectangle so it looks cut.

I'd suggest that you start with turning on your Grid and adjust the size in the Preferences > Guides and Grid. That's just to help align the click points. Also zoom way in to make using the tool easier.

Now with the Polygonal Lasso tool selected click just off one corner click again at the point inside the end of the 'tape' which will correspond to the depth of the serration. Next click at the outside edge of the tape to create a V. If you repeat those steps down the edge of the 'tape' rectangle you will create a zig-zag edge all the way down. To finish the selection go outside the 'tape' after the last V and around back to the first click. You will now have a selection similar to the one I've shown below. Clicking delete will make your serrated edge.

One difference I might suggest with the tutorial is to cut the other edge just use the Select > Transform Selection option to move and rotate your selection to the other end of the 'tape' and hit delete again to create the other edge.

Does that help? \:/

jreimsch

When I go to press "delete", it just deletes my rectangle (piece of tape) and doesn't make the edges.

jreimsch

If I do what the tutorial says and use "Ctrl+H" then delete, I get this error:

"Could not complete request because the content of the layer is not directly editable."

Welles

I'd suggest forgetting about hiding the selection. If you can't see a selection it is too easy to forget. For someone like Mark who wrote the tutorial and is a real expert, turning off the visible indication that he had a selection made sense. For most of us it is just too easy to get lost!

Secondarily, if you have a selection similar to the one shown in my little image and the tape is on a separate layer then you hit the delete key all that can be deleted are those pixels in the selected layer which fall within the bounds of the selection outline. I can only suggest trying again but leave the selection visible and make sure the tape layer is the active layer.

theKeeper

That could/would indicate that your selection is inverted (i.e. is selecting your tape shape). Press Ctrl+Shift+I and try deleting then. If the same problem occures, see the following solution.

That means that your tape shape has been created using the vector shape tools, not a normal filled selection.

OR...

That on your layer, you have a Vector Mask added and selected, and not the layer contents itself.

Double-check this to be sure. But usually that error message points to either of these situations.

Welles

Oho! I'm sure glad you found this post, theKeeper. It suddenly dawned on me that the entire problem could indeed stem from the fact that jreimsch is using the Rectangle Tool to generate the shape. So when delete is pressed, the path is eliminated.

Two ways to straighten out the confusion are to create the original tape with a rectangular selection and then fill it with color (on a new layer). Or if you prefer the Rectangle Tool, rasterize the shape before creating your selection and subsequently deleting. Layer > Rasterize > Shape.