Loading Paths as Selections in Photoshop

Creating a path is usually the means to an end — an accurate selection. Therefore, most likely, you will frequently be using the Paths palette to load your path as a selection.

Follow these steps to get the lowdown on how to do just that. Open an image, make a selection by using the Pen tool, and get started.

1. Choose Make Selection from the Paths palette pop-up menu.
Alternatively, you can also press Alt (Option on the Mac) and click the Load Path as a Selection icon in the Paths palette. To bypass the Make Selection dialog box, simply click the Load Path as a Selection icon at the bottom of the Paths palette.

2. In the Make Selection dialog box, you can:
-->Feather your selection by entering a pixel value in the Feather Radius box.
-->Leave the feather radius at 0 for a hard-edged selection.
-->Select the Anti-aliased option. This option slightly softens the edge of the selection so that it doesn’t appear so jagged. (It’s my personal recommendation.)

If you happen to have another selection active when you load your current path as a selection, you can choose to add, subtract, or intersect with that other selection.

After the path is made into a selection, it acts like any other selection.

Here’s one of my favorite shortcuts. To quickly load the path as a selection, select the path and then press Ctrl+Enter (Ô+Return on the Mac). You can also Ctrl+click (Ô+click on the Mac) on your path name in the Paths palette to do the same. Just be aware that you bypass the dialog box and its options when you use the shortcuts.