05 Selection Clipboard

Ch. 05 ✂️ Selection & Clipboard

What you'll learn: Every selection tool DRAW offers, how selections clip drawing tools, the full clipboard vocabulary, and the Stroke Selection effect.

---

Selection Tools — Marquee, Freehand & Wand

🎯 Goal: Select regions for editing and manipulation.

A selection in DRAW does two things at once: it defines a region for clipboard operations, and it clips every drawing tool so paint only lands inside the marching-ants outline.

Marquee variants

Variant	Icon	What it does
Rectangle		Drag to draw a rectangular selection.
Ellipse		Oval / circular selection area.
Freehand		Draw the selection boundary by hand.
Polygon		Click each vertex; close with Enter.
Magic Wand		Click to select contiguous same-color pixels.

The shared modifier vocabulary works across every selection tool:

• Shift+drag/click — add to the existing selection (union).
• Alt+drag/click — subtract from the existing selection.

After a selection exists you get resize handles on its edges; drag inside the marquee to translate the selection (with Move semantics); arrow keys nudge by 1 pixel (10 with Shift).

Magic Wand specials

• Shift+Click — add to selection.
• Alt+Click — subtract.
• Hold F and click — instant flood fill with FG, no selection step. This works across ALL layers.
• Hold E and click — instant erase to transparent. This works across ALL layers.
• Hold W and click — sample from the merged composite of all visible layers, not just the active one.

Selection commands

Command	Shortcut
Select All	Ctrl+A
Deselect	Ctrl+D
Invert Selection	Ctrl+Shift+I
Expand / Contract	Image / Select menu
Selection from current layer	(non-transparent pixels)
Selection from selected layers	union mask

Copy, Cut, Paste & Clipboard Power

🎯 Goal: Master clipboard operations.

DRAW has more clipboard verbs than most editors because it cares about both layer-aware and pixel-aware semantics:

Action	Shortcut	Notes
Copy	Ctrl+C	Selection → clipboard.
Cut	Ctrl+X	Copy + clear.
Paste	Ctrl+V	Pastes at the cursor; auto-engages the Move tool so you can position before committing.
Paste in Place	Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V	Paste at the exact original position.
Copy Merged	Ctrl+Shift+C	Copies the visible composite, not just the active layer.
Copy to New Layer	Ctrl+Alt+C	One-step "duplicate selection onto a new layer above".
Cut to New Layer	Ctrl+Alt+X	Same, but removes from the source.
Paste from OS Clipboard	Ctrl+Shift+V	Brings in any image you copied from another application.
Clear / Erase	Ctrl+E or Delete	Clears the selection (or the whole layer if no selection — no prompt).

Stroke Selection

Edit → Stroke Selection adds a stroke around the selection boundary. You can configure:

• Width in pixels.
• Position — inside, outside, or centered on the boundary.
• Color — current FG, or a custom value.

This is the cleanest way to outline finished sprites in a uniform thickness.

---

➡️ Next: Chapter 6 — Transforms & Image Adjustments