Photoshop Tutorials - Single Marquee Tools/ Pixel Stretch Technique

Single Marquee Tools/ Pixel Stretch Technique

Here's how to use the single marquee tools; yes they actually do serve a purpose.

Use them when you want to select just a single pixel wide or long across the entire document. You must be on an active layer (that you want to copy from) to do this.  Just click where you want in the image and then Ctrl J to get a new layer of this 1 pixel selection.

Another note: If you have many layers that you want to copy with your marquee (or any selection) you’ll want to use Edit: copy merged; this will ensure that you use all visible layers.

Use Edit Free Transform.  With the transform bars just drag them all the way to the edge of the document. You’re just stretching out this one pixel representation.

   

Note that the pixels being stretched do represent the range of color across the width or height of the selection; orange for the sky, etc...

This technique is used all the time in techno-collages and flyers, etc. With your help we can help oversaturate the world with too many pixel stretches.

Press enter to apply the ‘transformation’.

  

You can also apply the same technique to the horizontal marquee tool.

Toggle through different tools with the Shift and keyboard shortcut key. Note that because the single marquees don’t have a keyboard shortcut next to them (they aren’t worthy enough) they aren’t included in the tool switching.

An important note when doing all of this: you must have an active, visible layer selected/highlighted in the layers palette. You cannot copy from a hidden layer.

You’ll have to switch back to the original image (background layer) in the layers palette and hide the first stretch pixel layer (unless you want to actually do a pixel stretch off of that). Then go through with the stretch method.

This is a very important point for beginners...if you’re wondering what's going on, there's a good chance you need to check your layers palette to make sure everything’s ok.

Edit: Free Transform again.

  

But hey, I’ll give you a little taste of design (because we’re using a lot of basic tools and techniques here). Drag in a selection you’ve made in another document. The Korean girl works out nice with the background.

Remember that you can also change the size of layers with edit: transform and you can also flip them, change blend modes, etc.

Here I’m showing you both the vertical and horizontal pixel stretched layers. Note that the foreground layer is the uppermost in the layers palette.

For fun you could try a pixel stretch off of the girl to work with similar colors and make that the background. Pixel stretch off of anything..it might make it more interesting. Then you can have people guess where it actually came from.

Posted in: Photoshop Tutorials