The stark white background makes it easy to see both your selection and the object you’re selecting while you’re fine-tuning it using the dialog box’s settings. Choose this view if your image is mostly dark. This view displays the selection on a black background, which is helpful if your image is light colored and doesn’t have a lot of black in it. To temporarily see your original image, press the X key press X again to go back to the preview mode you were using. You can cycle through the preview modes by pressing the F key repeatedly when the Refine Edge dialog box is open. (Because Photoshop displays the preview in the main document window, you’ll want to move the Refine Edge dialog box aside so it’s not covering your image.) Depending on the colors in the image, one of these View modes will let you see the selection better than the rest: The Refine Edge dialog box gives you seven different ways to preview your selection. You can also open it by choosing Select→Refine Edge, pressing Option-⌘-R (Alt+Ctrl+R), or clicking the Properties panel’s Mask Edge button (see Figure 3-33). If you forget what the dialog box’s various settings do, never fear: Just point your cursor at a setting and a tooltip appears explaining what it does.Īny time you have a selection tool active and some marching ants on your screen, you’ll see the Refine Edge button sitting pretty up in the Options bar simply click it to open the dialog box. Figure 4-19. The Refine Edge dialog box not only lets you see a live, continuously updated preview of what your selection will look like after fine-tuning, but you also get seven different views to choose from (Overlay is particularly handy if you’re dealing with hair or fur) and two tools you can use to refine your selection before clicking OK.